DON'T UNDERESTIMATE KAI...

He was mad at me when I was about to leave for the store this morning. He was complaining that I am taking Umma's car. He was pacified by Umma, telling him that I will buy gas. When I came back they were gone to the park...later when they came back, he told me about a bad boy in the park. I found out that there were some kids from the day care in the park, and looks like there was a "meanie" there that told him to go away. It was no big deal for him because Umma was there. But, he remembers! That was the first thing he told me when they came back..."Bad Boy!"

He had been eating good lately and when I say eat...it is continuous eating. Thank God that he is so active that everything that does go in his mouth must had be used up for all the energies spent. Lately he will ask for jello or tapioca pudding just before they leave for home. He loves ice cream ("i-kim") too. He will eat bacon all the time if you let him. It does not need cajoling at all. I made him french toast for his breakfast this morning. Umma asked him what he wants to eat for lunch and without hesitation told her, "small hot dog." He is learning to eat by himself using a small fork. I wonder how many almost three years old boy eats with a fork...I am sure some parents will not even allow their kids to handle one..."might get poked." Tomorrow, I will introduce to him some silver dollar pancakes. This was one of Tisha's favorite when she was at the same age. I will let him watch me doing it because this will give him the incentive to eat it.

We played in the backyard for awhile, I persuaded him to come inside by telling him that "Tom and Jerry" will be on and I will give him some "MMs" (rationed by fives at a time). We have a game that I will ask him to lay down with Umpha and come inside "Umpha's house" (inside the blanket). He did stay for a while and then became "itchy." He started to squeeze my face to be "broken" so he can fix it again. He was all over me. He will stand up and with arms and hands up the air, he will pretend dive towards me. I have to put a pillow across my chest as a buffer. I have no idea where he picked that up!

That is what we are doing when Tisha came. He was handed a bag of plastic glow in the dark bugs. He was excited and had me..."Open please...Umpha." Forgetting to hug his Mom as he always do. Although the creatures are creamy opaque and not in their true colors he was able to identify each of them except one...a centipede. I had to tell him what it is. Actually we haven't encountered any centipede in the yard yet. We moved to the dinning room where Tisha was eating and as usual he sat on the opposite direction of his Mommie.

He started to take out each of the bugs from the plastic bag and started telling his Mom the name of them. He recited each name, "bumble bee," "beetle." "cockroach," 'lady bug" (the bigger one of the two was the mommie and the smaller one was the baby), "scorpion," etc. It was very funny when it came to the centipede. I guess it hadn't registered yet the name "centipede." What came out of his mouth was, "long-long-long bug." Tisha and I really got a kick out of it. For me it was really amazing that in spite of him forgetting the name, he was able to concoct an alternative name that suited the bug. He is really doing fine in sentence constructions. I noticed that he is learning to reason, assess a situation, and at times can solve some simple problems he gets in...or the latter, needs a..."Umpha help!" Oh yes, he gets confused between "outside" and "inside." We are working on it!