Updates on my dear Ryan

@ 4 years 10 months 4 days

It has been a while since I update anything on Ryan. Here’s some of his latest developments.

- At this age, he’s very vocal and very expressive (according to his art teacher). At home he has no problem expressing his needs. When he’s outside, I do find him a tad shy especially when it comes to strangers. But after warming up, he’ll be fine. I guess he’s like hubs. Just need a little bit more time to heat it up.

- He is now able to converse in Mandarin. This is an improvement by leaps and bounds. 6 months ago, he had very limited Mandarin vocab, not to mention speaking the language. However after attending BaoBei for a mere 2 months, he started showing progress and the rest is history. As of now, I think he could recognise (read and understand) at least 50 – 80 words now. Not a number to shout about but definitely something I am very proud of him. For sure, he could recognise more Mandarin words than his mommy.

- Ryan is a very competitive child, to an extent overly competitive. He gets very upset when he loses out. When we’re in a game, he want to win all the time. Really bad. I guess that explain why he only plays with Yeh Yeh who always give in to him.

- He’s crazy about Wii and iPad game now. As of now, he’s into Mario Cart (Wii) and Fragger (iPad). Knowing his lack of skills, he always ask Daddy to help him unlock the Mario cars and when it comes to Fragger, he always bug me to unlock the levels for him.

- He has been attending art lessons for about 4 months now. Frankly I don’t see any progress or maybe I do not really know how to evaluate his progress. His art teacher said he’s very expressive in vocal and pictures. He’s also pretty good in his creativity. The only improvement Ryan needs is on his patience. He gets upset even by being the last person to finish his drawing (because everyone else were playing outside except him). Luckily after bring lectured numerous times by me, he’s better now when it comes to that sense. He still get upset if he’s not the first but at least would not put up a show because of silly matter like this.

IMG_2187
Feb11 – @ Judy’s Art Class. Theme: CNY flower (that was a Mao Tan flower)

This boy of mine has mood swings. I would say most of the time he is moderately patient. He is one individual who needs to sweet talk to make him do the things we want him to do. The Chinese say , “sao yuen hmm sao ngang”. That’s my boy.

- When he gets punished/scolded/reprimanded, he will say things like “Mommy, you still love me or not?“, “Mommy, I already apologised why you still do bad things to me?“, “Mommy, you want me to eat my food or not? If yes, you must sayang me.“, “Mommy, I want you to sayang me now“, “Mommy, if you don’t sayang me, I don’t love you anymore!” (ouchhh.. how hurtful).

- At this age, he’s very opinionated. He has his own thinking and at times it really drives me up the wall trying to mange this little fella. Just a moment ago, I was scolding him for not eating his food. He was served pasta soup. Instead of eating his Gomito pasta, he was messing around with it and only drank the soup. When I reprimanded him, he kept asking me why; why must he eat lunch when he’s not hungry; why can’t he drink the soup first then only pasta; why he needs to eat food together with everyone (usually only dinner. He eats his lunch in playroom), yadda yadda…..

- Ryan attended his first swimming lesson last Saturday after a very long procrastination by hubs and I. Excuses one after another. So last Saturday what happened was, hubs was commenting he had not visited the club even once after we bought the membership last year and that he’s dying to do some exercise. I suggested we go around 5pm, so we could also meet up with the swim coach, Steven. I knew they have swimming lessons at the Club every weekends between 5 – 7pm. So off we went around 4pm. Coincidentally there was a class which starts at 4.15pm. After discussing with Coach, we decided to let Ryan try. Ryan is one scaredy cat. He dislike water splashing onto his face. I get very agigated during shower time when I have to wash his hair with his head backwards. Yea.. at almost 5 years old, he still get his hair washed that way. So ‘baby‘ rite. LOL. Anyway, back to his first swimming lesson, he got on very well. He was a bit intidimated when he was asked to remove his floats and put on the goggles but he survived. :P I guess it was due to the peer pressures. We bumped into his schoolmate who is also attending swimming lesson under Steven and guess what this friend could swim like a mermaid! Knowing Ryan’s personality, he will bite his tongue and prove he too can do it, if not better.

IMG_2195

19Feb11 - First swimming lesson. Was asked to breath bubbles and kick water. Noticed how he was trying very hard to put up a smile there. :D

Â