At 2 years and 4 months

At 2 years and 4 months, Oliver is a happy, funny, animated, pre-preschooler. He's been going for about a month. The first day he was not happy about it at all, but since then he's learned that it's a place that he gets to play with fun things and have more teachers who'll play with him than just me. So now he really enjoys school, and we often talk about the things we learned there. Since we started school, it's been much easier to get him to wash his hands, sit down to eat a meal, and understand the 5-minute rule before moving on to another activity. He's also learned to play next to other children, and how to handle situations when 2 of them wants the same toy.

Here's a picture of Oliver taken by the teachers at his preschool. Every Tuesday there's a music teacher, teacher William, who comes with little drums and shakers to teach the children to sing and play music. One thing teacher William likes to do is to have the children sing a color instead of just saying it. So we often play that game during non-school days and sing "Bluuuuue....Yeeeellllooooow!"

These are his classmates (We try not to use the word "friends" because at this age, children can play with you one day and ignore you the next. So not to confuse them the meaning of friendship, we say "the children in your class". That's another thing, the teachers say "children" and not "kids" which feels like you should take them more seriously.)

The boy in the red shirt is Koji, and the girl in pink is Mable. The blue square on the rug behind Mable is where I ask Oliver to sit when it's circle time. It's his favorite color, and from day one I told him go to "your" blue square. He now runs and lays down on his blue square.

Oliver playing with bubbles next to classmate Frisco. They actually used to hang out at the Coffeebean and Tea Leaf on Sunset when we used to walk there in the morning. We didn't know Frisco or his sister Lila, but saw them often. I recognized them in their Family Book at the school. So turns out these 2 goes way back when they were still babies...if only they knew.

Oliver still loves to play the drum, but he also enjoys pretending to play the trumpet and and the piano. (among lots of other pretend games and imaginary friends FaFa and Bubu) He loves to sing, and the list of songs he knows is growing:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in English and Chinese
The Hello Song (from school)
The Good Bye Song (from school)
ABCs
A song about 2 Tigers in Chinese in the melodies of Frere Jacques
Wheels on the Bus
Head Shoulders Knees and Toes
Toe Knee Chestnut (similar to Head Shoulder Knees and Toes)
A Bushel and a Peck (Chris grew up listening to his song, we only sang it to Oliver when he was a baby, and one day last week he just started to sing it!)
The Barney theme song
The Mickey Mouse Club House theme song
And he can hear a song and try to follow it, or make up his own song about anything by repeating the word to his own melody.

Oliver has really developed quickly his speech and even correct grammer. Yesterday he explained to Chris when he found a goldfish cracker on his car seat that "Daddy, I can't eat it. It's been in the car. We need to throw it away." He uses past and present tenses such as "It's stopped" or "I'm still playing." And although he responds in English 99% of the time, he knows when to use Chinese. One time he said "holes" but I didn't understand it. He "repeated" the word in Chinese...he basically translated for me. And he remembers all of our Chinese names, my cell phone number (my dad told me to teach him that the day before he passed away, Oliver learned it within a week) His ability to memorize is so amazing, he now can read along at least 2 books. The 2 favorites are: Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss and I'm Dirty (a book about a backhoe loader), and Rainbow Fish. We read them at bedtime, then open to his favorite page to be tucked between the bed frame and mattress so he can look at them. And Oliver tells us that he dreams about milk, and milk in a funny car coming out of the closet.

Everything is funny now. He likes the funny car, eat funny crackers. He loves his toy Lion "She-Tze" which is lion in Chinese. He will hold anything close and say "I love it! it's so cute!" and everything is pretty. His favorite food is still mostly fruits. He does love something called Gogi berry, which is used in many chinese herbal teas and medicine. Recently WholeFoods started to sell it as a snack that he tried it at school during snack time. Since then I've been putting them on his plate during meal time. He also likes savory flavored tofu that I cut into little sticks. He calls them train tracks. And he loves black olives, which are sliced and looks like wheels.

Oliver still helps to clean and sweep whenever "he can". He cleans up a lot at school which really impresses the teachers. At home, it's a little bit more work. I'm trying to have less toys out and before taking out another one, he should put an unused one away. He's also very well mannered. When he coughs, he will cover his mouth with his upper sleeve. He'll say excuse me, although he will say it with his face inches away from mine so I can't ignore him. He also likes to ask "Mommy, are you sad?" when he's done something wrong or when I'm upset. He'll always offer me a hug with a very sympathetic look on his face, followed by asking "Mommy, are you happy?" He also loves to say "by myself" when he does something by himself, and will hold the kitchen childproof gate open for me. What a gentle man. An ongoing joke he has is to tell me not to sing in the car, then I'll keep singing and he asks me to stop in a very serious tone. Then at bedtime, he'll ask me to sing Hop on Pop and switch back to reading when he feels like it.

Other than trying to figure out how to handle him waking up at 4:30 am, he continues to be great company and an amazing child.