Summer Days, Part 1

I don't know what it's like where you live, but here, it's been 90 degrees the past 2 days! We've been trying to get outdoors but still not melt in the sun and heat. Who knew that shade at a playground is so crucial (or that we would pick our favorites based on that criteria)? Generally we've been going on walks or going to our complex's little playground early in the morning right after breakfast or in the evenings.

In between, our days are filled with--you guessed it--water!

This week was the first week our complex's pool has been open every day for the summer. Silly Bean loves to talk about whether the pool is open or closed, and he gets very excited when he sees the door open and the lifeguard getting the pool ready! We went swimming three times this week--splashing by the steps, me holding Silly Bean and walking around in the pool, and playing with water scoops.

But when we aren't at the pool or indoors, we're playing on the deck at the water table!

I just can't rave enough about water tables for toddlers. In preschools or daycares I think they call them sensory tables, and you can put a variety of different things in it that children can explore (water, dirt, bubbly water, sand, etc.). Young children love to learn by interacting with things in the world around them, and a lot of them love learning through the sense of touch (Ever have that kid who you tell not to touch something, and they just keep touching it and trying to figure out what it is?)--hence the word "sensory." I've also heard it said that playing with water has a therapeutic and calming effect for children, and I have to say from experience that it's pretty therapeutic for adults as well! So fun :)

We just love our water table in this warm weather! Silly Bean's 婆婆 got this particular one for him from Costco, but you could also get one second-hand in pretty good condition (we saw one on Craigslist but it was snagged too quickly!).

There's enough shade on our deck in the afternoons after nap time for it to not feel like 90 degrees, and water in summer of course is just wonderful.  Silly Bean loves pouring the water on the top part to make it rain down, "wash" his hands, and bathe his fish and dolphins. Since we live on the third floor, we have to be so careful though to not spill the water through the cracks of the deck and flow onto the neighbor's deck immediately below, but lining towels on the ground have been doing the trick so far.

Summer is such a fun time for toddlerhood! We sure are enjoying the sunshine.

Growing up bilingual, part I

A lot of people have asked me what it's like for us to raise Silly Bean as a bilingual kid, and while I don't think I can fully answer the question in one post, I'm hoping to give y'all a small picture of what it's like for us in this stage in life.

One of Silly Bean's favorite books is "Oh! The Places You'll Go!" by Dr. Seuss, which features an ambiguous-looking character that we call a baby, going through life-encountering success, failures, and building resilience throughout. I think he loves the rhymes in the text (honestly, I think it's really well written and inspiring as well!), the colorful pictures, and especially the balloons, that are in the book. We saw a bulletin board set of Oh! The Places You'll Go! at Target for $3 so we just had to get it. Maybe a month or two ago we re-vamped the wall in Silly Bean's room (the one that had the alphabet train on it from a previous post) to make it "Go Go" (as Silly Bean calls it) themed.

In addition to putting up the bulletin board set, I also took the opportunity to label some of the balloons with the numbers in Chinese, from 1 through 30.

Now, can Silly Bean "read" the Chinese numbers as well as he can "read" the romanized numerals and his letters? Not as well, but the pictographic system is also a different ball game that we haven't really gotten into yet.

In terms of oral communication, I speak to Silly Bean in Cantonese 98% of the time (with the exception of when we are singing songs in English, when I'm reading him books that have a lot of rhymes that don't just translate in Chinese, or when I just have no idea what the Chinese word is/there isn't a Chinese word for a particular thing) and we're basically talking all day long, repeating many of the same things, and I try to extend his vocabulary by saying more about the word he says. I'm pretty sure that he knows over a hundred words already (both in his receptive and productive vocabulary, though he understands a lot more than he can say or produce). Kevin speaks to him in English, and he also probably knows hundreds of English words as well. I was really amazed when one time, Silly Bean and I were talking about whether he was happy today (in Chinese) and Kevin asked what we were saying, and I asked Silly Bean in Chinese, "How do you say 'happy' in English?"and he said, "Bibi happy" in English. I think there is some awareness there that he is learning 2 languages and that for him, there are two words for everything-- a lot of the times when I ask him for both, he can tell me both! This is really surprising to me because from all of my study about language acquisition in bilingual learners, it seems as though kids often understand a lot (receptive vocabulary) in a given language, but their speech in that language (their productive vocabulary) develops more slowly. This, however, is in kids who grew up speaking one language, and English is their second language a few years later, while for Silly Bean, the language acquisition is happening simultaneously, so I'm not sure how that all fits in. I also don't remember what it was like for me at age 1-3 so I don't really know.

Silly Bean knowing Chinese is important to us because with language learning, you aren't just learning how to speak in that language, but the culture of that language is also being transmitted. It's going to be easy for Silly Bean to learn the dominant culture here in the US, and we want Silly Bean to know all the different parts of his ethnic identity, including the parts where we need to try harder to convey that part to him. But ethnic identity is another topic for another post! For now, learning Chinese and English is a lot of talking and reading, interacting with friends and family members, singing, listening to music in Chinese and in English, listening to Peppa Pig in Chinese, and generally just talking a lot lot lot!

Water, in the Form of Puddles

In the past 2 months or so, Silly Bean has been absolutely loving water play, whether it's splashing in the tub during bathtime, washing his hands, watering plants on our deck, playing with sensory water beads, dumping water out of his cup onto the floor/table/sofa, feeding his stuffed bears some water, or stomping in puddles. Can't wait til Memorial Day when the pool here opens! It's been amazing to me to see how easily Silly Bean delights and finds joy in such simple things, and I think if you're like me, you're thinking that you can take a beat from that. 

 

I felt inspired to write a poem about what for some reason felt like an important moment, so here it is to share with y'all! Hope you enjoy it!

"Hoping for Puddles (Rainboots)"

4/11/2019

“What shoes do you want to wear to Target?”

Looking at the shoe rack

pointing at each pair,

naming each color.

Then, a big smile:

“Boots!”

Outside, cloudy but not overcast—

“Are you sure?”

“Puddle!”

So much hope brimming in his eyes

so on the boots go

and off we go.

List in his hand as we walk down the aisles

swinging his legs,

hoping for puddles.

Items in the cart, checklist checked

waiting on line, reading numbers on the lanes.

Items scanned and paid, bags in the cart

then we walk toward the windowed doors

and what we hear is 

water drumming on the pavement

and shoppers complaining

about ruining their hair 

or their shoes,

how they forgot their umbrellas

and when is the rain going to stop.

I look over at him in the cart—

huge smile, eyes exclaiming:

“Puddles!”

We run to the car and drive quickly home

and even though it’s time to sleep

we look for the biggest puddle

and stomp stomp stomp.

Hopes do come true!

What he thinks is

how the puddles were made just for him

and what I think is

good thing he wore his boots.

Owls!!

After several weeks of insomnia and a more intense responsibilities with my work, I am back and finally have a chance to sit down and write about our latest adventures, which have been many! Today I thought I'd share about Silly Bean's love for owls.

I think the first time Silly Bean saw an owl was back in his infancy (makes him sound so old!)  in an alphabet board book we were given by our friends that he still loves to read.  He first expressed interest in owls back in December (Silly Bean was around 16 months old then) when he learned to say the word "owl" in English, one of the first times he was able to say two syllables clearly one after the other.  His Aunt Jenn also brought over a box of 6 different stuffed animals and allowed him to choose one, and to our surprise he chose the owl.

alphabet book and stuffed owl that he just loves

Our friend Christina had told us about the Raptor Trust, which is a bird sanctuary in New Jersey, and we had in mind to go since it was an opportunity for Silly Bean to see real live owls. However, the weather deterred us for quite a while. But in the meantime, we prepared by reading lots and lots of books about owls!

We really loved the National Geographic photographs of owls in action.

We went to the Raptor Trust back in February, but it was only about 32 degrees so we didn't get many photos.  This past Saturday we were able to visit again since it was a beautiful day and we spontaneously thought it would be a great idea.  This time we got to talk about the different species of owls that we remembered from looking in the books, which was fun.

  

    

I am thankful for the resources we have here to extend our book learning with live experiences!

Silly Bean ABCs

Letters are our favorite nowadays and we see them everywhere--books, magazines, signs in stores, traffic signs during our walks, collegiate sweatshirts, t-shirts, and even where they aren't intentionally (doors or signposts, sleepy dogs eyes, clothing racks)--literally EVERYWHERE.

Silly Bean started noticing letters about a month ago and becoming very interested in them, so I put up a few bubble letters that I cut out by hand.  He loved them and liked to touch them as he walked by and I said the letters.  After a while, I noticed that he learned those few I put up very quickly.

During this time he also really liked standing behind me, my husband, or my mom, and taking our hands, saying "choo choo" and chugging around with us around the condo.  So naturally, I made an alphabet train for his room, which he absolutely loves! Most days when he wakes up from his nap, you can hear him reciting his alphabet and see him pointing to the letters in the baby monitor.

the alphabet train snakes around Silly Bean's room (front of train not pictured)

Silly Bean was learning the letters quickly so I had to add more bubble letters! I also had to keep moving the bubble letters up every day because he would pull them off and rip them up.  He was also getting confused initially between letters and numbers, so we decided to simultaneously learn our letters too and make some bubble numbers. Silly Bean also learned those both in English and Chinese quickly, so 1 through 10 isn't enough anymore!

ABC books have also been really fun to look at. Silly Bean absolutely loved the Llama Llama Loves to Read book, as well as the Hungry Caterpillar ABCs book (not pictured). Having a variety of ABC books has also been helpful, as some have the alphabet in upper-case letters while others have the lower-case ones. Silly Bean mastered them rather quickly.

Another activity station that we set up for Silly Bean was magnetic lowercase letters with this metal box used to hold valentine cards that I had saved from my own childhood.  The letters stick on the box, and Silly Bean enjoys adhering the letters, saying them, and putting them back in the small basket where we store them. Unfortunately the letters get everywhere and many have gone missing at this point, but we still have it out.

What's next? We shall see! :)

A Silly Bean Snow Day

I was going to make a post about Silly Bean's recent ABCs learning, but yesterday we had a SNOW DAY :)

Silly Bean looooves snowmen! Our friend Jamie brought him this stuffed snowman when she came to visit us back in early November, and even though he had never seen an actual snowman at that point, he loved (and still loves) it so much. When he wakes up, he runs to the living room and yells, "Man man," picks it up, and kisses it.

The first snow of the season was in mid-November, and Silly Bean was not a big fan. After about 5 minutes of standing outside and watching the snow falling he cried to go home, so we took some snow to explore in the warmth of our condo. Silly Bean doesn't touch very many cold things (except for maybe frozen groceries when he helps to put them away), so he was very interested in poking/holding/mashing the snow around with his hands.

Silly Bean was very curious about what it tasted like, and ended up eating most of it before dinner (don't worry, it was clean snow!)!

We began reading books about winter in anticipation of more snow to come, which never really happened throughout December and January. Silly Bean's favorite was one about a snowman of course, called Snowman Magic, by Katherine Tegen.  We didn't get a photo of it, but here's the Amazon photo and link to it:

click HERE to purchase (links to Amazon)

We learned about the magic of snowmen, how many of them have carrot noses and button eyes, and how they inevitably melt when the weather gets warmer.

After that, we just never really saw enough snow to do much with, until yesterday! As we watched the snow fall from the window, we talked about how it was a snowman day!

This time, Silly Bean had a grand old time in the snow, which I think just goes to show that sometimes kids (and even adults, I daresay) may need to try something multiple times before deciding that they actually enjoy it. Included in the list of Silly Bean-approved activities was trudging through the snow wearing several pairs of socks in rainboots as well as chucking snowballs at the sidewalk and watching them break. We also built a tiny snowman, to which Silly Bean loudly and gleefully exclaimed, "Man man!" every time we walked away and walked back to look at it. He thought the carrot nose we had given it that we had pulled out of the refrigerator was especially delightful.

Now that the little snowman is all melted and all that remains is a baby carrot in the grass, we can't wait for the next snow day!

Ringing in the Year of the Pig, Silly Bean Style

Silly Bean is a multiracial little guy- Cantonese from my side, and British, Irish, and French from Kevin's side. We want him to grow up knowing who he is and how he was created, and so holidays are an entryway into teaching him about his cultures. Now while he is so young, it's more about awareness about what particular people groups do/eat/celebrate than about teaching him about ethnicity or differences among them. These past few days, we've been learning about Chinese New Year (in addition to receiving red envelopes from family members).

Silly Bean loves picture books, but they need to have pictures that are appealing to him, and contain some words but not too many. Here are some of the books we've been looking at that he has enjoyed "reading" and learning from:

In particular, Grace Lin's Bringing in the New Year (and all of Grace Lin's books for that matter) was a big hit with Silly Bean. I think he remembered the lanterns from the other book we read by her about the Midautumn Festival, so we created some mini lanterns out of red envelopes that he enjoyed holding in his hand and helping to put up on the door. 

One of the other joys of Silly Bean being 17 months old is the new discovery and fascination with eating--Silly Bean learning how to eat, being introduced to new foods, and for me, cooking healthy foods that he might like and seeing how he reacts. It was really fun to make these dumplings while Silly Bean watched (and tried to help), just like we saw in Grace Lin's book about the new year.  Though Silly Bean only liked the dumpling skins sans filling this time around, I hope this will become one of our yearly traditions!

新年快樂 from our family to yours!

What traditions/holidays do you celebrate with your little one to teach them about who they are?