As soon as he caught sight of the train set and Matchbox-type car section at this playcentre all he wanted to do was get back there- wasn't really interested in the ball pool at all this time, just tolerated it while I took photos! We spent an hour in this area and he still wasn't ready to leave.
In the last few weeks he has developed quite an interest in cars and other vehicles, so it's not surprising that one of his new words this month is "car"- usually repeated several times at a high pitch while pointing in excitement :) He also mimics sirens whenever he hears them or sees a firetruck, and does the sign for plane and the sound effects if he sees a plane or helicopter (or a picture of one). Funny because I haven't really steered him towards typical boy toys over others, he's developed this preference by himself.
This was a much bigger ball pool than the one in the picture in the last post, with slides leading into it- wish they had had this kind of thing in NZ when I was little!
Another of his favourite things right now is stickers- especially stickers of cars and dogs, although anything will do! When he sticks one on himself (or me, or the floor, or the furniture) he often says "tik!" which I'm pretty sure is "stick"- some of his words are a bit indistinct at the moment but he is getting more and more communicative all the time.
He loves to hold our hands these days, whether we are out walking or at home. I don't get to sit down for long these days as usually within a minute or two I will have a little hand pulling me towards his toy box, the book shelf or the kitchen. Here he is walking along the road in Chigasaki where his Japanese grandmother lives- doesn't he look like a big boy?
This water play area has been one of our favourite places this summer:
The water flows out of a small fountain into a pool, down a mini waterfall/rapids into this stream and under two bridges before getting pumped back up to the fountain. Riku has a fantastic time here throwing leaves into the stream, filling up a bottle and pouring the water back out again and splashing Mummy :) It closes for the year tomorrow but I'm looking forward to taking him back there next summer.
These days he is really starting to recognise different animals and something that I find very interesting is he now usually recognises cartoons of animals as well- I don't think Hello Kitty looks a lot like a cat really for example, but when he sees Hello Kitty warning people not to get their fingers jammed on the signs on the train doors he points and says "Yaow"which is his version of meow at the moment. Dogs are "foo foo", cows say "oooooo" apparently, and most other animals say "grrrr" according to Riku. He also has favourite characters on the preschoolers' educational programmes these days and likes to dance along to some of the songs. He also waves bye bye (or "yai yai" in Riku's case) to the characters when they say goodbye. He has a very fancy chair which he loves to sit in these days to watch TV or just relax- the chair was also a big hit with some little visitors today, so much so that there was someone on it (or two people on it) at pretty much all times while they were visiting!
Next month is the big one and a half!
