Children's Day

Here are some pix of some of the things we did to celebrate Children's Day! The Lord supplied everything, from entrance fee, to lunch, and even a super premium peach Häagen Dazs ice-cream for each of the boys! (I was sooo jealous)! :D

Due to the heat being just about unbearable, we didn't stay long at the La-la Landia, but the kids had a blast nonetheless! Upon arriving home we did some projects, bathed, and then ended their celebration day with a movie!

Oh, I almost forgot, as a special reward for being such a shiner with his potty training at naps and bedtime (he doesn't wet his bed at all anymore) I decided to present to him his new Thomas the Train bed set and bed, (his mattress has been on the floor these past months) but unfortunately the people building his bed did not have it ready in time to give it to him as a "Children's Day" present. :(

I think I'll wait for the bed so that I can give it to him as a complete little reward for his progress, or I may give in and just give him his new bed set regardless of the bed. As I do want to post pics of his bed set as it's oh, so cute! :)

My little guy is getting big!

Ummm, yes that's usually what happens as time goes by, Suko. :P .... I know, I know, but I'm just so happy with all the progress my little tyke is making that I had to blog about it. :)

Simple joys!

The other day it was the kids movie night, so I put on something that I knew would catch Kenji's interest, but to my surprise he wasn't really into it for the moment. Instead he said; "Me no want to see movie. Mommy, me do something fun with you?" So I said; "Sure, my love, we can do something special and fun together! What would you like to do?" He thought about it a bit then enthusiastically said, "Hmmm..., me want to do school with you!"

Hearing that made me so happy and proud of him. Sure he doesn't always think this way about school, for the most part he gives me a hard time when it's time to start school, but once he gets started he really does enjoy it! Ah, such simple little joys! I just hope he can keep this mindset (of school being fun) for a long, long time. Heh.

I've started him on a bit more of "bigger" kids kind of school -- pre-writing, counting/adding, reading, (both sight & phonetic) etc. And so far he seems to be liking it. More than trying to rush him through things just to try and "make" him smarter, I figured I'd just go at his pace (seeing as boys aren't as into school as girls are :P) but so far so good. He's picking up his phonetic reading pretty well and can read one vowel words all by himself and is also making steady progress with his "Early Bird Readers" - sight reading.

He is also doing real well with his pre-writing! He enjoys doing a thorough job when writing or coloring (Virgo traits kick in, yay) and hardly makes mistakes, holds his crayon real well, in spite of his just about non-existent interest for coloring/scribbling when he was younger. (That is supposed to really help kids in their writing ability later on down the line).

Now as far as math goes, I've noticed he's quite good with numbers and quantity concepts. Again, I'm taking this easy and just following his leading, but already he can count to 50 - with the exception of getting some of the "teen" numbers mixed up every now and then. For a while he would get his 'five' mixed up with 'nine.' Ha!

Oh, and another little tid bit is; I recently did a 'heads up' on how many spirit helpers he knows (and I mean knows their name and what they help us in) and it amounts to 24! Wowsy! I'm so proud of my little "spiritual samurai." :) It's a given that he needs a small hint with certain ones, but over all he has a fantastic memory!

Okay, I'll stop blabbing/bragging :D about my little guy and leave you here with some pix of school/projects/activities from the past couple of weeks as well as a video of Angel doing some homework. He's making SO much progress! :) There should be some other videos of him in the related videos. Take a peek at them all, it's worth it! ;)

* Little disclaimer: I'm sure you've noticed Kenji's new 'do in the post prior to this one & this one. Well, I took him to a hair salon a while ago and the lady did a terrible job - even after I had specifically told her what I wanted. Grrr... oh well I guess it will grow out again soon enough, and you know actually it doesn't look too bad on him. Or maybe he's just that cute for anything to look bad on him. :P JK.

Okay, now get this. The other day while brushing his hair I noticed a nice little chunk of hair right on the top of his head being about 3 cm long so I asked him, "what happened here, did you cut your hair?" To which he replied, "the lady no do it nicely, mom, me fix it." Riight! He must have heard me and grandma say that, heh. I guess I'll have to do his partition to the other side for some time now. :D

Its c-mas time all over again!

Thanks Mig & Amber for the cute shirts you sent for the boys. Kenji was quite awed at the fact that it came all the way from far, far away Australia. Ha! And Angel liked it in his own way too, heh. He's not so fond of putting unfamiliar clothing items on, but he made no fuss about the shirt. He acutually didn't want to take it off, since he got so much attention wearing it. Ha!

Leave you all with some pics and vids of the boys and the fun they had during Emma's short visit. Poor little Angel was very distressed with her departure! :( We're going to miss you Emma, come back and visit us soon! :D WLY!