Milan, Milano, Little Monkey

While us adults are trying to figure out our new life here in China, Milan is blossoming into a fun, sweet, talkative little boy. I thought I'd catch you up on his latest antics.

Favorite playtime activity: cooking
Most of Milan's day is spent cooking up a storm. He has access to the real potatoes, onions, garlic and ginger that live on the lower shelves in the kitchen, as well as all the pots and pans (we have a small kitchen, we don't have much choice where to store things). So he puts individual potatoes, onions, etc into pans or the wok or the pressure cooker and adds imaginary olive oil, oregano, and paprika to make me all kinds of interesting meals throughout the day. The other day he made me shrimp with Jello, and last week I was treated to a dish of shrimp with strawberries (he loves his shrimp, both jumping at the market or dead and cooked on his plate).

When he is not cooking the real things he can grab in the kitchen he uses the refrigerator magnets as ingredients to make pancakes, waffles, and more pancakes. Mostly pancakes. In the sandbox at Tim's school: pancakes. In the bathtub: pancakes.

Here he is cooking with the pans in the kitchen


Here he is pointing out and explaining each dish that he has made for me

And, of course, he helps us in the kitchen making real food. Especially pancakes, every Saturday. And anything else I happen to be cooking throughout the day. Here he is helping Tim roll out homemade tortillas

for the most amazing wonderful Mexican meal on Chinese National Day.

Yes, we even had fresh-squeezed lime juice margaritas (the adults, not Milan. He had sweetened lime juice).

Milan has added trips to the make-believe market to sustain his cooking. He started doing this yesterday, when he puts the veggies in plastic bags and announces the price, usually only "yi kuai" (one yuan).

Favorite songs: Eensy Weensy Spider and Baa Baa Black Sheep
Milan has become quite a performer in the past month, ever since he started singing the whole eensy weensy song by himself. He started by singing "The eensy weensy spider went up and up a wall", but now he is much more sophisticated and knows that the spider climbs up a water spout.

One night at dinner last week we sang Baa Baa Black Sheep and then Milan asked me to "talk about it, Mommy," meaning I should explain all the words so he understands all the lyrics. Then I sang it again, then talked about it again, then sang it again, for about 15 minutes. Then he was ready to sing it himself.



He watched this video this morning and seemed annoyed that he didn't have the words right - "little boy down the lane, not down the street!" Because now he sings this one perfectly as well. But the first dry run is so much more interesting!

Favorite wake-up time: 5:50am
Yes, we are back to the painfully early wake-up. At least bedtime is still really easy and peaceful.

Favorite animal: Hyena
Lately, everything is about hyenas. We had a pack of them living in the house last weekend and they slept with Milan. Whenever he isn't cooking, he is playing with his animals. And even though he doesn't have a single hyena, he pretends that the giraffe, the elephant, the bird, the cat, anything becomes a hyena. The librarian even found us a book this week with a hyena as the main character! Librarians are great, especially when they are personal friends as well!

Milan is doing great and having so much fun. He takes all this cross-cultural experiences and language in stride. He still gets frustrated at the random strangers who come up to him and gets in his face, but he started a new tactic to cope with this a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about mosquitoes and how they are annoying and what "annoying" means etc. Then, when an over-friendly stranger came up to him he went into mosquito mode, making a buzzing sound and twirling his hand around like a mosquitoes buzzing around. He is either trying to make them go away, or it is his way of saying "buzz off, you're annoying!" It is heaps better than his previous tactic of blowing raspberries in their faces.

Today we had our first official play-group with two other kids, and on Monday we went to the first toddler story-time at the school library with five kids in attendance! It is great to be back to doing these kinds of weekly fun things with other moms.

If you want to see the original eensy weensy performance, I put the video up on Flickr.