Our boy has his own distinct likes and dislikes now. He thinks in his own way, speaks his mind and tells us his thoughts and feelings. That shapely, hairless and toned leg above is his, not mine. He took those photos himself using my camera phone.

If we raise our voice to him, he goes: "Why are you angry?", or "Ok, ok, I'm doing it now, can't you see?"

We had incidents when our parents raise their voices a little louder to us, and he told them off: "You don't scold my Daddy/ Mummy, ok?"

We went out for dinner on Saturday. A man approached his friends at the next table and exclaimed: "She is so stupid, can't find this place!", pointing to his female companion. Aidan's eyes bulged. He leaned towards his Dad and whispered: "Papa, that man said 'stupid'!" (We told him not to use the word because it is rude)

Just before he slept just now, I took his 1 page Chinese homework up to his room with him. It's a simple set of 6 stickers, to paste in blanks. This week, they were on the topic "只，条， 个" which address measurement of nouns, such as a dog, and 3 children.

He pasted the easy ones, or rather the ones he knew the answers of. He skipped 1 sentence, and pasted the 5th sticker on the final 6th sentence. Before he pasted the remaining sticker, I asked him what does the sticker say?

His reply: "I don't know lah, but it will be correct answer. Only this sticker left, for 1 (last) blank here mah. Sure right!"

My hero man... I was shocked at his confidence, that despite not knowing what the word meant, he was sure it was meant for that blank because he knew the rest were correct. The 'elimination' method.

Cool, I think he will do well for multiple choice questions next time. If not, he can learn from his Mom, who once coloured 'C' for all 10 MCQs when she ran out of time during a test. Surely there would be a few 'C's amongst those 10 answers, right?

I brought The Prince to school and wanted to tell his form teacher (a lady from China) about his condition on his penis, that the foreskin is a little red and she needs to call me if he complains that he is in extreme pain.

The problem didn't occur to me, until I spoke in Mandarin and got stuck after: "Teacher Sun, Jing-Jie (Aidan) had an infection over the weekend. It is at his ...erm... his..", and I couldn't find the mandarin term for penis. The word "ku-ku" was the default stored in my vocabulary and I doubt she knows this hokkien word.

Sun lao-shi looked at me blankly, waiting for me to explain to her where the infection was. I thought about whether I should say "小鸟" (little bird) but I will die of embarrassment if she still doesn't understand and burst out laughing instead.

So I did the next best thing. I bent over immediately and pulled down my son's pants and pointed to the problem area. My son would have died of embarrassment too, but lucky he is only 4 years old and his friends were not around then.

So I went home and asked my parents what is 'penis' and 'vagina' in Mandarin, what if I need to use the words in times of emergency in the future? Amazingly, they pondered for a while and remarked to each other that they haven't used the proper Chinese term before, it's always 'ku-ku' and 'nor-nor' to them, too.

My mum did give me the term after that, but it never registered. It's like telling me what is 'asphyxiation' in Spanish, it sounded totally foreign. But for the benefit of all, I went to www.freetranslation.com and found the term for the penis and vagina respectively: 阴茎 / 阴道.