Jeremy in October

Its been a while since I have written about my son so here is an update. Jeremy is two and a half next month and his recent language acquisition has been staggering as are his motor skills.
We have been teaching him words and sentences and he is able to repeat and use quite successfully what he hears and sees to great almost too good effect.

Reasons to be cheerful

He can give direction (come, sit, go, up, down) and describe things around him using colours (the car is black or the wheels dirty) for example.
He seems to be obsessed with Monster Trucks and to 'crash' the car, subsequently everything that touches is 'crashed' then 'oh no its broken' to 'oh its fixed' in a matter of seconds. He is obsessed with cleaning things and will clean his toys 'toys are dirty' and my bike, the window, me anything he deems not clean. I told him the other day that a taxi we were in was dirty and for the next 35 minutes that all he said 'taxi is dirty' so that was good.

Crane Dada crane!

He likes tower cranes, can't say why but there is one we can see from our house and is gets higher he can watch it grow. He will spend a lot of time pointing at it saying 'crane is moving/broken/fix' to help describe it and if he can go upstairs he will run to the balcony and point at any thing and call it a crane, unless however it is a radio mast and then he thinks it is a mast. We are working on trying to convince him otherwise.

Jeremy enjoys the bus and will sit quite still and quiet until he sees another bus/taxi/truck/tower crane or if he is with Yovita and if I am away from her (Yovita is given a seat in the female only part of the bus because of Jeremy) he will call for me until he sees me.

Through my tab he watches a considerable amount of You tube in the morning before work and then on the weekend. I am careful as to what and he mainly watches Donald Duck, Thomas and Friends, Wheels on the Bus videos and lots and lots of vocabulary videos where he will sit and watch and repeat the words said to him as they are spoken. He will sing Incy Wincy spider and Twinkle Twinkle little star, and whilst its not good. He is 2. So what to expect. Last night he repeated the alphabet until P then he was confused for the right reasons.  I am banning Monster Truck videos now!

You tube with me, not that I can see

He can also switch on my Tab, find You Tube, turn the volume and brightness us, as well as turn on the WiFi and has learnt to scroll and press the button to skip ads.

Some of the recent history from my You Tube account

With Jeremy being Indonesian, he also uses the language and it is mixed with English. 'Duduk' means to sit and so he will tell me that when he needs me to sit. 'Tolong bikin susu' tells me he wants me to make milk and 'mimi' is short for drink or water. He understands Indonesian language and how to use it. There might be however, a gap in his knowledge as he is currently being exposed to far more English than Indonesian which could slow him down a little later. I will need to research more materials for him to see and listen which are in Indonesian to help balance his language because he will need, probably, to speak more Indonesian than English as soon as he starts school.

He is very very active and will run about all day and if we let him run about in a mall then he will just run everywhere. It is hard to find him a safe place to run and play everyday as there really are not any areas for a child to play near us and its also too hot to be out running about for too long. There is a local children play area but its not really very child friendly. Happily we have a car port he can run around in and he does and also the balcony upstairs has enough space for this as well. Jeremy is watched like a hawk so he is safe and he will run and run and jump as much as we let him.

Jeremy is also getting bigger and heavier. We are already on XXL nappy pants with the intention he will be toilet trained before he is 3 and we are putting him in clothing for 3 or 4 year old. He must get the size from me as well as eating like a horse when he can. All of which is good. There are plenty of choices for clothing so that helps him here at the moment.

He also likes to have his teeth cleaned and this is helping him grow and learn routines. We need to be more routine with this but he happily sits while we brush and he knows or is beginning to know why and when we do this. He knows when bed time is now and will almost willingly go bed and lie down and eventually sleep. He still sleeps for around 9 hours a night, dropping off before 9 and awaking before 6 and waking everyone with him.

He will eat anything we give him and drink more or less the same. He does not eat too much sweet stuff as he is full of energy already but he does eat ice cream with his dad now and then and is partial to a milk chocolate digestive! If we are out and about he will eat what we eat and can drink most types of milk and does not refuse now, plain white milk instead of his vanilla flabvoured baby milk. i make him drink fresh cows milk through the week and UHT milk as well but its all white, no chocolate or added sweetener. Yovita makes him drink water and juice and his gran here, feeds him all sorts of Javanese food and stuff. Our housekeeper cooks up soups and food for him, all of which probably explains why he is so bloody heavy!!! But when he is sick he does seem to drop weight quickly and from a recent bout of diarrhoea  he became dehydrated quickly and that was a concern. He was fixed 2 days later but only after a course of anti-biotics.

Pretty good Milk

Vanilla is better than the Honey one

With his language and motorskills developing, we are now encouraging numbers and the alphabet as well as more Indonesian language and we are doing this through play and constant talking. He favourite toys are die cast cars so for some reason he now has over 50 of them (most of which are Matchbox because I like Matchbox) and this number is growning. Thomas is fun for him as any bus but he likes to choose his toy and most of them are trucks or vans. The reason I choose Matchbox over hotwheels is to help him identify quicker with the vehicles around him as they are more realistic. He also likes trains and planes and in time he will be given Duplo lego or Playmobile (do you know how much this stuff costs??) to help grow and develop further but that can wait until he is 3.

Fire Truck and its great

He has just found out about the shopping cars in Carrefour, The little tikes car with a shopping trolley bolted to it so next week will be far more fun for us shopping what with 'car is dirty, beep beep, oh no car has crashed / fixed' or 'the wheel is broken' the shopping time won't increase in time at all.

Getting him out of this will be a challenge

So thats Jeremy today. A handful. He seems to be far more active than a lot of children I see but I dont really know. I know that its fun and everyday I am kept on my toes and thats great.

Jeremy