Since the day little Rynus joined the Chan family, our attention has to be shared between the two boys. Like I mentioned in my previous blog post, it didn't take too long for Renzo to get re-adjusted, and by now Rynus has turned ONE, I am proud to say Renzo has been coping way better than expected. He loves his Rynus Di Di although he still insists Renzo is Mummy's 宝贝，and Rynus belongs to Daddy.
During day time, Renzo enjoys his school life at the child care center. Rynus has to spend a whole day alone with our helper at home. So after Renzo comes home from school, the brothers could spend a couple of hours playing together, well fighting together also ^_^. Renzo only let Rynus touch toys we specifically mentioned "bought for Di Di". Yes he has this super good memory that he could easily identify toys we bought for Rynus and usually he doesn't even touch them. But then, he will shout and stop Rynus from touching toys belong to Renzo, which makes baby Rynus a little upset sometimes.
Recently, he finally started to share his toys and maybe he just realized that there's no way to play all his 101 Thomas trains at the same time. Yesterday, I observed that Renzo allowed Rynus to play with some of his legos, and he even reminded his little brother that those pieces are very dangerous for Rynus as he's only one year old and he might accidentally swallow them. If you wonder did Renzo say that to Rynus? Yes those are his exact words, he really talks like an adult now!!
And when it comes to bedtime routine, before we had Rynus, Renzo was getting 100% attention from me. I used to bathe him, read with him, talk to him and sleep together with him. But now, Daddy has to settle everything for Renzo while I feed Rynus and coax him to sleep. Last night, after Daddy turned off the light, hugged/kissed Renzo and said good night, Renzo asked, "What are you doing Mummy? Can you come over here?". I told him that I am carrying Rynus and can only go to him after Rynus is asleep, he said "妈妈，我要你坐在这边，那样我就很开心了!"..
OMG I almost burst into tears when I heard that, little Renzo understands that I can't put Rynus down but all he asked for, was to have me sitting on his bed while carrying Rynus, so that he could fall asleep happily! He's such a sweet darling, isn't he?!!
He requested me to take a photo of him hugging his Rynus!
And look at how he plays with his Rynus Di Di, so loving and caring right?!!
When Daddy Chan was disciplining Renzo for his mischievous behavior last Saturday night, Renzo whined and declared (secretly to me), "I don't love daddy anymore, I will not say happy mother's day and give happy mother's day present to daddy!!!". Oh well of course he meant "happy father's day".. So just in case my dearest hubby is not getting anything from Renzo tonight, since the teachers in school will definitely help them prepare the father's day present, let me just share this lovely mother's day present from Renzo with Daddy first ^_^...
I am not trying to make fun of Daddy Chan here. Just that little Renzo has this incredibly good memory and he is a man of his word. There was this time when my mother-in-law "threatened' him that she's not going to bring him home after school if he insists to take bus 69 instead of 34 every time, so that night, Renzo casually mentioned that he's not coming home with grandma the next day and he will wait for me to pick him up, guess what? The next day, my poor mother-in-law had to call me from school as Renzo really refused to follow her home and even told her "Nainai, yesterday, you said you will not pick me up, and I will have to wait for mummy to come and be the last one to leave school!!"
In my eyes, Daddy Chan has been a great father to the 2 boys and not just that, he's the best ever husband who always supports me, and "Mummy knows the best" is his favorite phrase all the time when comes to kids upbringing! Being the first among his group of friends to get married and have kids, I know it's a very challenging experience and he's been handling it so well! I admire his patience, and energy in running around the playground with the kids, carrying them up and down, sweating like a cow but coming back with a big smile telling me how fun and enjoyable experience he had. When comes to their upbringing, he told me to be the angel in our kids' eyes and he will always be the bad man. He said, "It's alright for them to hate me when they are young, because I will shout, I will scold, I will beat, I will really discipline and teach them what is right and wrong through the hard approach, as long as they all love you and go to you for best comfort".
Many people might have the impression that Daddy Chan is a great gamer and would definitely be sharing his full collection of games with the boys in the very near future, but I know it's not just that. The boys will be learning so many other stuff from their daddy! I am always impressed with his extensive science knowledge, interesting trivia facts, effective basketball drills and amazing tolerance level in handling his partner, yes that's me! And he even has plans to teach the boys how to save & invest at the age of 5? Or write their own piece of web app code at the age of 10? I am sure the boys will get some of these really good traits from their daddy.
About 2 years ago, I wrote a post on Renzo's Mandarin and although we were pretty impressed with his ability to sing Chinese songs or even recite "三字经" at young age, we have to admit that his Chinese didn't improve much for the past 2 years, with our all English speaking environment at home.
In fact Renzo has quite a big problem dealing with people who speaks Chinese. You know it's pretty common in Singapore to have strangers who try to strike conversation with him in Chinese, he usually gets pretty angry and responds in a very rude manner. He loves to talk to people who speaks English, and somehow he has this concept that all Malays, Indians and Caucasians can definitely speak English, thus he has a strong preference to communicate and interact with them.
Knowing that he definitely needs to brush up his Chinese language in our bilingual society, we put him into Chinese class (form teacher teaches Chinese) at his childcare for the past 2 years. And this year when we were given a chance to choose between English and Chinese class, we picked English class instead as he's not been adapting well in school, and we suspected language barrier might be the major roadblock.
Now he's doing better under the English form teacher, and his Chinese teacher this year is one of the best teachers in the school. So somehow we noticed that he starts to get more and more confident in speaking Chinese at home. Although he's still speaking with a strong ang moh (Caucasian) accent, his Chinese articulation is very accurate, just like his English. His teacher once mentioned that he was helping to teach other kids how to pronounce "红毛丹" (rambutan) in school! The only problem is that he's using a lot of "direct translation" from English to Chinese which makes his sentences less fluent, and more hilarious. For example, "I want to throw this into the dustbin"，becomes 我要丢这个去里面在垃圾桶 instead of 我要把这个丢进垃圾桶里面 in Renzo's language.
Last night, he happily told us, "我是一个火车，爸爸是树，妈妈是一个球，Rynus是一个小松鼠". He always self proclaim he is the longest wheel train simply because he loves trains so much! We asked him why daddy is a tree, he answered it's because daddy is growing taller and taller, yes in his eyes, and in his little heart, daddy is a tall and strong man! And when we asked him why he thinks Rynus is a squirrel, he said: "因为，我不知道他是什么shape的!".. Well not much logic here but at least that's a good try!
Of course I got pretty upset and "complained" to daddy that I must be too fat to be described as a BALL. Renzo immediately "corrected" me, "不是的妈妈，妈妈是一个球，不过，不是一个胖胖的球!".. Awww how sweet!!!!! My son knows what I was complaining about. But then he followed by, "是一个球，就像一个大西瓜!".. Gosh, is watermelon any "slimmer" than a ball then?!!
Anyway we have to really thank Renzo's school and teacher for their incredible hard work. It's still tougher to teach Renzo Chinese than English, but we can definitely conquer, together!!
This is what he learned in school, and all credits must go to his Chinese teacher, 戴老师!!
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