It's been slightly more than a year since Rynus started full day childcare at the same center as Renzo. I've mentioned a few times that everything is great so far and he's truly blessed with great teachers, who are extremely caring and capable in handling him.It's amazing to see how much he has grown over a year.
- Getting more emotionally intelligent
When Rynus first
joined full day childcare, he was pretty famous in his class for
throwing himself on the floor and not doing anything when he's not in
the right mood. Sounds not as bad as those who screams and rolls around
on the floor right? Nope! Not when a 18kg boy lying in the center of the
classroom!! Teachers commented that he's too heavy and strong and it's
hard to move him to a corner in order not to interrupt other kids from
doing their activities.But as he slowly gets used to the childcare environment, we seldom see him throwing temper tantrums nowadays. Indeed his TERRIBLE TWOS phase was, almost seamingless to us. Yes I've mentioned that many times and I also have doubts that maybe it's not even started, but I've decided not to over analyzing him, and instead just to count my blessing for now.
He often tells us "I am so happy, korkor sad face" when we returned home after work. Yes most of the time he's like a happy bunny hopping around the house in full smiles. And even if he misbehaves, before we start disciplining him, he usually covers his ears with his hands and tells us, "It's okay" in a chirpy tone, though everyone in the house, including he himself, knows that it's NOT OKAY!
Once a while when he
knows he's done something seriously wrong, and seeing us with extremely
crossed expressions on our faces, immediately, he would turn away from
us, or hide at the corner of the room and refuse to have any eye contact
with us. Sometimes he could even give this resentful look as if we
were the ones at wrong (in disciplining him), and "locks" himself out
somewhere (planter in this picture) and refuses to come in and talk to
us. Fortunately, all these don't happen on a daily basis, perhaps, just once or twice in a month and the rest of the time, he's absolutely a little angel who never fails to make us laugh with his cute voice and actions. I used to have a bit of concerns bringing him out in fear of him making a scene in public, but ever since he turned 3, he has improved so much and yes he still gets excited and loves to run about like a headless chicken when he's outdoor, but it's way easier to manage him as he listens well and reacts well to reasoning now.
- Being more independent
Just like Renzo's time, we didn't purposely put Rynus on potty training as we strongly believe they will be easily trained once they are ready for it, nope that's not because we are plain lazy, not at all! And just as expected, Rynus was potty trained during the day within a few days after his childcare teachers suggested to bring more underwears and train him in school. He didn't struggle with it like his Renzo korkor in the past, instead, we saw his changes overnight and before we even noticed, he started rushing to the bathroom on his own, chanting "I want to pass urine or I want to poo poo!" while climbing up on to the toilet bowl and clean himself up with tissue paper after he's done with hsi business. 
He showers himself and it's not the 2 seconds kind of wet body dry and come out kind of shower. He makes sure he put shampoo and massage his hair and rinse off thoroughly. In fact I often need to send Renzo back for a second round of washing as he tends to forget about his dirty neck or armpit, but Rynus wins his korkor hands down in ensuring he looks clean and smells good all the time! And he even attempted to wash his own clothes on a few occasions.
If he spills drinks/food on the floor, the first thing he does is to get tissues or table cloth to clean up the mess. I honestly have never seen Renzo doing the same though he's 3 years older. If he sees Renzo playing with water, he will remind him, "Hey Renzo Chan, stop! Cannot waste water!!". Oh right just for record, he addresses his elder brother by his full name when he gets angry or dissatisfied with Renzo.
- Learning fast
Yes I know in the past I mentioned a few times that I foresee Rynus will be harder to coach when comes to academics. But within the past half a year, he has proven me wrong again and again with his amazing capacity to pick up things fast. I won't really say he has learned as much as Renzo at the age of 3+. Because Renzo was able to read short stories by this age but nope Rynus still couldn't do that. But he's absorbing very well and he has developed great attitude towards learning over time. I couldn't believe just 2 years ago he would throw the books we try to read to him and show absolutely no sign of interest in anything we tried to introduce to him. But now, he asks for pencil and paper all the time. And when he sees Renzo doing his school homework, he asks for homework too!
Recently, we have been slowly introducing him to blending words with simple 3 letter words as I mentioned in the previous post. And one night, he decided to surprise us with spelling/writing the word MONDAY all on his own. He said his teacher taught them and he could almost spell out Monday to Friday though not 100% accurate. I don't believe teachers will teach them spelling at such young age, but they do introduce days of the week and put the date/day on the whiteboard daily in both English and Chinese, so kids get to understand the concept slowly. But for Rynus, I am pretty sure his phonics knowledge helped and he is probably the same "silent learner" like Renzo, basically they observe, then they absorb. And that's how he figured out and probably also memorized how to spell MONDAY.
He also enjoys communicating with people and it's pretty funny to see how he tries to put the words he knows together to form a proper sentence structure. And he often say things like "hey what's going on here?!", "Oopsy daisy!" in the right context. Which again leads me to believe that kids around the age of 2-4 have really strong ability to manipulate what they hear and see as I am pretty sure he learned those from Disney Junior shows. As I am writing this post, I start to realize how much Rynus has grown and improved over the past one year. I feel really glad that although he is very different from Renzo, the same upbringing method we used on Renzo, is showing great result on Rynus too. And not to forget his wonderful teachers in the child care center who have played an extremely important role in his early years of development.
When Renzo was young, he didn't share anything about his school life with us but knowing that he has no difficulties in learning, we didn't have much concerns. And Rynus is totally different, he enjoys "showing off" to us what he has learned in school and he tells us about his likes or dislikes, his favorite teachers and best friends with his limited vocabulary too. Boy, never would we expect the teachers to introduce so much about the world to these young toddlers. And we could see clearly that Rynus is totally enjoying his time in school, what's more to ask for??!!
