Early October was Leah's fourth birthday party. When she was at Bambini she had a couple of friends, especially Arthur (though as he was French Leah mispronounced his name Achu) although he left earlier this year to go back to France. At the German Kindergarten she has made progress and has a few new friends (though interestingly not that much with Leni, who is a good friend of Hannah's because they were in the same class until Hannah moved up to the primary school), but she's still not the most sociable. Maybe because Hannah has always been her best friend, or maybe it is just her personality?
For her fourth birthday party in early October we had something fairly simple beside the swimming pool at the German School, which is better than our pool, which lacks and chairs or tables or much of a grassy area to run around in. The kids mostly spent time in the swimming pool, and playing some games (we did have one clown come too). Of course the most important thing is the Cake, so in what has become a tradition, we take the kids off to the cake shop to pick the cake they want (it can take a long time to decide!). The present situation is normally fairly easy, with birthday present requests over the years varying from a unicorn to a dinosaur; never anything too expensive thankfully, though there are boxes and boxes of toys that have built up over the years.
Most birthday parties in Kenya amongst our friends are similar affairs involving pools, BBQs/food, bouncy castles and clowns at this age. One friend organised a slime-making birthday party (they also made cookies) and slime seems to be the toy of the year. Another friend organized a proper disco with a tent, lights, and dance teacher for the kids, which was popular.
Leah had a phase where she would hit people if she didn't get her way, though that seems to have passed. She still quickly gets angry and starts shouting though.She's often very stubborn, but can easily be convinced if push-comes-to-shove (e.g. if you don't brush your teeth then the advent calendar is being given to the monkeys). She is usually better when there is only one of us around, and seems to act better without her parents around!
She still understands a lot of Chinese when the Chinese teacher talks or reads books (and most of the TV she and Hannah watches is in Chinese) but Leah is not keen to make the effort to speak Chinese. It didn't change with the month of kindergarten in Shenzhen last year. I am not sure if it will change during the 3 weeks of kindergarten in Beijing this year, but we'll see once kindergarten starts next week. It's probably as much a desire issue as an ability issue. She just doesn't want to and doesn't need to in Kenya at least.
Over the last couple of months she's really enjoyed horse riding and cooking, but has not really gotten into any of her ballet at school. Funnily enough she is very shy in public. At the Christmas concert last week she didn't seek much at all, but in the car home she sang the entire song. She doesn't have the best of singing voices at the moment, but can really get into it!
Though she used to be a very good eater, she's become much more picky and generally refuses to eat vegetables at home, unless she's required to (i.e. no x until you've eaten y). She's very attached to Andrea, and had a hard time when Andrea was gone for a couple of weeks, being especially difficult when a neighbour was taking her and Hannah to and from School every day.
So she's definitely in a slightly awkward time. Though she settled into the German kindergarten quite well (she's not yet speaking much German but that should come next year), she's still learning how to handle her emotions and interact with other people. Let's see what next year brings for her!
