Now that Scott is over 2 years old and Elaine is 8 months old it gets nice and nicer to interact with them. Scott really started talking now, he switches without any problems from Chinese to Dutch, and even occasionally says some thing in English. Chinese he learns at home from my wife and the nannies, Dutch from me and my parents when they are visiting, and English from the teachers and kids in school. Because his pronunciation is not yet perfect we sometimes have to guess what language he is speaking, or he mixes two languages (e.g. sometimes he says “??? kijken”, a mix of Chinese and Dutch which means “I want to watch the tractor” – a reference to his favorite TV series Tractor Tom).

Elaine also started to talk a lot, her favorite word is still baba. When I come into her room in the morning she is always very happy to see me and she immediately says “baba” to me while waving her hand to greet me. So sweet! It makes me very happy to be a dad. Elaine learns new skills almost every day now. A few days ago she managed to stand on her own for the first time, but of course she fell over after a few seconds. She now also manages to clap her hands, and she has a huge smile while doing that.

Their personalities are completely different. Scott is loud, loves to takes risks (climbing on the couch or table and jumping off) and has a high pain tolerance (on more than one occasion he hit his head against mine, which hurt pretty much but he didn’t even cry). He also loves everything related to cars. If he refuses to do something and you tell him we may go for a car ride later he will immediately follow what you ask him to do.

Elaine on the other hand is a real little lady. She is much more silent, but she can also cry and scream loudly if she is in the mood for that. Generally she just sits and observes the world around her, smiling at the people surrounding her or just completely ignoring them. At times she seems to look straight through me as if I’m not there. If you look her in the eyes, she does not look away but keeps looking at you without blinking. I can’t do that! Compared to Scott she is easily scared, for example when I am driving and suddenly need to brake she will immediately start crying. Also when watching TV she can suddenly start crying because she is afraid. But if you hold her she calms down right away and even keeps on watching the program.

We sometimes take videos of our kids and a couple of them are on Tudou. Below 3 videos that we shot with a simple point-and-shoot camera over the past weeks. The first one shows Scott and Elaine while playing in their playroom. Elaine’s nanny holds Elaine who keeps on laughing. In the middle of the video Scott takes a picture of Elaine with his baby camera, he is good at that already.

The second one shows Elaine on the couch in the living room. My wife is trying to teach Elaine to say mama, but of course she prefers to reply with baba 🙂 It’s quite funny actually to hear her saying baba the whole time. The last seconds of the clips show an article in a Chinese mother magazine about my wife. She was interviewed because they consider her a successful business woman who manages to combine an extremely busy job with raising two kids.

The last one was taken at Scott’s ??? (pre-school / kindergarten) where the class is singing and dancing. I never see Scott interact with other kids because I am always in the office during day time, so I liked it a lot that I could see him here. Scott it the boy in the red coat with a white collar. At 6:10 there is a small accident in which Scott falls pretty hard. But also here he does not cry, stands up right away and keeps on dancing with the group. I am a proud father!