Ren update

Ren is seriously super smart. He does things every day that totally amaze me. I know that they say that kids are amazing, but you really don't know how much until you have some of your own.

On thing that really stood out to me happened Sunday morning. Ren grabbed Yoshiko's cell phone and flipped it open. On her main screen, there is a picture of Ren and I sleeping. Ren starts laughing and says, "Papa!" So Yoshiko and I were like, "Yeah that's papa and Ren." And Ren looks a little perturbed and says, "No, papa!" So I point to Ren in the picture and say, "and Ren." He then points to me and says, "Papa!" I then pointed to him and said, "And Ren." He then grabbed my finger and pointed to me and said, "Papa!" Yoshiko and I were laughing so hard, we may have scared Ren.

Teaching a child two languages is a challenge. Some days I feel sorry for the little bugger. But he really seems to be catching on to both languages really well now. Today, for example, Yoshiko was giving Ren some apple. He knows the English word, but not the Japanese. Yoshiko kept repeating it to him in Japanese before she gave it to him. Now he says both. He does this for lots of other words too. When Ren needs to say "thank you" for something, Yoshiko will say, "domo ha?" And Ren will, depending on who he's talking to, will either say "thank you" in English or Japanese. Yoshiko is the primary Japanese teacher, but one of these days, I have to keep my promise to the Hirano family and teach him Osaka dialect (coolest dialect in Japan).

Lately, Ren has taken to Sesame Street. He loves Elmo. About a month ago, we bought the Elmo movie. He watches it every day. It's so funny to see him get so excited about parts that he knows are coming up in the movie. Kids are awesome. I can't wait to see what he does next. I also can't wait to have more kids like him ;P