As Sean reaches his 34th month, I'm seeing Sean growing more independent and cuter each day. He's now playing more on his own, doing more imaginative play. He's speaking more clearly now and becoming more expressive. It's really cute to hear him play by himself...When he's looking for something and finds it, he goes "Oh here it is".
He's also been displaying more and more of his humorous side. He finds many things hilarious. Tonight I told him to get his " Yo! Yes?" book. He ran to the basket and came back with a book behind his back, eyes lit up and almost bursting with laughter. He showed me the book and said "Brown Bear!" and laughed, then he ran back to the shelf and took another book and repeated this and found so much fun in teasing his mummy.
Another incident I can remember. I asked him, " Do you want to stay in the room or do you want to go downstairs?" I had my 2 fingers up to make my point. He grabbed on of the finger and said "outside!" and laughed and laughed. He knew he was teasing his mummy.
Just recently, the librarian, Anne, at Play Center asked me,"Where's your little boy?" You see, Sean used to shadow me all the time. She was surprised to hear that he was playing by himself outside (with the other kids and adults). She commented, "Wow, he has really grown independent now."
Just on Monday, Sean bullied another boy who's still at the clingy stage. He wanted to play the car that the boy was on. Sean said " My Car" (It wasn't his car but he thinks that everything that he has played with is his) The mother was obviously upset and I scolded Sean and told him to say sorry of course. Bullying is just not acceptable behavior. The mother was surprised to see Sean obediently saying sorry contritely and then moving away without a fuss. She was more surprised to hear that Sean still gets bullied by another (older) boy too.
When he used to get bullied, I told him that he doesn't need to cry but just say "No!". Now he is able to stand up for himself. But he still gets upset when someone takes his toys away too. But then boys will just be boys, they all seem to fight for one particular toy even though they are surrounded by many other toys.
This is a lot of difference from when he started at Children's corner in February. Sean was very clingy and would cry whenever the bell rang. Now, he doesn't cling anymore.In fact, he's one of the few who would answer during lesson time.
Teacher: Who are these?
Sean: People
Teacher: How many of them are there?
Sean: Three
(His voice isn't loud so I don't think he was heard but I just found it cute that he is participating more and more)
He still can't sits still during Circle time though, but I think it's because he is not interested in singing nursery rhymes. He finds jumping around a lot more fun. But I don't have to chase him around the room anymore to get him to sit down. Seriously, my skin is very thick now. I used to chase Sean around the room to catch him while most other kids sit with their mothers.
Sean caught the Transformer bug when he was in Jakarta. The whole time he was there, he was playing with Frederick's transformer toy. On our flight back on Air Asia, we got him a kids meal that came with a few Transformer cards. It became his treasured cards. He plays with them constantly.
On Thursday night, I remembered that I saw some of John's old broken Transformer toys from way back when Transformer first came out in the 80s. I searched for the box and found an old Optimus Prime, and a few other transformer robots with missing parts. Sean was so happy to have "Optipus Time". =D
We washed the dust away and since then we cannot part him from his "Optipus Time" and Bumblebee. He took photos of them, and went to sleep with them. When he wakes up in the morning, he brings them down for breakfast. The only time he's not with them is when he goes to playgroup. I tell him that he cannot bring his toys because he'll lose them. Hence, he hasn't wanted to go out anywhere because he wants to stay home and play with his Transformers.
Sean is still overcoming his fear of water. After swimming lesson, he spends more time outside the pool than inside it. It doesn't help that Kai keeps taking his swimming board away, but in this situation, it's more about learning to defend himself. When he is in water, he still keeps to the shallow steps of the pool. I guess we need to have more swim time to get him more confident in water.
This was Sean's first painting. I was doing a song sheet for Children's corner when Sean woke up and wanted to paint too. I gave him some papers and a brush and some paint. He was painting this upside down when
I said, " Hey, that looks like a car. Is that a car?"
Sean: Yes
I said : Where are the wheels?
So he painted circles for wheels and a window.
He hasn't done anything like this since then. So I can call this his first masterpiece. After all masterpieces are things that is done once only. . ha ha ..ha...
This is Sean's recent painting of letter A. He has a funny way of writing A. He starts with the letter H and then joins the top to make an A. He likes his letters with eyes too.
He painted A with an aeroplane on Thursday but I forgot to bring the paper back from playgroup. Anyway, his aeroplane still doesn't look anything like an aeroplane. It's just squiggles of lines for the body and wings.
Last week he learned how to spell "ANT" all on his own. He was playing with some flash cards and said " A is for Ant!", and since then has been spelling "ant" on the fridge with his alphabet magnets and on the computer when we let him play typing.
He refuses to learn any other words that I try to teach him though. He only learns when he wants to learn. I guess I should learn to be patient and let him learn at his own pace.
Toilet training : We've moved on to sleeping and going out without diapers , but I got lazy yesterday and put him in a diaper if we need to go shopping. We have 2 half packets of diapers left and my intention is to let these be the last of the diapers. Maybe I should just hide them so that Sean will not keep asking to wear diapers all the time and I don't get tempted to put a diaper on him.
This was in March when the kids would run down the slope after playgroup. That was the highlight of the day. What I notice is that while there are toys around, they ignore each other. They prefer to play on their own. The moment we keep the toys away, the notice each other and start playing together. But ever since Kai, the oldest boy (4 years old) left the playgroup in April, they haven't played this much. I guess they need to re-establish the peckng order once again.
This was taken in February. One of the rare photos of me and Sean. I really should take more photos with Sean and Sam. We have so few pictures together.
On Saturday, after being cooped up in the room half the afternoon while I surfed the Net and he played with his Transformer cards, Sean was jumping around like a monkey, impatient to do something fun. I was checking out other people's blogs, as well as reading attempts by blogger mummies who are doing Montessori materials with their children. So I thought... Let's do it! Let's do some Montessori activities.
But I had a lot of fun. I doodled pictures, such as apple, orange, watermelon, bee, car, person, simple drawings, and asked him what they were, and he got them correct most of the time. He drew his letter 'A' as usual, and then out of the blue, he doodled a pear. We haven't even been eating pears nor talked about pears for a long time, which was why it surprised me. And he did a mini banana.
Later that evening, I got out some beads that I had and made it into a stringing toy with a thin wire. At school, he's never been interested in stringing things, but maybe the pink beads are especially attractive.
