2 little monkeys

Birthday season seems like a good time to write an update on my boys, so please forgive a bit of doting-mummy-ness...

K turned 5 at the beginning of March, and will start his second, and last, year of kindergarten next week. He remains as planet-obsessed as ever, and likes to draw and cut out diagrams of the solar system. In fact, give him some paper, scissors and tape and he will entertain himself quite happily. He will spend hours poring over reference books and starts many a conversation with 'Did you know...?' Lately he has gotten into Lego, and also tells everyone that he loves Cars and Lightning McQueen, despite never having seen the film. He likes to watch The Octonauts and Chuggington. He reads confidently in English, and can read hiragana and katakana (the 2 simple syllabaries) in Japanese. He can write quite well in English too, but still prefers to have things to copy in Japanese. He speaks Japanese well now, and has started to use it a bit at home too.

K has been going to swimming for almost a year now, and has recently become a lot more confident. Yesterday I watched him jump into the pool without hesitation, going completely under the water. The classes focus more on confidence in the water and proper technique than learning to actually swim so I think it will be a while until he can swim by himself, although he gets along quite well with a float. He's generally well-behaved (and his eating pace has definitely picked up, although getting dressed has slowed down), but there are rebellious moments, plus rather a lot of selective hearing, especially when related to tidying-up...

T turned 2 last week, and is in full mischievous toddler mode. A few examples, just from today: undressing himself half a dozen times throughout the day; weeing on the floor, and in his stacking cups; climbing onto the kitchen counter from the living room, leaning over to get the liquid soap and then pumping it out all over the place; moving the coffee table to the living room gate and then using it to climb over said gate, before going to the next room and playing the piano; having a mouthful of mushed-up brown stuff which I presume was a piece of cardboard. And those are just the things I know about... He sleeps well, from around 8.30 till 7.15, but doesn't nap or ease up at all in the daytime.

Still, he gets away with it because he's very cute. He eats well, usually as much as K, and uses spoons, forks and training chopsticks confidently. His vocabulary is growing in both English and Japanese and he makes little 2 word 'sentences' like 'Daddy bus' and 'stick gone'. He loves to be read to and often sits looking at a book by himself too. Lately he's interested in counting; yesterday when I pointed out some birds and counted out loud '1,2,3,4,5', he continued '6,7,8,9,10!' (although there were only 5 birds...). Going down the escalators, he pointed to the number 2 written on the floor and said 'two!', although when I pointed to '1', he said 'eight!'... Still, he's interested!

T loves Maisy, and anything Maisy-related. He even refers to any elephant as 'Eddie', and crocodile as 'Charlie'. He likes to 'draw' with crayons, and play with stickers. He likes playing outside and riding the tricycle, and impressed me at the park yesterday with his confidence in climbing, navigating obstacles and going down quite big slides! One of the questions on the 2 year check up was 'Can he run?'. Oh yes. He can certainly run, especially when it is away from me.

Both boys are quite into imaginative play nowadays, and enjoy dressing up and using the play kitchen. This is a rather recent thing for K, but T has been doing all kinds of 'pretend' play for a while. He really likes soft toys too, and will often pick up a teddy for a cuddle. Today they were being doctors in the play tent, bringing in all the teddies to be taken care of. Apparently K was the doctor, giving injections, and T was the nurse, supplying cuddles.

I'm sure I could carry on like this for ages, but that's probably enough for now. They are both beautiful, sweet little boys who I love dearly, and who drive me crazy at times...