The Bub in the Belly

I've mentioned the Noddy Fun Book a few times on the blog. We have two sets - one we bought ourselves, the other was a gift from a friend for Ryan for his 2nd birthday back in January 2011 (thanks so much, Sue Lin!).

Each set comes with 10 Fun Books, the flip-grid with 12 numbered tiles, 10 colour pens and a parent's guide. Each Fun Book has a different theme - shapes, numbers, upper case letters, lower case letters, math, colours, time, animals, plants, weather. There are 15 games of three varying levels of difficulty in each Fun Book. You can read the reviews on it on the internet, I won't go into all that here.

We have been playing for it for some time now and Ryan has pretty much worked through all the Fun Books already. His favourites are the ones with letters and numbers. Ryan loves the games - he will, of his own accord, drag the set from the shelf (it's pretty heavy) and ask us to sit down and play with him. Often he will play through one Fun Book (15 games) in one go, and start all over with the same Fun Book (another 15 games). There was once he went through a Fun Book three times in one sitting!

We bought our set from the Tensai shop in Shichida when they were having a sale (we have used it a couple of times in Shichida class), and you can also get it online. I can't remember how much we paid for it at the Tensai shop but I think you can get it online for about $75 (or thereabouts) so, as 10 Fun Books with 15 games each adds up to 150 games, it would translate to about $2 per game. Factor in the fact that Ryan plays the games repeatedly, I would say it is very good value for us.

Here's a Youtube video (about 7:20 minutes long) of Ryan in action with the Noddy Fun Book. We were in Malaysia when the video was filmed. It's a little longer than the usual videos I show on the blog, because I wanted to show the whole process of setting up the flip grid, executing the game and checking the result, plus I wanted to show an example from each of the three levels of difficulty. You can see that it is really easy to operate - Ryan needs absolutely no help to go through the process.

We are pretty excited about what Ryan drew last night!

The night before, Richard introduced the watercolour paper to Ryan. Ryan has worked with watercolour before but not on watercolour paper. He was very excited and last night, he actually asked Richard to set up the art table for him again!

In addition to his usual art pieces, he made this.

The first thing he did was to write "Elmo" at the bottom in blue. Richard said, "Elmo is red!", so Ryan wrote "Elmo" in red directly above the blue "Elmo". Then, using the blue watercolour again, Ryan drew a face! Can you see it on the left? Two eyes, one nose and a smile! After that, Ryan used the red watercolour and drew another smiling face (in the middle) and a sad face (on the right)! Then he wrote the word "sad". Ryan had been playing all day with an Elmo hand puppet, so it was not surprising that Elmo was prominent in his thoughts.

It's the faces that we are excited about! We know that Ryan could write and spell, plus we know that he is aware what happy and sad mean, but this is the first time that we've seen him draw a face. He must have seen some similar images somewhere, because we have not taught him to use dots for the eyes/nose and a curved line for the mouth. Drawing faces is supposed to be a developmental milestone for his age, so it's really good news to know that he's right on track.

Ryan did everything on his own, completely unaided. I wasn't even there, I was editing a movie in another room. Richard told me what he had drawn and I asked Ryan as well. Ryan said "Happy Elmo" and "Sad Elmo" when I asked him what it was. When I pointed to the dots for the nose and asked him what's that, he cheekily sniffed a few times (to signify his nose). When I pointed to the dots for the eyes and asked him what's that, he blinked his eyes!

We are really excited! Well done, son!

Here's a Youtube video (2:14 minutes) of Ryan playing with something we bought last Sunday, basically spelling words to match pictures.



Ryan is taking his time to spell as he is a little preoccupied with handling the material (this is the very first time he is playing with this). You can also see how tidy he is, making sure that the letters fit nicely on the spaces. I got a little impatient (because I know he knows the spelling for these words) so I tried to prompt him but I misled him by prompting with the wrong letter sound! He was spelling the word "CLOCK" (at 1:30) and he said "L". I wanted to repeat after him, but somehow I said "/e/" instead of "L", so he picked up the letter "E". Just goes to show that sometimes trying to help is not helpful!

Ryan can pretty much read all the words in the set, if I spell them out for him. The question is whether he can spell the words himself. Spelling is a different thought process from reading so even if you can read a word, you may not be able to spell it. For the picture sheet that you see in the video, Ryan is very familiar with the spelling for those words, but there are more advanced sheets in the set, which he may not know how to spell out, so we will be working through them slowly.

This set was pretty cheap - about $10 from Popular Bookstore. If you're interested in this sort of game, there are lots around and we have a few different versions at home. You can consider Boggle Jr. - Ryan has been playing Boggle Jr. at his nanny's place, which is similar - it also lets him form words to match picture cards (or word cards).

It's my Valentine's Day bouquet! Thank you hubs!

Also got these from my office! Love them! Muack Muack!

Can you spot the big bad wolf?

Our dog, Max, came along too.

Something fun today.

I wanted to pen down the process that we went through when choosing a name for our son. Actually, it's a really short story - Ryan was the first name we chose - but we went through the process anyway.

So, yes Ryan was the first name we chose. It had an instant appeal for us, it sounded right. Nevertheless, we wanted to be thorough so, before committing to it, we threw up several other names, but none of them had that "connection" for us. I guess everyone wants a name that sounds nice. But there are many, many names that sound nice. Some people want a meaningful name. But there are many many names that are meaningful. Most people want both a nice-sounding name and a meaningful one but that doesn't narrow the choices by much.

For us, there was a third factor - we had to feel a connection. Some people are inspired by songs, by experiences, by people, and we did discuss some names along those lines. For instance, I toyed with the name Dylan, remembering Bob Dylan, but I decided that I wasn't inspired enough and I wasn't enough of a fan to name my son in his honour - besides, what if it turns out that he hates Bob Dylan?? So, although there had to be a connection, it couldn't be something majorly significant, because it could turn out to be absolutely meaningless to our son or worse, the source of our inspiration might turn out to be a completely turn off for him and be totally inappropriate.

Here, the fact that it started with the letter "R" was good enough. It was a small connection that didn't demand anything from our son. He didn't have to like the song that he was named after, he didn't have to read books by an author that he had no interest in, he didn't have to feel that he needed to live up to a biblical character, etc. Anti-climactic? Haha, it really was that simple for us.

And the meaning? "Ryan" means "Little King". Perfect.

There were other criteria, which was the pretty usual stuff - we didn't want to give our son the same name as a relative/friend/friend's son; we didn't want a name that would look odd on a Chinese boy; it had to be easy to pronounce (especially by the old folks); and we didn't want a name that you couldn't find on a souvenir. We didn't need a unique name or a name with a unique spelling - our son was already special in our eyes - we felt that having a unique name/spelling was more of a burden than a gift for the child. "Ryan" satisfied all that.

There was one more criteria - we didn't want an "old" name, ie. it had to fit into the present era. "Ryan" was definitely not an "old" name so no problem there. This was amply demonstrated yesterday. As I was watching Ryan Giggs play in a football match on TV, I thought it'd be fun to look up some of the well-known people with the name "Ryan" and so I did. I didn't get any people or characters from bygones ago. Instead, these hunks (and one beautiful lady) turned up!

Ryan Giggs. Hmm, I'm not a fan and he's not really my type, but he's apparently quite a ladies' man. Anyhow... he's fit, drives an Audi and is intensely loyal (to his club). Good enough.

Ryan Reynolds. Need I say more?


Ryan Gosling. No words. No words are necessary.


Ryan Seacrest. The most hardworking man around. He probably has twenty jobs going at the same time.



Ryan Atwood - the protagonist on the TV series "The O.C." played by Benjamin Mackenzie.

More decorations on our bookcase. The one in the middle says "Gong Xi Fa Cai".


A 7-ft plastic dragon adorned our windows, swooping low above our woodland creatures.


This one was pretty cute, five children on a dragon boat! I bought it because there were going to be five children attending the Chinese New Year gathering at our home (three boys and two girls, like in the boat). We hung it from the light above our dining table.

Here's a Youtube video of the children tossing the yee sang! The video is about 2:27 minutes long. Each child has a different style - Ryan is mainly moving the chopsticks left and right (vigorously) on the plate, Brayden is mainly moving his chopsticks in a circular motion, Matthias is mainly stabbing the plate, and Ern is quite demure and a little worried about the mess. They got into the spirit of things and most of them managed to do some tossing, especially Brayden! By the time they were done, most of the yee sang was no longer on the plate! I think the children had lots of fun, so hopefully we'll be able to give them the chance to do it again next year!



You can also see that Ryan is partial to his left hand although I don't think he has quite made up his mind yet which will be the dominant hand.

Red packets were distributed to the children and the party ended shortly after 10 pm. Each family left with a pair of mandarin oranges and each child left with a paper dragon and those chopsticks. This is the paper dragon (I got it from Chinatown). You hold one stick in each hand and stretch it out. Ryan loves it!

Oh, I wanted to show you what Shann's family brought for us! Garlic! As her daughter, Ern, passed them to me, she told me, "Huat ah!"

Shann & Ern