Rynus just turned 2.5 years old! Yes time really flies and he has grown so much in the past half a year, though he still pretty much behaves like a baby.The decision to send him to full day childcare since July, was brilliant, except for the financial burdens of course, as pre-school education is extremely expensive in Singapore. On top of the extra S$680 school fee we need to fork out every month after S$300 government subsidy for working mothers, we are still keeping our helper though her main duty has shifted from caring for Rynus, to purely household chores. Also, I've mentioned before, we are spending almost S$8 dollars daily on cab fare, as neither my mother in law, nor my helper could manage 2 of them with 2 large school bags for almost an hour of bus journey home. Not to forget this little Rynus could put up a stunt of rolling on the ground anytime, anywhere, yes that includes in the middle of the road! I definitely could, yes trust me that's called mummy power! But after a tired day at work, and with the erratic weather here, taxi is the best(fastest) option though not the most economical.
But other than all these, life has been great! We are greeted with cozy house and warm food daily, and after dinner, I get extra 1 hour (saved from the bus journey, or rather from cooking dinner after work) to spend with the kids.
And the best part, Rynus has been doing well in school, and he has learned so much!!
School life:
We had a nice conversation with his teachers during the "meet parents session" last week. Rynus has fully adapted to school environment. Although he doesn't follow instructions all the time, has short attention span, is rather picky on food and often throws tantrums when things don't go his way (sounds like his korkor? Quite!), he still managed to "survive" well for the past 4 months. And his teacher was rather impressed with his enthusiasm with learning alphabets and numbers (sounds like his korkor? Absolutely!).
Here's one of the observations from his teacher, the "suddenly, Rynus stood up..." part really cracked me up because that's SO OUR Rynus!!!
As expected, he started falling sick more often after he entered full day childcare. Luckily most of the time he takes medicine well, indeed he enjoys feeding himself through the syringe. But he hasn't been eating well at all, he rejects almost all type of food at home, and has been surviving on formula milk, fresh milk, fruit/vege juice and soup most of the time. This is probably the biggest concern I have currently though Renzo had experienced the same phase around this age too. And here are more pictures of his wonderful daily life in school..
Home life:
Did I mention Rynus is still having his Terrible Twos? Yes but a rather mild one, especially at home, he's quite an angel. He spends most of his time playing toys and watching TV. Yes I have not imposed any house rule on TV time. I do let them watch daily, especially during weekends. As they spend full 5 days in school every week learning, and playing of course, so time at home is purely fun time! And Rynus has learned such a great deal from TV! He's not interested in cartoons so Disney Junior channel is more for Renzo. Rynus watches Dora the Explorer, Thomas and Friends and whole Leapfrog series.
This is what he did last night while daddy was reading with Renzo, totally out of the blue. He was trying to sing the Leapfrog A-Z alphabet song that sounds like "A says [a], A says [a], every letter makes a sound the A says [a]...", and when he sang "T says [t], Tic Tac, I was rather surprised.
Dora won his heart totally during the past few months and sometimes he shouts Spanish words, such as Azul (blue), Amarillo (yellow), Rojo (red). Renzo loves Dora too when he was at such age, but he wasn't this interactive like Rynus. Even for a brand new Dora disc, it probably takes 15-20 minutes the most, for Rynus to warm up and be able to answer Dora's questions. He learns animals like "Zebra", "Kangaroo", "Jaguar", "Snake", "Iguana", "Rhinoceros", etc all from Dora discs.
I am sure I've mentioned many times that Rynus couldn't really talk much. But for the past one month, he's been mimicking what Renzo says very often. And interestingly, Rynus has quite good sense of humorous like Renzo. When he accidentally stepped on daddy's leg, he said, "sorry Daddy", and when he did it again, he said, "sorry again!". When he instructed me to build his train track, instead of saying, "Thank you, Mummy!", he said, "Well done, Mummy!". He is also as sensible as Renzo to certain extend. On our daily cab ride home, he waves byebye and says "Thank you uncle, see you tomorrow taxi!" each time, but when he notices my conversation with the taxi driver is in Chinese (I do that if the driver is listening to Chinese radio station), Rynus says "谢谢 uncle!" before he gets off the car. And once when I was frowning at Renzo for taking too long to shower,
Rynus walked over to me, held my face with his hands, looked into my
eyes, then pat my head and said "Don't worry mummy, don't worry!". Outdoor:
Rynus gets extremely upset when we have to leave him at home with our helper. The last time we had to do that, he refused to talk to us after we returned home. Instead he leaned on my chest and zoned out for a long period of time, I felt that he was angry with me. So recently we've been trying our best to bring him along whenever we go out. He can soon prove to us, it's not the wisest decision because the moment he gets out of the house, he starts running about and it's impossible for him to sit still for a meal even. 
We brought him for his little cousin's full month celebration recently, throughout the 3 hours, we had to take turns to run, climb, jump up and down with him outside the restaurant, while Renzo sat by the table enjoying the food. So nowadays bringing Rynus out for grocery or food, is basically a challenge, instead, bringing them for outdoor activities seems to be a much better choice for Rynus. He's not afraid of trying new things and I am sure soon we will need to send him for some swimming lessons as he simply loves water.
So in a nutshell, Rynus has been doing extremely well, except for those occasional rolling on the floor episodes, he's been bringing us so much joy and fun everyday! I shall end this post with the a recent video of him reading his favorite Dora book together with daddy, he finished the story with "The! End!" when he noticed they are at the last page of the book. Little cute cute is a big boy now, and, still just as cute especially his voice!!
