Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Daycare Year 4

My secret wish has been granted. We have our favourite sensei as your head teacher for this year (さくら組)! Happy! She was one of your head teachers too during Year 2, and you bloomed then.

I pray you’ll have a great year of fun in learning about life and love with young Sakura gumi classmates under the tutelage of your redoubtable head teacher. 

We are excited for you! We love you. 

life with a kindergartener: moving up day

You’ll be moving to your new, upper grade classroom tomorrow so I’ve been looking for your “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” book for an hour but to no avail. Looked for it on your bookshelf, on my bookshelf, in daddy’s library, in our bedroom’s book nook. It’s nowhere to be found. 

Thankfully we technically still have a week for our yearly tradition since your class will still be with your previous head teacher for this week and your moving up ceremony is still this Thursday. But I still couldn’t be at peace knowing that I couldn’t find your book. Told you about it and you tried to ask (and understand) why I was looking for it. 

Then you sang “Remembering, remembering” from the series “Land Before Time”, in which save for those two words, you altered the lyrics to suit how I am trying to remember where we put your book so we can have our little tradition in your moving up to Sakura class. 

And you know what, you did comfort me. Your thoughtfulness and creativity and sweet voice soothed me. 

Thank you our dear little one. Indeed, you’re moving up in so many ways. Thankful. 

life with a kindergartener: the T-Rex and its digits 

We’ve been arguing for weeks now about this particular issue. You against me & your Dad. But you just won’t relent. In fact, you’ve grown more vehement in your belief that you were right. That it is an indisputable fact that the T-Rex has only two digits on its fore limbs. Your Dad and I insist it had three. 

At one point, Gon the dinosaur was even involved in our discussion as we (Me and your Dad), suggested Gon is a T-Rex. And with this, you passionately told us this is not correct because Gon has three fingers. 

It went on for weeks. But it was only tonight that I thought of checking it out so that once and for all, the matter will be settled. And I was shocked to see you were right! You were jumping gayly on your bed, saying “desu yo?! Desu yo?!! I won!” while Dad hid under the covers because well, we lost. 


Yes I’m very proud that you were able to notice such detail. 

But I’m even more proud on how relentless you were on your stand; how confident you were even when your views were very different from Mom and Dad. You didn’t even go and look for proof (as I would do at the office); you just say it in a very confident manner that  has a tone of a “full stop” on it; no room for discussion. 

By even as you rejoiced, you also felt the need to comfort Mom and Dad because we lost in our big debate. And so you went really really generous. You shared with us your two most favourite toys that you almost couldn’t go to bed without. You gave Pinkie Pie to Daddy for the night, and to me, Arlo. 

I pray the world, us including, doesn’t change you anak. May you continue to be firm yet gentle; determined yet generous. 

life with a kindergartener: when I grow up….

On a visit to our daughter’s daycare, one of her girl classmates suddenly exclaimed  albeit with a serious expression while looking so self-assured at me: I’ll be a pianist when I grow up!

Boy classmate then piped in, “I’ll be a Godzilla or dinosaur when I grow up! Really, really big!!” (His voice then changed to emphasise how big he is gonna be)

Of course my daughter wouldn’t allow herself to loose ground. She also has to say her own piece. 

Yui: when I grow up, I will be a….FLAMINGO!!

There’s a golden rule: never, ever laugh at someone else’s dream. And so of course, I tried not to. 

A few weeks later…

Yui: I will be a prime minister. Flamingo prime minister! 

Well, at least she’s consistent. 

life with a kindergartener: first love

You over the weekend. 

Luis aite ni yokattara. Luis no uchi ikitai. Luis ga suki! 

It would be good to see Luis. I want to see Luis and visit him in his home. I love Luis!

Well, you probably don’t mean it in the romantic way and you were probably thinking more of his toy dinosaurs and dragons. But then again, he is the first who’s outside of our family whom you said you love. ❤️😍

baby diaries: Valentines and colouring book

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. And so since we are in Japan, we did what women do at this day of the year – we gave Dad a (Godiva) box of chocolates! You did a pretty good job in carrying our gift and handing it over to Daddy. You did a good job too in eating half of them (and almost succeeded in convincing me to give you my share).  

This evening, you coloured some pages of your Barbie colouring book. I love it that you always try to improve things, where’s there’s chance, without us having to tell you to. You also don’t limit yourself only to what you’re supposed to do. And for these, I am very thankful. I pray that you continue to be so, as you grow older and wiser. 

By the way, I loved how you laughed while saying Barbie had too much ketchup. Just like you, you ketchup monster, you. 😍