Trying out faster and higher slides...
Bouncing...
Eating Elmo cupcakes...
Revisiting his first swing...
Getting soaked...
Thursday, 30 May 2013
Friday, 17 May 2013
Eating at two years and one month
I have decided to do a series of updates on where Riku is at two years rather than one post as I suspect it would turn into a pretty long one! This is partly just to document things for myself so 6 months or a year from now I can look back and compare. Last post I looked at his talking, so now I'll update on the eating situation.
His eating is something that has improved so much compared to six months ago, and it is such a relief. The turning point was a few weeks after he was sick with suspected rotavirus, and although he had put back on a bit of the kilo he lost, it had been very slow, and he was being pickier than ever. One evening after half an hour of trying to cajole him into eating I decided out of desperation that I would try that old standard of frustrated parents: putting him to bed without any dinner if he wasn't going to eat what I had made for him. I felt very mean, but I took him upstairs and put him in his cot and left him for about 30 seconds. I then went back in and asked him if he would like to eat his dinner now, and got a tearful yes, and he actually ate the whole bowl, without any messing around at all.
The next day all I had to do was carry him up the stairs, and by the third day I only had to ask him whether he wanted to go to bed and he consented to eat his entire dinner! I'm not too happy I had to resort to that kind of tactics, but something had to give, he was eating very badly and is by far the skinniest of all the kids we know who are the same age. I was starting to be genuinely concerned that his growth or brain development would be affected by his poor eating- I'm not sure if it's really possible for that to happen as he wasn't starving, but most days I would say he ate a bare minimum and far too high a proportion of what he ate was sweet or salty foods that I gave him just so he would have eaten something. Not only has the amount of food he eats greatly increased, but he has now also started eating corn, carrots and broccoli quite happily- not whole, but mixed into other food, which is a major step ahead for us as well. As a result he is now up to 10.9 kg (from 10.5) after hardly gaining any weight at all for a good 6 months- hopefully he will hit 11 soon!
I do often have to feed him still, otherwise he will just get out of his high chair and run around, and the amount of different kinds of foods he will eat is still fairly limited compared to a lot of kids we know, but meal times are no longer the ordeal they were for most of last year, hopefully it keeps improving from here! :)
His eating is something that has improved so much compared to six months ago, and it is such a relief. The turning point was a few weeks after he was sick with suspected rotavirus, and although he had put back on a bit of the kilo he lost, it had been very slow, and he was being pickier than ever. One evening after half an hour of trying to cajole him into eating I decided out of desperation that I would try that old standard of frustrated parents: putting him to bed without any dinner if he wasn't going to eat what I had made for him. I felt very mean, but I took him upstairs and put him in his cot and left him for about 30 seconds. I then went back in and asked him if he would like to eat his dinner now, and got a tearful yes, and he actually ate the whole bowl, without any messing around at all.
The next day all I had to do was carry him up the stairs, and by the third day I only had to ask him whether he wanted to go to bed and he consented to eat his entire dinner! I'm not too happy I had to resort to that kind of tactics, but something had to give, he was eating very badly and is by far the skinniest of all the kids we know who are the same age. I was starting to be genuinely concerned that his growth or brain development would be affected by his poor eating- I'm not sure if it's really possible for that to happen as he wasn't starving, but most days I would say he ate a bare minimum and far too high a proportion of what he ate was sweet or salty foods that I gave him just so he would have eaten something. Not only has the amount of food he eats greatly increased, but he has now also started eating corn, carrots and broccoli quite happily- not whole, but mixed into other food, which is a major step ahead for us as well. As a result he is now up to 10.9 kg (from 10.5) after hardly gaining any weight at all for a good 6 months- hopefully he will hit 11 soon!
I do often have to feed him still, otherwise he will just get out of his high chair and run around, and the amount of different kinds of foods he will eat is still fairly limited compared to a lot of kids we know, but meal times are no longer the ordeal they were for most of last year, hopefully it keeps improving from here! :)
Helping to tear up lettuce for a salad for dinner one night last week just before he had a hair cut, which probably deserves its own blog post! He didn't eat the salad of course, we haven't got quite that far with him eating vegetables yet, but maybe one day!
Saturday, 11 May 2013
Words
Well, we definitely have a slow-ish talker, but he is within a normal range, especially for a boy from a bilingual family. I decided to make a list of the words he says (the ones I remember anyway, there are bound to be a few more!) at 25 months. With a lot of these words I and maybe his papa are the only ones who understand what he's saying- orange for example is "on", diamond is "minemine" for some reason, apple, hippo and purple all sound pretty much the same, and a lot of words are missing their final consonant, for example bike sounds more like "buy", nose is usually just "no" etc.
I have been surprised by the Japanese words he has picked up lately- partly from the educational DVDs he watches and partly from his papa being home more lately while waiting for his next work placement I guess. I was thinking it might be an idea to put him in a Japanese-language environment daycare for one or two days a week from next spring to give him more exposure to Japanese, but now I am starting to wonder if that is necessary and whether I should maybe send him to the English-language preschool that is very near to us instead!
Anyway, here are the words I have been able to think of while writing this post:
English:
yellow
red
green
blue
white
orange
purple
what's that?
there it is
that
no
ok
oh no!
uh-oh
all right
car
helicopter
plane
moon
star
bag
box
book
cracker
circle
diamond
juice
shoes
cheese
cheers
ball
tree
flower
Mama
Papa
Riku
Deedee (for Neenee, his maternal grandmother)
GG (his grandfather)
fishy
kitty
roar
meow
moo
eww
dirty
bath
wee
poo
bye bye
hello
hi there
bee (applies to almost all insects at the moment)
nose
eye
belly button (all he can say is "bibi" at the moment though!)
cuddle
door
bike
taxi
bus
broom broom
apple
nana
colour
stick
sticker
stop
go
stuck
dropped
plus the numbers 1-12 and all the letters of the alphabet, all of which he can recognise :)
Japanese:
hai (yes)
douzo (here you are)
dekita (I did it)
yatta (same meaning as above)
kiechatta (it disappeared)
chocho (butterfly)
kyukyusha (ambulance)
acchi (there)
doko (where)
are? (huh?)
kore (this)
dakko (pick me up)
wanwan (doggie)
ippai (lots)
He still chats away a lot of the time in his own language, but real words are gradually increasing. Will be interesting to see where he is a few months from now!
Just so there's a photo in this post, here's a picture of Riku with one of his very favourite things, a fire engine :)
I have been surprised by the Japanese words he has picked up lately- partly from the educational DVDs he watches and partly from his papa being home more lately while waiting for his next work placement I guess. I was thinking it might be an idea to put him in a Japanese-language environment daycare for one or two days a week from next spring to give him more exposure to Japanese, but now I am starting to wonder if that is necessary and whether I should maybe send him to the English-language preschool that is very near to us instead!
Anyway, here are the words I have been able to think of while writing this post:
English:
yellow
red
green
blue
white
orange
purple
what's that?
there it is
that
no
ok
oh no!
uh-oh
all right
car
helicopter
plane
moon
star
bag
box
book
cracker
circle
diamond
juice
shoes
cheese
cheers
ball
tree
flower
Mama
Papa
Riku
Deedee (for Neenee, his maternal grandmother)
GG (his grandfather)
fishy
kitty
roar
meow
moo
eww
dirty
bath
wee
poo
bye bye
hello
hi there
bee (applies to almost all insects at the moment)
nose
eye
belly button (all he can say is "bibi" at the moment though!)
cuddle
door
bike
taxi
bus
broom broom
apple
nana
colour
stick
sticker
stop
go
stuck
dropped
plus the numbers 1-12 and all the letters of the alphabet, all of which he can recognise :)
Japanese:
hai (yes)
douzo (here you are)
dekita (I did it)
yatta (same meaning as above)
kiechatta (it disappeared)
chocho (butterfly)
kyukyusha (ambulance)
acchi (there)
doko (where)
are? (huh?)
kore (this)
dakko (pick me up)
wanwan (doggie)
ippai (lots)
He still chats away a lot of the time in his own language, but real words are gradually increasing. Will be interesting to see where he is a few months from now!
Just so there's a photo in this post, here's a picture of Riku with one of his very favourite things, a fire engine :)
Thursday, 2 May 2013
This week in Riku-land
We have been taking it pretty easy this week after a busy April, but here are some photos of what Riku's been up to:
 |
| Waiting for his crepe to be served at a cafe in Shinjuku |
 |
| New gumboots! |
 |
| Morning yoga practice |
 |
| Followed by some horizontal bar work at the park! This is a favourite activity lately |
Tomorrow we are heading down to Riku's grandma's house, about a 90-minute train ride and 20-minute bus ride from here, for two days. Will try and post his birthday update next week!
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