Taisei Buffet

Chillin' at Home

I just discovered this video taken a few weeks ago. We thought we'd share.




I enjoyed this too, from a fatherly point of view. ;)

posted by Jerin at 10:39 PM | 7 comment(s)

Sleep and Scissors

Taisei has a pretty set routine for getting ready for bed:

1. Normally, we have a shower or bath.
   
2. We dry him off and put lotion on him.
   
3. We put on his diaper.
   
4. We put on his PJs.
   
5. We give him his gummy bear vitamin.
   
6. We brush his teeth.
7. We go to his room and lie down on the futon to read a book.
   
8. Then we turn off the lights and baba (me) says a prayer.
   
9. Then mama picks him up, gives him one last drink of water. I give him a kiss and mama puts him in the crib.
   
10. Lastly, I cover him with blankets and we leave the room.
    

The last part has always been non-negotiable. I pray, and mom puts him to put. In the past few months, here is how things have evolved:

1. We have a shower or bath. Now he washes himself with soap.
   
2. We wrap a towel around him and he dries off his own hair with his favorite Totoro towel.
   
3. He takes off naked and runs around til we catch him. Then we put on his diaper.
   
4. We try to put on lotion, but he usually wants to do it himself.
   
5. He grabs his favorite flavor of gummy bear.
   
6. He brushes his own teeth and sometimes will let us help.
   
7. He then proceeds to run around, jump off the bed, and stall bedtime as much as possible.
   
8. We finally get him into his room and he continues to run around.
   
9. I threaten to skip the book by turning off the lights and he finally lies down.
   
10. We finish one book and turn off the lights before he can protest.
11. I pray.
    
12. Mom picks him up and lets him have one last drink of water. Tonight was the first night he ever let me pick him up and put him in the crib.
    
13. We kiss him goodnight and leave the room.

It's slightly more time, but still not too bad. Once the book reading starts, he's in his crib within 5 or 10 minutes, depending how generous we are with the book reading. Usually, bedtime has been around 8-8:30. Once he's in bed, we finally have our free time!! woohoo!


In other news, things that Taisei's been up to:

• He likes to pretend read. He'll grab something and start going "blee-blah-poo-ka-ka"
• He has a concept of numbers, but the concept isn't quite right. It usually goes like this: One, three, five, ex, seven, EIGHT! Sometimes he'll throw a two and a four in there, but usually not.
• He hasn't been behaving well in nursery lately, but has been totally fine in his pre-school class. I think it's partly because of an unstructured nursery combined with little to no consistency in leadership or discipline. The bad thing is that Taisei is misbehaves the most out of all the kids. Part of that is probably our fault. We haven't found a punishment that truly works in teaching him yet. (Any good ideas? We've tried taking away favorite toys, time out, etc. He doesn't seem to care.) He pushes and takes things from other kids. The other parents don't like it and the nursery leaders complain (although they don't exercise any discipline). I don't want to be in there even though I'm one of the leaders because I don't want Taisei to be dependent on me. But on the other hand, it doesn't seem like anyone knows how to deal with him, nor run the nursery in general. When can we move on to primary??
  
• If he sees a monster or spiderman or something on TV, even if it's a commercial, we have to endure crazy Taisei pretending to be a monster or spiderman until he forgets about it, which sometimes is not until the next day. One time he saw a power ranger commercial and he was jumping around, posing in ninja positions, throwing punches for days. From ONE commercial!?! I don't know why these things stick in his brain so well, except that he's a boy.
• He has been so interesting in cutting things with scissors that we finally bought him a pair of his own. I thought it would be a little safer. He LOVES them, especially in this Halloween season. Every time we need to open a snack or something something, he runs to get his scissors. With all the Halloween costume ads showing up in the mail, he always insists on cutting out the scary ones. I have to say that he's fairly adept with his scissors, although he hasn't yet figured out that he can turn the paper to guide the scissors, instead of trying to turn his body and the scissors. :)

We kept looking for a new Halloween costume, but in the end decided to just use his monkey again from last year. He's thrilled to wear it and it still fits. So what the heck. He's already used it twice. Once at the Gardner's Village Witch Week. And twice today, at our ward Halloween party, and then Trick-Or-Treating at Hogle Zoo. Wami said they had a really great time at all the parties. I had to be in class for all the fun. :( Next year, Wami wants to have me babysit while she goes with some of the girls to the Gardner's Village Witch Week. Apparently, it's kind of a girl's night out where they all dress up as witches.

posted by Jerin at 9:03 PM | 3 comment(s)

Officially Two and a Half

We've been casually trying to potty train Taisei since the beginning of the summer. We would wear training pants (underwear with lining) but would never tell us when he had to go, until after the fact. We still kept diligently putting him on the toilet at all the right times, even at times when we knew he had to go. But he would actually hold it! Sometimes, just 10 minutes later, he would have an accident. Yesterday, he went no. 1 in the toilet for the first time! AND, later in the day, he went for the second time! He was very excited about it and actually called me over to watch before his second success for the day. Yay - a big milestone, hopefully. :)


Yesterday, I had my most in-depth conversation with him so far:
Dad:

"Taisei, were you cold last night?" (He doesn't like to use his blanket)
Taisei: "Yeah."
Dad: "Did you use your blanket like I told you to?"
Taisei: "No - sampo." (No, I was cold when we took a walk.)
Dad: "Oh, you were cold at Chieko-sensei's house?" (I knew they took a walk at pre-school today)
Taisei: "No, Hiro's park. O sampo." (No, I was cold at Hiro's park.)
Dad: "Oh, you were cold when you took Hiro for a walk?"
Taisei: "Yeah."

Cool huh? I thought it was cool.

Last night, he let us weigh him and measure his height.

• He's 35.25 inches (around 40%) and weighs 26.5 lbs (?%)

In the past couple of months, Taisei suddenly started to talk a lot. Now that he's so much more vocal, it's become clear that his Japanese ability is far beyond his English ability. Maybe because of that, we notice his English phrases more. Taisei's common English phrases:

• "What are you doing?"
• "Did you see that?"
• "Oh, cool!"
• "Watch this!"

Here's what Taisei seems to be learning these days:

Thanks to a great teacher (former kindergarten teacher in Japan) in his "Wanpaku pre-school", he learned to:

• eat on his own and finish meals
• share with other kids and ask nicely if he wants something
• wear undies and at least learn to "hold it"
• wear clothes by himself, especially socks, shoes and pants
• stand up for and soothe the younger kids when older kids pick on them

In nursery at church, he learned to:

• hm... I can't think of much from here, unfortunately... obviously an under-utilized teaching opportunity
  
• play ring-around-rosie

At home:

• so far, he has thrown one fit of utter frustration (because we didn't want him to wear his underwear to bed)
  
• loves to hold newborns and sooth them when they cry. Sometimes it freaks out the baby's moms though.
  
• stacks and removes the plates after dinner
• always has to "help" with everything, and sometimes he actually does help
• has been refusing baths before bedtime
• has insisted on using scissors to cut things, so we bought him some kiddie scissors. not he runs around cutting up everything, particularly cutting out all the "scary monsters" out of the Halloween ads that we've been getting in the mail
• likes to draw "Totoro" and rockets
  

Taisei seems to have calmed down a little from his earlier days when he always fought back when other kids picked on him or took his toys. Now, he seems to really favor the underdog. He seems to have compassion, especially when other kids are crying. One time, he gave up his light-saber to his older friend S. when S. was crying over not having one (of the four). Another time, Wami was babysitting Taisei's friend L. L was crying because his mommy was not there and Taisei comforted him by saying "L, daijobu. Mama kuru." (L, it's ok. Mama's coming.) Interestingly, ever since that day, L and Taisei have been closer than ever.

ps. Of course, our boy is probably no different from the average boy out there, but because we are oyabaka, everything he does is amazing to us. :)

posted by Jerin at 7:28 PM | 3 comment(s)