Sven's First Horse Ride

While were were visiting Half Moon Bay during the holidays, we took the kids on a horse back ride. Sven did a great job on his full size horse. Erik told Sven to pull on the reins and say "whoa" if he wanted his horse to slow down. Since Sven's horse liked to be near the front of the pack, it had to gallop a few times to stay in its preferred position. One time, Uncle Jim heard Sven say to his galloping horse, "I know you like to be the leader, but not today!"

Sven was thrilled by the ride, but got very cold because of the wind. I think the strong head wind along the beach finally got to him.

Here are some pictures from the ride. These were taken by Erik on his mobile phone camera. I had my Konica, but since my horse liked to be near the rear of the pack, the only pictures I could take were from the back. Also, I was also nervous about riding, so it was difficult for me to take pictures with one hand.

Horse Ride

More Reading

Up until now, Sven has been reading by memorizing how some words look, e.g. his name "Sven". But this year he has started to sound out the letters. Yesterday, he managed to read his first word phonetically. The word was "off".

Puzzle Boy

On Friday we had dinner at PoPo and Ojiisan's house. Sven finished his dinner early, so he was playing with one of Ojiisan's puzzles in the living room. It was an Adam's Cube and I thought he was randomly playing with the pieces. I saw him drop and retrieve the pieces on the floor and couch a few times, then after 30-40 minutes he said "hey I made a big square." He had managed to get the pieces back in the correct square pattern. This is a puzzle that several adults can't even manage (including this Mommy).

The picture of the puzzle shows another pattern that can be made with the same pieces.

1/2/08 update: Sven played with this toy again yesterday during New Year's Dinner, and did this Rocket.

How many hands does it take to learn?

Sven is getting over a cold. We kept him home from school for one day, but the next day we told him he had to go back. Sven shook his head and said "no, I can't go to school, I have to blow my nose." When I told him he could blow his nose at school he said "But, I need both hands to learn."

Sven's cold has also produced some funny rhymes. After getting an upset stomach from too much mucus he said "snot in the tummy is not funny." His ears are also plugged which led to "fluff in my ear, I can't hear."

More Sven News

Sven has now lost his first two baby teeth. The first came out on Thanksgiving and the second came out last Monday. His permanent teeth were already growing in, so he doesn't have a big gap in the front of his mouth. In fact, its hard to tell that he has recently lost 2 teeth.

Last weekend, Sven and I did another race - the Annual Jingle Bell Run. Sven and I did the 1 K Run with the Elves, which he finished in under 10 minutes. Then I handed Sven off to Erik, and did the regular Jingle Bell Run. Sven thought the jingle bells on his shoes were pretty cool - and he got an official race t-shirt. More than he got for doing the Seattle Kiddie Marathon.

Religious Debate

For Erik's birthday, Sven picked out a card that had a picture of the Buddhist Wheel of Life. He asked about the picture, so I gave him a quick overview of reincarnation.

A few weeks later Sven came up to me with tears in his eyes and said "Daddy said Addis is dead. Is Addis really dead?" When I said yes, Sven said "Maybe Addis is something else. Maybe he's a cow." Sven seemed to feel comforted by the thought of Addis being around in some form or another and the tears stopped.

A couple of weeks ago, I took Sven and his friend Thomas to see a movie. On the way to the movies, Sven and Thomas had a huge argument about what happens when somebody dies. Sven insisted that the person comes back as another being. Thomas said "when you're dead, you're dead forever." Finally after some heated discussion, I said "It's OK to believe different things." Thomas concluded by saying very loudly "I'm right AND you're right."