Grayden gardening

At Grayden's preschool they were learning about plants, trees, flowers, and how to plant a garden. They were growing a garden at the school, and had the kids contribute. They let the kids rake, dig, and plant the seeds. They showed them how to water the seeds to take care of them and make them grow. It was such a cute idea to have the kids make a garden at the school. Grayden really enjoyed the gardening as you can see. As an art project they were to bring in an old tissue box to make a tree out of. You can see in the pictures he is painting the tissue box for the base of the tree, then he is putting the green leaves on the tree.

Chase goes to school

At Grayden's preschool they were learning all about animals, each week they focused on a different one. So, when they came to cats, his teacher asked if we could bring one of our cats in for a show and tell. Well, Chase is like 18lbs and me being pregnant, I was not sure I could carry him in the pet carrier. Daddy came to the rescue and offered to carry Chase to the school for us. Chase did very well at the school, he came right out to greet the children. Grayden was so excited to have his kitty cat at his school. Some of the children were afraid of Chase, but Grayden told them it was okay he was friendly. The next week one of the other children brought their dog in, and Grayden did very well with the dog. He pet the dog, walked the dog, and fed the dog. I guess he takes after his Mommy and Daddy as being an animal lover.

We're back...

Well, we are back in Singapore now. We have been home for about two weeks now. Grayden went back to school the week after we got back, and this week he started going three days a week. He has not been to happy to go back to school, he has been clinging to me, and crying when I drop him off. The teacher said I guess your holiday was to long, sigh... He cries for a few minutes, then he is okay they say. When I come to pick him up he is always happy, and says he had a fun day. So, I guess it is just trying to get back in the swing of things here. I think that it is pretty confusing to him everytime we go back to the states, he sees all these people for a short time and then they are gone. It broke my heart when my parents had to leave and he was holding onto their suitcases saying no dont go Grandpa. Then he did the same to my Mom. It is not easy living so far away from everyone.

We had a wonderful time back home, wish we could have stayed longer. We have two more years to go here. I hope it will fly by like the first two and a half.

Here we come...

We are leaving for Texas tomorrow morning here. We will start our journey getting up at 3am to make our 6am flight to Hong Kong. Then from Hong Kong we will make our 13 hour flight to San Francisco. Once we get there we have a couple hours layover in SF, then we will take the four hour flight to Austin. Wow, it is such an exhausting flight getting back to the U.S., but it makes it worth it when we get home. We are not bringing Grayden's car seat for the first time, hope that it goes well. We bought a FAA approved airplane seatbelt to use on the plane. It looks just like his seat belt in the carseat so hopefully he will feel comfortable in it.

I am a little nervous being six months pregnant and taking this long of a trip. You feel uncomfortable already, just imagine sitting in an airplane seat for that long. I have never flown being pregnant before, so it will be an experience. This little guy inside my tummy is always moving around and kicking. We will see how he likes the plane ride.

Alphabet time

Grayden's class just got the alphabet mats, and they were playing a game to step on the letter they were told to step on. You can see Grayden is a little nervous to play the game, but then settled on the letter U. The teachers also came up with a new alphabet song that incorporates the sounds of the letter.

As you can see Grayden really enjoys coloring. They usually have about 10 minutes during the class that they do coloring. It usually will reflect what they are learning in the class that day, or for the week. His favorite is to draw circles, and his letter G for Grayden.

Learning about firemen

At school a couple of weeks ago the firefighters came and talked to the class about their job. The kids were very excited to see the firemen, their gear, the fire hose, and pretend play with them. The firemen taught the children how to stop, drop, and roll, and other things to do in case of a fire. They also got to play with the fire hose and pretend to squirt out a fire. The teachers also drew fire on paper ,and set it up outside for the kids to put out with their water sprinklers.

All of the children were supposed to go to the fire station a couple weekends ago, but the trip got canceled due to the swine flu. The government here does not want the schools to have any outings for the next few months due to the flu. It has tripled here within the last few weeks, so they want to avoid the kids being in large crowds. I guess the school does not want to be responsible if one of the kids got the flu while out on a school trip. Grayden was very disappointed he wanted to go to the fire station to see the big red fire engine, and ride on it. Hopefully, they will reschedule the trip when the flu subsides here.

Chef Grayden

At school a couple weeks ago they were teaching the children about carbohydrates. They got to feel, touch, and taste them. They experimented with rice, noodles, bread, and cereals. The kids learned that these types of food are the ones that will give you energy. The teachers then helped the children to cook some fried rice. They all took turns stirring the rice as it cooked, and added the ingredients one by one. Besides rice, they also were taught how to make bread. In the first picture the Chinese teacher was teaching them about vegetables. She helped the children make a salad, and after they all ate it. The teachers said they were surprised that most of the children enjoyed eating the salad. Also, after about half an hour of cooking the fried rice the children could identify what was in the fried rice, such as onions, garlic, egg, rice, and carrots. Grayden seemed to enjoy cooking the fried rice with his teacher.

Turtle race at school

At Grayden's school they got two pet turtles, they are so teeny tiny. They took the turtles outside to have them race each other. They built a track for the turtles with the mega blocks, so they could not get out. One of the turtles did try to get out, he was curious to see what was outside of the blocks. Grayden was excited but at the same time a little nervous about the turtles. You can see his face in one of the pictures, he is trying to smile but with some hesitation. Now when I pick him up from school he always points out the turtles to me. So, I think he is feeling more comfortable with them.

Grayden and the cozy coupe

Grayden can not wait to go to school and have outside time. He loves to drive around in the red cozy coupe. If we get to school late, and they are already outside he gets upset if someone else is in the cozy coupe. Even though they have like three other cars to ride around in. We do not have room in the condo for him to have a cozy coupe, so I am glad he gets to enjoy it at school.

In the other pictures, Grayden is making a jelly sandwich. They teach them how to spread the jelly on the bread, then they get to eat it. Mmmm yummy!!

School outing at the Botanical Gardens

Grayden's pre-school took them on an outing to the Botanical Gardens. They were learning all about colors the past few weeks, so they took them here to show them all the colors of nature. They had a picnic that was full of colorful food, and yummy food. This was the first time that Mommy did not get to go on the outing, so I was very nervous. He ended up doing very well, and holding his teacher's hand when told so. He has come such a long way in his school, I am very proud of him.

Color week

Grayden is learning about the different colors this week. Here in the picture's he is learning about blue and yellow. They do lots of fun activities to teach the kids about the colors. The teacher said that Grayden could identify blue after showing the color to him three times. His favorite color is yellow though. Most of the time he will say yellow to everything, silly guy. He is growing so fast, I can not believe my little guy will be three this year. He has come such a long way in school. He is actually sitting still and learning instead of running around getting into everything.

New Zealand

We have just returned from our nine day trip to the South Island of New Zealand. It was truly an amazing and beautiful place to go visit. The weather was a bit cooler than here in Singapore, but a nice change for us. We had a nine day trip itinerary to follow which took us to a new place every day or two. We were mostly along the West coast of New Zealand then toward the end of our trip we went inland. We rented a car so that we could take our time and just enjoy the drive around NZ. Sheep are everywhere in NZ, even way up on the mountains. So most of the time driving you saw lots of sheep, cows, and lots of mountains.

I have to say the most amazing part of NZ was to see the Glaciers!! I never thought that I would ever get to see a galcier let alone walk on top of one. All week we were trying to get up on a helicopter to see the glaciers, but the weather would not cooperate. It rained pretty much everyday we were there. The last day we were at Mt. Cook which has the five glaciers around it, and were hoping we could do it there. We were in luck, the weather was clear, and we decided to do it. So, we got to see Mt. Cook, the five glaciers, and had a snow landing on Franz Josef Glacier. It had just snowed on top of the mountains that morning so we had fresh snow to step on. Daddy and Grayden threw snow balls at eachother, it was great packing snow. Grayden did so good on the helicopter, and even wore his headphones. There was another little girl that was 16 months old on our helicopter, so I think that helped.

We also took a boat ride around a river called the Tasman River which is basically created from the glaciers melting. In this river are giant iceburgs that have come off the glaciers, I mean they are huge. They fall off the glacier into the river and then come up from out of the water. They said they are usually one meter still under the water that you can not see. Everyday the glaciers are melting, and moving. The one day we were at the Fox Glacier, a small piece of the bottom of it fell off, and created a big surge in the river that was coming out it. Truly an amazing thing to see. You could hear things cracking and falling off of the glaciers when we would sit still in the boat. I was scared that if something fell off of these things while we were in the river, it would be bad news. They said one of the iceburgs had just fallen off about three weeks ago and created a huge surge in the river. They had just finished with a tour on the river when it happened, good thing.

Also, I am sure that you all know Lord of the Rings was filmed in NZ, so we got to see a few locations where it was filmed. One of Brian's favorite movies, so he was excited to see those locations.

I will try to get some pictures out for everyone to see.

Dr. Dostie

Grayden is back in school. They missed him very much, and were very happy that he is back. These are some pictures when they were learning the different jobs that people do. As you can see they were learning about Doctors. There are some previous pictures on the blog where they learned about firemen and got to wear the hat, and hold the hose. That stethoscope looks good on Grayden, maybe my little man will be a doctor when he grows up and take care of his Mommy and Daddy. Wish he was that good when we actually go to the Doctor and she has to put the stethoscope up to him, he screams. They always say he has good lungs!!

Grayden had a hard time going back to school after being away for six weeks. He cried when Mommy was leaving. I hate when he does that, it upsets me. So, the first week back he cried for like five minutes then after I left he was fine. Now that he has been going for the past two weeks, no crying. He realizes that school is fun, and he gets to get in the cozy coupe car at outside play. He loves riding in those little cars.

We are still having problems with potty training. He was doing so well, even when we were in Cincinnati. Then we came home and he wants nothing to do with it. I tell him he can get a new toy when he poops in the potty and he doesn't care. He tells me No Thank You, well at least he is polite. I guess I have to either let him run around naked for a weekend or stop for now and try again in a month. It is to stressful for me, he sits on the potty for like three hours before he will even poop, peeing is not really the problem. He will do that most of the time, it is just going poop. I know that most boys are hard to potty train, but my gosh I didn't realize this hard. I really thought he would not like to sit with poop in his pants, but he really could do it all day.