March 15 is not a normal Monday.

Yifan started his first day in kindergarten today. It is not the official kindergarten yet – that will start from this September, instead, it is 8:30 – 4:30 pm part time school. The official one needs him to be 3 year old.

We worried a lot for the first day – we heard the stories of kids crying for days to get used to the new life. We believe so since we tried to put him into some part time kindergarten before – does not work at all.

In the morning, Wendy talked all the way with Yifan. Yifan promised everything – he promised that he would not cry. He promised he would play nicely with other children, and he promised to be quiet in the music class, and won’t go out of the class room.

Of cause, he broke the promise as soon as he saw the new kindergarten, and cried out loud when Wendy sent him to the door. The teachers got him, and disappeared behind the door – with Yifan still crying loudly.

Wendy was very worried, and spent tough morning by herself.

At noon time, the teacher called and reported Yifan slept, but didn’t eat too much for lunch.

At 4:00, Wendy arrived early at the kindergarten. To her surprise, through the windows, she saw Yifan sat quietly on the little bench, and listened to the teacher to tell a story with other kids. Nothing went wrong. Yifan obviously seem to love the new place.

At night, I asked Yifan:

“Are you happy today?”, he said yes.

“Did you cry today?”, he said no. Never….

:-)

Yifan, my good boy!

After Yifan built Parking Lots with his glass balls, he started to add eyes to all the cars. Look at this:

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

More interestingly, Yifan fell in love with my new Google Nexus One, and quickly learn how to take photos. Among the 50+ blurred and dark photos, I still can find some very decent photo taken by Yifan, at his 2 and 3/4 year.

Photo taken by Wang Yifan (Hey! He is 2 year and 9 month old when taking this photo)

Photograph by Wang Yifan

Photograph by Wang Yifan

Photograph by Wang Yifan

Yifan started to build parking lots for his cars with glass balls. Look at this, it is getting big!

Photo taken by Jian Shuo Wang

P.S. When Yifan was sleeping (gradema was with him), I got out for a cup of coffee with my Moleskine notebook.

I don’t know why, when I am back, Yifan put all his toys into two big boxes, and asked his mom: “Would you please hide them so dad cannot find it?” What is in his mind to hide his toys from dad?

In the morning, Yifan kept asking me where I want to take his train to go. His stops are his familiar places like Shanghai, Luoyang, Beijing…. I told him, I am going to Rio de Janeiro. Yifan just smiled and cannot follow the difficult city name. Disappointed, he went to mom and ask where mom wanted to go, and mom said: “Amsterdam” – another way too difficult name for him to pronounce. He just know some simple names. Then he asked grandpa, and the answer he got was Buenos Aires…. Yifan was completely confused. Everyone burst into laughter.

To have Yifan with us was less challenging was we thought. Yifan is such a nice boy and he plays nicely with us most of the time. Trip with Yifan makes it harder than just Wendy and me, but it adds so much fan.

Yifan wearing Wendy’s swimming glasses.

Yifan’s second favorite after elevator in Sanya: the electronic trolley car. We don’t have trolley car in our hotel, so Yifan took the chance to touch it, or “ride” it when it is parked. Yifan loves the car so much that we pretend to be another hotels’ guest so he can ride for half minute, before we were discovered. Embarrassing is the father, and exciting is the son.

Besides the trolley car, Yifan loves to be on the back seat of his father’s bike.

People loves Yifan when we go. He got all kinds of gift from people around him: balloons, candies and small toys.

The good thing is, he eats well, and tried many new things, like coconut.

And he sleeps much more than at home, so we have to adjust our pace to fit his schedule, so we missed breakfast in the morning, and watching the pool beside window in afternoons.

Yifan has not waked up yet, in this quiet morning. The little man is tired…

Yifan grows fast.

Recently, he started to ask hard-to-answer questions.

Once he pointed to a No-Smoking sign, and asked me what it is. I said it means no smoking. Yifan asked me what is smoking. I said to have cigarettes, and he continued to ask why people have cigarettes….

Yifan loves train. His favorite entertainment is to ride Metro with us. He will stand and wave to every train and say “Byebye!”

Wendy bought him a small rolling suite case – like the one people take at airport. He loved it so much that he take it with him where ever he goes, and even put it in his bed at nights.

I spent the whole morning and noon time with Yifan. We built LEGO train, car, and buildings together. The only LEGO we had so far is Set # 4960-1: Giant Zoo. It contains building blocks for a zoo, but Yifan is not as keen to animals as to cars. So, we just left all the animals along, and started to build cars.

Look how I did to help Yifan to build the car. I did most of the part, and Yifan was busy helping me on logistic – he is very good at finding similar items for me.

I enjoyed the 4 hours playing LEGO with Yifan. Although I built it, I admit that it was actually Yifan who guided me to do the job. He has high standards – he requires Dad, and Mom on the car, and the car head should be red, and must have 4 wheels, and he especially asked to have a gas hole.

Have I told you that I am always a LEGO fan?

In his current age, Yifan loves to ask questions all the time. The typical types of the questions are: “What” and “Why”.

Sample questions:

What is this?

What is on this?

Why this stone is red?

Why this brick is missing?

Why there is no gas hole on train?

Why are you standing here?

Why look at me?

Why….

Obviously, he is trying very hard to form an inner mapping of the external world in his brain. He is exploring curiously, and learning happily.

Yifan found mobile phone easier to use than pen, computer, and chopsticks.

His morning routine is to grab my mobile phone and started to input numbers. His favorite is 8. He enters 16 eights (the length limit) and asks me to help him clean it up. Later, when he learned to use the clear key to clean the numbers, he loves the mobile phone better.

His mom recorded a nice folk song Jasmine by herself on her mobile phone. At night, Yifan loves to have the mobile phone, and play the song of his mom. Wendy and I cannot keep from laughing when we hear him play the song again – a big relief to Wendy. Thanks for the new technology. I asked Wendy: “Do you think he can fall asleep with the mobile phone”. Wendy said “no.” She is right. After Yifan is tired of the high-tech equipment, he still reaches out to the low-tech mom to sing for him, so he can feel safely fall asleep.

Another surprise to me was, one morning, I wake up to hear Yifan talking with someone over phone. It turned out that Yifan dialed his grandmother’s phone just by random pushing, and then was happy to hear his grandmother’s voice from it.

Oh. Yifan started to go to kindergartner from few days ago. He cried initially, and complained that the lunch is not as good as home, but he loves to play the big toys in the kindergartner. Still, he is introverted and don’t like to interact with other children. His grandfather said, it is just like me when I am in his age.

Yifan grows up quickly. Recently, he started to find a tune by himself, and created the lyric. He even gives his own first song a name: Ma Ni Ma.

That sounds like:

Ma ni ma ni ma ni ma ni la,

ma ni ma mi ma mi ma….

Whenever he is in good mood, his little song will fill every corner of the room. Amazing!

These are the photos Yifan and I took one week ago:

Below: Yifan loves to be with his dad – laughs all the time:

Photograph by: Wendy Fan

Below: Yifan loves to watch Qiaohu (Clever Tiger) – a DVD program produced in Shanghai. As always, he has his red car with him – all the time:

Yifan is genereally a happy boy and loves to laugh at many things, including dad waving at him, or simply see his dad jumps from one sofa to another.

There is one person I feel Yifan loves more – his mom. His mom spent so much time with him, and he now is like another mom – he speaks in a way like his mom – like “Yeee…..?” whenever he sees something strange – just like his mom Wendy.

Below: Yifan’s poor dad – the cast on the right hand. I would be happy if you pay attention to the “father” on the toy brick board. I asked Yifan: How is this guy? Yifan said: Baba.

This is another “dad” I created for Yifan. As expected, Yifan laughed out loudly, and almost rolled on the ground:

At last, is the poor Yifan getting back from hospital that night.

He is as calm, cheerful as any previous days, but his parents were all in tears that night.

Sept 10 is a bad day. Bad day!

Yifan fell over, and hurt his head at 8:00 this morning. We sent him to hospital and have doctor sutured the wound. My heart was completely broken. The wound was about 1cm long on Yifan’s forehead, and took 5 surgical sewing.

This is the toughest day for me in the recent years. I worry so much that there will be a scar left on Yifan’s head. We tried everything we can to avoid that. But nothing is really that helpful after it happened.

Although I read a lot about happiness (and sadness), the theories just cannot help myself out from the deep pain. I complained myself not to take care of Yifan better to avoid it (Ayi brought Yifan out, and he fell – why I didn’t go with them?). I asked the question why it happens to Yifan. I wake up from deep thoughts in meetings wondering whether it happened or not.

For the first time, I realized that it is completely a different thing of hurting myself, and see my son hurt. The later is much more painful than doing it to myself.

I know it is not that a big deal – many people told me that it is so common to little boys, but I just cannot accept it. It is so painful to see the scar on the Yifan’s head – what a lovely, perfect boy. I saw him arriving to this world with my own eyes. What a perfect gift but I didn’t protect him well.

Yifan, I am sorry.

Yifan is a big fan of cars. He loves all kinds of cars – the real car running on the streets, his toy cars (he has a lot) or cars on TV, magazines. He especially loves red car. He knows the cars by brand and can tell you the brand all the time. His favorite so far is Audi, followed by Mazda.

He loves everything related to car. He washes his car all the time, and leaving the table a mass with water.

He loves parking garage, and he especially loves the pole at the entrance of parking lots. He loves to treat our legs as parking lot, and repeat the following conversation 20 times a day:

Yifan: Parking pole!

Dad: You need to pay.

Yifan: seeking out to his pocket and put “air” into your hand Here you are.

Dad: How much is it?

Yifan: 100 Yuan.

Dad: Not enough.

Yifan: Price rise?

Dad: Yes.

Yifan: Too expensive.

Dad: No pay, no entrance.

Yifan: putting another piece of air into the hand This is 100 yuan.

Dad: OK. You can go.

Yifan: Hahaha. The car is coming in!

Then he drives his car around the table and get stopped by the Parking Pole again. “Parking Pole!” the whole story happens again.

Sometimes when I ask for more than 200 yuan, he would turn to his mom to lend some money.

Yifan now is just like a small boy now, and can have meaningful conversation for a long time. He is happier than before since he found we started to understand what he wants, because he can say that!

Cute boy.

This is the picture Yifan drew in the last few weeks. He enjoys to draw big circles like below:

Drawing of Yifan at age of 2

Drawing of Yifan

Drawing of Yifan

Like it?

Yifan surrounded me the whole morning. He got curious about my laptop, and tried to reach out to touch the keys. He particularly love the key of B. He presses B hundreds of times, and keeps saying: “Parking Garage! Parking Garage”.

I thought it is just another random word popping out of his mouth. 10 minutes later, he explained it very serious me: “On the Elevator! On the Elevator!”

Then I realized he did realize the character B, since the parking garage is marked as B in my elevator.

The logic of kids are different from adults, and most of the time, they are right.

This entry was made up on June 7th, and dated back to June 2.

These are some photos of Yifan at his 2 year old birthday.

His mom tried to bake a birthday cake for him, but failed in the afternoon. Well. The cake tastes great, just strong in shape. Yifan didn’t seem to mind the shape, as long as it tasted good.

How Yifan Talks

Yifan was very quick to understand most things, but slower to talk. Now, he mastered many of the necessary words in daily conversation. The first English word he mastered two months ago was “Car”, since the pronunciation is much easier than the Chinese word “Che”. Well. We didn’t intentionally teach him English, and he just found out the easiest way to pronounce things. Like most of the word he mastered – he picked the easiest word to pronounce out of the whole words.

For example,

Like – Xi Huan – he don’t like to pronounce Xi, and just use Huan.

Happy – Gao Xing – he only say Xing

Cake – Dan Gao – and he says it as Gao…

To translate it into English, it is just like he don’t like to pronounce Happy, and only say: “Pay” to tell the same thing.

Yifan is so lovely! Why all the father on this planet thinks his own son is the best in this world?

Happy Children’s Day. We don’t prepare too much for Yifan on Children’s Day, because, Yifan is turning two years old tomorrow!

I will be OOB (Out of Blogging) tomorrow for the whole day (and out of office, and out of computer, and out of anything that I felt important most of my time), and stay with Yifan for the whole day. I believe he will be happy to have enough of his dad’s attention, which he recently demands a lot.

Happy birthday to Yifan.

This morning, the whole family went to the Daning Green Land 大宁绿地, at the west of the Shanghai Circus. The reason we went there was, it has the only beach in Shanghai.

Well. I admit that I made a mistake here. It is not a beach. It is just a lake with some sand on the north side of it.

However, it is the only place in the whole Shanghai that I can bring Yifan to really play sand. There are some other man-made beach in Fengxian, and in Jinshan, but none of them are as child friendly as the place we went to.

Yifan was very happy that for the first time, he is able to sit on the sand, and play with the water. There are many kids there.

Be prepared that since ti is just by the lake, the water is pretty dirty compared to real beach. But, it is somewhere worth to bring kids to.

Just now, Yifan finished his daily practice of language. Now, at 1 year and 10.5 months, he can pronounce number from 1 to 9 – pretty clear – in Chinese, of cause.

We count how many ducks on his quilt with me. Bingo. My little boy can count to 9.

– Note from a happy father.

Yifan on the Guilin to Yangshuo boat – his first boat ride.

Yifan likes his red car – he has been with the car for many weeks – days and nights. At night, he sleeps with the car – any attempt to remove the car from his hands will cause him to cry for a long time to protest against.

Yifan and the bird (technically, it is called Phalacrocorax carbo 鸬鹚). I paid 2 RMB to get the permission to take the photo for Yifan.

Yifan’s other good friend – the little red travel case. He loves to push the case around – on ground with nice surface, like airports, or tough places, like this one at the pier.

Not surprisingly, Yifan is the first person fallin asleep when we arrived at hotel after a long trip.

Yifan finally got the chance to play with water as long as he wishes – he was not allowed to do it in Shanghai when the weather is still too cold.

As you can see, whenever there is Yifan, there is the red car.

He finally got some interest in the menu – when he feels hungry, or shifted his interest to cup when he feels thirsty.

Before a bar with strong rock-n-roll music, he dances with me:

Every time Yifan travels with us, he grows up a lot, and learn some new tricks… How wonderful the trip is with Yifan, although we almost haven’t explore Yangshuo yet.