January, week 4: 2 weeks in review

TheFry sports a new hat I made for him. Sorry for the poor picture quality.

So, I finally downloaded Windows Live (including Windows Live Writer) on my work computer, so I have managed to get [sort of] caught up on blog posts that have been on the brain.

Now I’d like to at least do a periodical recap of what’s been going on in our lives. If there’s something monumental or TheFry reaches a new developmental stage, I’ll post once a week. But if life is boring me to tears then I probably won’t be sharing any of that nonsense with you!

So here’s the last two weeks for you:

1. I got caught up on blog posts, yay! I feel like I might actually have the potential to keep family and friends updated regularly.

2. TheFry is almost walkin’ and pretty much talkin’. It’s taken me a couple of weeks to realize that there are a couple of words—in both English and Korean—that he knows fairly well. In English, he uses the expressions “oh” and “yeah” pretty regularly and with confidence.

He also sometimes cries “Mom!” and “Mama!”, but only when he’s upset or having a tantrum. He also often whines and cries “엄마!” (“eomma”, the Korean word for “mommy”) in the same instances. Therefore, I’m reluctant to say that he uses any of those words at all, since he only uses them in those instances and never to get my attention any other way.

He also has started saying “아빠" (“appa”, the Korean word for “daddy”) pretty regularly, although I don’t think he uses the word to call on PapaFish, but he seems to enjoy saying it, and pronounces the ‘ㅃ’ sound very deliberately.

Furthermore, PapaFish informed me today that when playing “peekabo”, he will say something that sounds like “까꿍!” (“gga ggung”, the Korean word for “peekabo”).

3. TheFry continues to stack blocks. His nursery school even wrote a note about it, saying that he pretty much likes to play with the wooden blocks all the time.

 

 

4. Last weekend we went to the ToysRUs near Guil Station. It was fabulous – way cooler than any ToysRUs I can remember in the States! The checkout lanes were shaped like big toy train engines, and they had to-scale models of tables in chairs that adults can sit in to see what it’s like to be kid-size at their age!

TheFry can’t walk confidently yet, so he missed out on a lot of things, but we found that the store has quite a number of decently-priced toys for infants and toddlers, and quite a few infant/toddler necessities that aren’t bad, either. Of course, everything we would consider “necessary” back home (car seats, strollers, and baby safety gates, to name a few) were way off the charts as far as reasonable prices go, we found the store a great place to stock up on things like sippy cups and the like.

The ToysRUs is on level B1 of Lotte Mart, a grocery store similar to HomePlus in that it carries non-grocery items (such as clothing) and also has a food court. We ate at the food court for cheap, and TheFry gobbled down his meal. It seems that any more these days he will only eat when he’s not at home. Apparently the meals we serve at home are for playing with…

5. Probably my favorite development thus far is TheFry’s participation in ordinary activities that we do as a family. Specifically, I am speaking of mealtime prayers. When we can manage to all have a homemade meal together, we say a blessing beforehand. We have been showing him how we fold our hands. He loves to participate in family prayers! He will sit in his chair with his hands folded and the biggest grin on his face, being very quiet but letting out cute little sighs. Most recently he has started bowing his head a little bit, but of course not for the whole prayer.

The thing that is so interesting about this development to me is that we haven’t enforced it very much at all. We never discipline him if he doesn’t fold his hands, but we encourage him to do it with smiles and soft words. He just loves copying his mom and dad and he loves doing things together as a family.

Further developing his participation in prayers, however, is this little anecdote that had me laugh/crying on the bus on the way to ToysRUs last weekend:

We were taking the bus, and as per usual, the driver was cruising along like a maniac. I was wearing TheFry in the Pognae carrier, strapped to the front, and for some reason I was not able to sit down. The driver hit a big bump, and as I almost lost my balance, I shouted “Geez!”

TheFry looked up at me with bright eyes and a wide smile, and folded his hands in front of him. He recognizes the name “Jesus".

It’s time to start watching our mouths then, I guess.

See you next time, folks!