the jellyball family blog

Luc was out of town for almost four days last week. The weather was fairly good, so we took the opportunity to do some special outings, like the long-awaited ride on a real double-decker bus:

After four days, the boys seemed like they were going to fall apart (especially Caleb) without their father around. Luc suspects this is because Mom runs a far tighter ship than Dad does! I kept them busy working towards Dad's arrival at the airport. They worked hard on a banner and we bought celebratory balloons, and they waited relatively patiently for almost an hour (an eternity in toddler time) at the international arrivals area at the airport for their father to finally arrive home.

It was a happy reunion. I pretty much had to surgically remove the boys from their father for the next couple of days - they were stuck to him like glue.

Dear Noah,

You are a character. Oooh boy, what a funny little guy you are. You're now 26 months old but growing up far too fast.

You have made tremendous strides in the past couple of months in the food department, even though in general you can be a fairly picky eater. You are now a lover of spaghetti and I am pleased to report that spaghetti is no longer something you eat strand-by-strand with your hands, but you have transitioned into a much more polite fork-eating, slurping kind of technique. Pasta was never a favourite of yours but thankfully with the help of our friend, parmesan cheese, you are now a believer. (But as far as we're concerned, there is no other pasta other than spaghetti.)

You eat broccoli and sweet potato fries! Hooray for vegetables! I mean, there are days where the first thing you eat on your plate is broccoli and it ends up being one of the only things you eat. I never thought I'd see the day where you'd wolf down your side of broccoli and demand more, but I'm happy to provide you with as much broccoli as you want. Your brother wants nothing to do with these sweet potato fries (the "orange fries", as he calls them) but you are totally up for it, which makes me really happy! You'll even occasionally entertain red pepper strips, so I am happy that your vegetable repertoire has expanded so greatly in the past couple of months.

You're a fan of pineapple, watermelon, oranges, kiwis, and pears. You can be persuaded to do just about anything for a cracker or a pastry (clearly you're mother's son there). You can be a really funny eater - some days you will try just about anything, and sometimes you will ask me for a bite of what I'm eating, then turn up your nose when I offer you a piece like you're really offended that I would dare even ask.

You have learned to ride a tricycle. You got your first bike helmet not long ago and broke it in within hours of wearing it when you took a wild U-turn and learned why it's important to wear a helmet. You'd gotten a two-wheeler for your birthday but you're not quite ready for it just yet, but given how quickly you've learned to ride the trike, it probably won't be long before you're whizzing around the driveway doing loops like your brother.

One of your favorite things to do is to play with our neighbours' kids, Morgan and Oliver. Sometimes you are so desperate to see your friends that you will moan to me that you need to see your two friends, and where ARE they? Every time we get home, you and your brother will make a mad dash across the front lawn to peek at their driveway to see if they're there playing or playing in the backyard. The four of you happily play in our yard or theirs, and we couldn't be happier that you guys have some play buddies.

You and your brother Caleb are like two peas in a pod. All in all, you guys get along really well for two brothers. When you guys wake up in the morning, it's like you missed each other. You greet one another with an enthusiastic "Hi, Caleb!!!" and "Hi, Noah!!!" as though it's been days (not hours) since you last saw each other. Some mornings, you greet each other by running into each others' arms for a long hug and some kisses. (Definitely a favourite sight of mine.) It's not long before you guys are climbing all over us in bed, demanding to go downstairs to play, while we are desperately clinging to a few last moments of sleep.

You are totally the instigator between you and your brother. You are always coming up with new schemes and troublesome activities. You are always making him laugh, especially while you two are eating, with some kind of silly face or word. On one hand, I find it really adorable that you guys really make each other laugh, but sometimes it makes a meal really frustrating when no one is eating because you guys are egging each other on.

Noah, you have an amazing vocabulary for a two year old. You express your thoughts in French with eloquent little sentences. You understand just about everything in English, and can have a pretty basic conversation (or at least attempt one) with anyone who will talk to you. People are always pretty amazed at you because you follow directions fairly well and are so autonomous for your age, not to mention the fact that those big chipmunk cheeks and baby fat make you look younger than you are.

You and your brother have a pretty tight relationship with your grandparents. You have been spending a day a week with your paternal grandparents, which usually results in you guys coming home with all kinds of interesting expressions and phrases, like when you look me square in the eyes and say "Hey, baby!" Your grandfather (Papi) has been preparing for their upcoming Italian vacation by inventing Italian nicknames for everyone - Papi Zamboni, Mamie Pronto, Noah Bambouni, Caleb Scusi. It's gotten to the point where you will fart and then say "El petto!" or "Scusi!" Most days we just shake our heads, but we laugh at how much fun you guys have with your grandparents and how much you love them.

You usually have a short playdate with your grandmother every weekend, too, where she comes fully stocked with fruit ("Hey, Ba Ngoai, what food did you bring me today?"), surprises (lately it's been fortune cookies), and elaborate games that only a grandmother would have patience for - like the time when your grandmother showed up ready to teach you guys about the concept of money with all kinds of hand-cut cardboard coins and dollar bills, all colour-coded, with numbers written on them. At some point, you, Caleb and Ba Ngoai (Vietnamese for maternal grandmother) end up eating a snack in the TV room by the large window facing the back yard, looking at birdies or counting squirrels and inventing all kinds of funny stories about them.

Your sleep habits have gotten a lot better in the past month. You sleep in a toddler bed now. You still nap about half the time - sometimes involuntarily (due to a long car ride) or when you clearly need it. You've stopped waking up a gazillion times a night. It seemed like a few months ago, you were up 4-5 times a night, but there have been a couple of nights in recent weeks where you've more or less slept through the night, or have only woken up 1-2 times.

Lately you will call out for us when you have lost your blanket or your bunny rabbit, and this week you've been asking for kisses or rarely it'll be a glass of water (which is significant considering 2 months ago, you'd wake up 3-4 times a night asking for water). It's still fairly common for you to wake up at least once between bedtime and midnight. You'll sometimes wake up as early as 5:30am but can be persuaded to sleep a little longer if it means you get to sleep in bed with us. I know it's become fairly habitual for us to stretch you out an extra hour this way since we've started keeping a pillow just for you in our bed. You'll setttle into our bed between us, asking us "Mon oreiller?" ("my pillow?")

You keep up pretty well with your brother in general, and in keeping up with him, you've learned some pretty amazing things. You can count to 20 in French and recite the entire alphabet. You know most of the train names for Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends. You know that Gordon is the #4 engine, and that James is the red one. You know all the names of the characters in Bob the Builder and sing the theme song. Speaking of music, your favourite non-children's songs are "Low" by Flo-Rida, "Whatever you like" by T.I., and "Boom boom pow" by the Black Eyed Peas. There is something quite funny when I hear you sing fragments from those songs and talk about whose booty you're going to slap.

You have had your decidedly two-year old moments. There are some tantrums, which mostly escalate from you hitting Caleb or failing to listen to repeated requests to stop doing something, and then ends up with some full-out meltdown because you won't do your timeout in the corner. You are a pretty stubborn little guy - these episodes of discipline can last up to an hour where we are talking you through first calming down enough to hear us talk, to getting you to stop talking, to getting you to go stand in the corner silently for a couple of minutes. Doing all those things at the same time is a tough job for a two year old, but I know you'll get better and understanding who the bosses are in this house. (No, it isn't you, really.) There are days where we feel you are light years ahead of your age, and there are days where we are reminded that you are only two.

Your potty training is going pretty well. You have started to have a lot of dry diapers in the morning, and dry diapers throughout the day between your trips to the potty. We are still having a really tough time getting you to do the #2 on the potty, though you're pretty good about telling us about it after the fact. Your dad says he's going to be having you run around pantless and diaper-less all summer and it'll be fixed in no time.

You really hold your own - you have never been the little brother who follows along aimlessly. You will boss around your brother like you will try to do anyone else. You have your little diva moments where you insist that you will be the only one who will be allowed to sing - solos only! You throw up your hand and insist, "Non! Noah chante!" (No, Noah sing)

You have started to be a little bit better with your fear of dogs - you still like them in concept but don't like to be anywhere near big ones. I no longer have to take you in my arms every time we pass a dog on the street (which, living in our neighbourhood, is a real relief now!) but you will go into a tizzy and wail "J'ai peur!" (I'm scared) if there is a sizeable dog anywhere in your vicinity for more than a few seconds. You're not a huge fan of birds either, but thankfully your brother really enjoys chasing them away on your behalf, so we seem to be OK in that department. You really do love all animals, just mostly when they're in books and not so much when they're in your face.

Your favourite book is one called "Bob", which is about a rooster that is learning to crow, but that learns all kinds of other animal sounds as well on his journey to find another rooster to teach him how to crow. You will enthusiastically belt out all the animal sounds with zest! I could read you "Bob" five times a day and you wouldn't get bored.

Easter pretty much blew your mind. I mean, a holiday that involved bunny rabbits AND chocolate? Holy moly.

You do a pretty decent mean face. I especially love when you give me this face when I ask you to smile for the camera:

That pretty much sums it up. You are a funny guy, and far, far too smart for age. You give the best kisses. You are a real joy to be around, and you make us all laugh with your sweetness and sense of humour.

We love you lots!

Love

Maman & Papa

Every day, Caleb amazes us with something really smart that he says or does. It really blows us away what a big boy he is becoming.

Recently, he's been starting to ask about what time it is, and it's not so much that he understands the concept of the exact time, but he knows that there are things like lunch time, time for school, bathtime and time for bed.

Since he knows all his numbers, we've started to teach him to read digital clocks in the house. This is an especially interesting game to play when we finish the bath and he wants to know if there's enough time to go downstairs to play before bedtime. I'll ask him to tell me what time it is, and he'll run into my bedroom, mutter the numbers to himself a few times so that he remembers them, and then runs back to tell me something like "6", which is usually the first digit.

So then I send him back to memorize the full three digits, and he'll come back and tell me something like "6. 5. 0. Can I go downstairs?"

This new interest in "time" led him to ask if he could wear his Thomas the Tank Engine watch the other day. It's an analog watch he received for his last birthday and he can really only stand wearing a watch for about ten minutes at a time.

The other day when he asked me if he could wear it, he watched me adjust the time for daylight savings time and then I told him that when the big arm touched the 12, we would head downstairs to get ready to go out. He was so anxious to get going that I actually caught him trying to adjust the time on his watch.

I love the innocence in his concept of time. Hell - if you say we can't go until the big arm hits the 12, I'm going to just move the big arm myself!

Back when Caleb used to live across the street from his grandparents, he used to hang out at the large window at the front of the house watching for his grandparents.

He did this from the time he could stand up.

He'd be there at 6:30am in the morning, watching to see when Grandma was going to work.

He was there mid-morning to see if Grandpa was going out for a walk.

He was there around 3:30pm to see if Grandma was coming home from work and coming over to play. Every time my mom caught a glimpse of that face in the window, she couldn't resist coming over for a quick playdate.

So the other day when I told Caleb that Grandma was coming over to play, he promptly went to go get a small step stool, parked himself in front of the window, and despite my telling him that it might be a while before Grandma arrived, he insisted on watching for her arrival.

Some days I look back at those old baby pictures and can hardly believe it's the same Caleb. But most of the time, we just laugh and realize that he hasn't changed a bit.

Dear Noah,

Several weeks ago, you turned two years old. Mommy's been a pretty bad girl, because you are almost 25 months old by the time I write this. I could give you a million excuses, but the bottom line is that I am spending all of my non-working time munching on your face so I really don't have time to do much else. This letter is going to have to be both your 24 and your 25 month old newsletter, because I've had to come to terms with the fact that in order to reduce my guilt and stay sane, I'm going to have to start writing these every 2 months until you are 3 years old. Technically you are getting 50% less newsletters in the next year but I promise you that I will be munching on you 200% more of the time.

It's hard to believe that our little baby boy is now two years old. You still have a healthy coat of baby fat on you (especially in your face), which is why sometimes people think you're younger than you are, but the minute they see that you can practically carry on a full conversation, they either think you are your age or you are a baby genius. We think it's a little of both!

We had a great birthday weekend celebration for you, where we invited both sides of the family to come and celebrate with you. You enjoyed a lot of cake.

On your actual birth day, you had chocolate cake.

And then over your birthday weekend, we celebrated with some vanilla cupcakes.

I think "cupcake" is now one of your favourite words. It's certainly one of your favourite things! Your idea of a cupcake is icing with some cake added to it. Once you eat off the top of an iced cupcake, you demand "Un autre cupcake!" (another cupcake), never mind that you are still clutching the bottom of the cupcake in your hands. You simply want more ICING... you just haven't figured out how to ask for it yet.

In the last month or two, you have decided that you no longer need a nap. I was pretty much ready to have you nap until the first grade, but apparently you have different plans for us. Most days you are chipper and fairly well behaved in the afternoon when you are trying to convince everyone that you don't need your nap. Car rides can still be tricky, because you still actually need the nap, you just insist on not doing it. The only place where you will consistently take a nap is during your weekly visit to your grandparents' house, where it somehow still happens to be engrained in your routine. The afternoons when your brother goes to school, you usually fall asleep somewhere on the way home in the car, and your dad puts you to sleep in the living room on the couch or on a pillow on the floor.

You and your brother hunker down for your bedtime around 7:30pm after tooth brushing, storytime, and a glass or five of water, after which point you instruct me to put your glass of water in a designated spot, and that I am to go to my room. At which point I inform you that no, Mommy is NOT going to her room to wait for you to fall asleep, I'm going downstairs to deal with the aftermath of your full-day tornado of toys, do dishes, or finish up my work day. Most days, you vocalize your disapproval of this for about twenty minutes until I threaten to take away your bunny or the two balls you keep in your crib.

You're still waking up a couple of times a night, sometimes not even quite awake and half-sleeping, half-crying. Usually I can distract you by asking you if you want a glass of water, after which point you tell me that you'd like for me to put the glass of water back in the designated spot in your room, and you tell me "Dodo" (sleep) and you're back in your bed. Thankfully there has been very little cosleeping in the last little while, except for the odd morning when you threaten to be wide awake at 5am and we attempt to lull you back to sleep in bed between us, only to get kicked in the face around 6:30am. We take what we can get, sleep-wise, with you.

You are a real cheeky monkey. You really are. You always have this mischevious twinkle in your eye. You will ham it up for the camera on demand! You are playful and engaging, and disarmingly charming - and I think you kind of know it. There are always parts of the day when you are determined to be a big boy - you'll want to go down the stairs on your own or sit without a booster seat at the table or play with scissors. And then there are more tender moments, when you insist on being in our arms ("dans les bras!!!") and refuse to play on your own.

You love to crawl underneath the dining room table like it's your fort, and play under the table. You crawl under the chairs like they're tunnels. Sometimes I look for you and can't find you anywhere, only to see that you are sitting under the table, happily playing with a couple of cars.

Your favourite toy at the moment is a little tractor from the Bob the Builder series called Travis. You're also a big fan of a couple of the race cars from the movie Cars, including RPM and Leakless. You're really good with all the names of the characters, too - you know them all!

You love to watch an animated series called Pocoyo, and continue to love Caillou. You will watch Bob the Builder with your brother, though you don't usually make it through an entire episode. You seem to enjoy Thomas the Tank Engine shows a lot more now that you have gotten more into the characters and all the trains we have at home.

You speak in these cute little sentences - "J'ai peur!" (I'm scared), "Temps de manger?" (time to eat?), "Pas fait caca dans couche" (didn't poop in diaper - usually a sign that you just did, by the way), and my personal favourite "Pas de Frank dans la maison? Frank dans Cars?" (No Frank in the house? Frank in Cars?) which is a reference to Frank the evil Combine Harvester in the movie Cars. Your vocabulary is amazing for your age, and you converse with your brother like it's no big deal. Your brother is still your universal translator - sometimes we have on idea what you're saying and we have to ask Caleb to translate for us. He seems to fluent in Noah-speak.

You love to speak in English. You're able to say hello, goodbye, thank you, and answer "How are you?" with "I'm good!" There are a bunch of English phrases that you know, like "You're it!", "I'm stuck!", "I'm trying!" or "I did it!" and usually if you are asked a question, you answer "Yes." no matter what the answer actually is. I know you are aware of the two languages, because when we are out and about and you are hearing English around you, I can ask you, in French, to say thank you to someone, and you will say it in English instead of French. Sometimes you get really stuck wanting to speak in English, and you will call out to me and repeatedly say "Mommy?" until I have responded to you in English instead of in French.

You're still a pretty picky eater. There aren't many foods that you LIKE, which makes it really frustrating to plan meals around you. You'll pretty much eat anything if it's breaded (fish, chicken nuggets, turkey), occasionally you will entertain roasted sausages, spaghetti is occasionally tolerated although you eat it with your hands one strand at at ime and sometimes dip it in ketchup, and you love anything in the bread/cracker/pastry family. Breakfast is probably the easiest meal with you - you love cereal, waffles, toast, etc. Thank goodness you will eat most fruit, or else you wouldn't have any fresh fibre in your diet. You'll eat yogurt and occasionally some applesauce. Potatoes used to be the only vegetable where you'd eat more than 2 bites. On the rare occasion, I have managed to bribe you into eating 2 or 3 pieces of roasted asparagus or broccoli, but nothing consistent. In the last couple of weeks, you've started enjoying red bell peppers and will pick them out of my salad. I managed to convince you that sweet potato fries are as good as the white kind (Caleb isn't buying it one bit, though). Alas - if only I could meet all your nutritional needs with food shaped like a cookie, you'd be fine, but unfortunately, that's not really the case.

But let's move on from the things you won't do and talk about the things you LOVE to do. You love to dance and sing. You do this great little shuffle dance with your feet that involves a whole lot of dangerous sliding with socked feet. You will sing your heart out, but will sometimes insist that you be allowed to do a solo and that no one else is permitted to sing. You love to read books! Sometimes when your brother is at school, your father will put you in the wagon with a backpack of books and take you to the coffee shop where you will eat an entire cookie and drink two huge glasses of milk, and happily read through every single book in your bag. You are a social butterfly - you love to say hello and goodbye to everyone you see. Sometimes you wave at random people as we are crossing the street or walking through public places. You love to be the one to hand over Mom's credit card when we are paying for anything.

We've been starting to toilet train you in preparation for you needing to be toilet trained by September when you start preschool. So far it's been going well - you've figured out how to pee and if we can catch you in the act of starting a #2, you can usually crank one out into the potty and are thrilled to see the results! We're working on getting you to vocalize your needs and be able to do so before the event and not after it. The reward of mini-M&Ms was a great way to get you started, only now you expect that every time you squeak out a few drops, you get a reward. You will squeak out a few drops, jump with your arms in the air in a celebratory pose and exclaim "BONBON!" (candy)

You are still terrified of dogs up close - you love to see them from far but if one of them gets close to you, you scream in terror and start to cry. The other day you were walking along when a couple of pigeons were minding their own business off by a tree and you FREAKED OUT... I couldn't convince you that they were more scared of you than you were. Caleb took charge of the situation and took it upon himself to scare off the birds by running after them and yelling at them, and then came back to tell you that you didn't have to worry, because he'd look out for any birds and scare them off for you. That's love!

Being two years old, you deal with your emotions in a two year old way. They don't call them the terrible twos for nothing! When you are upset, you will cry and wail and it will be the END OF THE WORLD as we know it. Sometimes it's so hard to shake you out of these crying fits, but I know this is a temporary thing and your father reminds me that Caleb was the same way at this age (I have wiped it from my memory). You are a happy go lucky guy most of the day with the exception of when you have your two year old moments (heck, we all have those, even though we are not two!) - and when you have your tough moments, they're tough, but you get past it, you wipe away those crocodile tears when you're done and demand a tissue to blow your nose. I think the hardest thing I find with disciplining you these days is that sometimes you don't take it seriously - you'll laugh at a punishment, or stomp your feet and declare "NO!" if we insist on a punishment. It's rough being two, I hear you.

Pretty soon you'll be sleeping in the toddler bed. Caleb's already moved into his new twin bed but we decided to hold off on putting you in the toddler bed since you still wake up so much during the night. The thought that you could crawl right out of your bed is just too much for us to handle. We'll work on geting you to sleep through the night, and then we can talk about the toddler bed. That is, until you figure out how to climb out of the crib, which is what happened with your brother.

Noah, you are a real gem. We love you more than you can imagine, and there are days when I wish you were still my sweet little baby, but I have to say that I am really happy you are growing up too, because I can already see that you are going to be a real funny little boy.

With love,

Maman & Papa

One of the positives of TV with kids is that with our two, it really seems to fire up their imagination. Caleb, in particular, has always had a knack for re-enacting scenes he's watched in Thomas, Bob the Builder, or Cars.

A couple of weeks ago, we bought the soundtrack to the movie Cars. I was particularly surprised when he listened to the classical pieces and could remember what scenes they were associated to.

There is a particular classical piece at the start of the film during a racing scene, where the music peaks when Lightning McQueen jumps and flies through the air, with his tongue flailing away.

Whenever the kids hear this part of the music, their cars always take to the air in slow-mo, and they stick out their tongues just like the car in the movie. It's priceless.

"Noah, how old are you?"

So I tried to get the boys to sing one of their favourite songs together, but it would appear that Noah is quite adamant (a la "talk to the hand!") that he only does solos. In the video, he says "Non, Noah chanter, Caleb!" ("No, Noah sing, Caleb!") while waving his little diva hand.

Also interesting to note is that Noah sings the song in English but subs in French animal names. Sometimes when I try to correct him with the right English name, he gives me attitude.

Sorry for the weird video size, I had to do some weird stuff to compress it down from 175 megs.

Dear Noah,

You are almost two years old. In the last couple of months, I've so often said you were "almost two" that I forget that right now, you're technically still 1. You seem to be every bit the little boy and the only thing remaining from babyhood is that delightful baby fat in your cheeks and legs.

You are an energetic, delightful little boy. You wake up in the morning bright, happy, and full of energy. You greet us with an enthusiastic "ALLO MAMAN!" or "ALLO PAPA!" even if we are groggy and cranky. You are always thrilled to start your day. Granted, you do get about 12 hours of sleep every night (minus all the social calls you make at night) but you are definitely always ready to go.

You have become a great play friend for Caleb. The two of you are always up to something, whether it's racing your cars around the same path (around the poof and along the back of the two-seater couch) to the soundtrack of the movie "Cars" or chugga-chugging your trains along the tracks with Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends. Lately, you too have been collecting Bob the Builder figurines along with your brother, as we've gotten into that phase where we need to buy two of everything.

You're still a pretty picky eater, but if there's one thing you love to do while eating, it's to dip. You love to dip in ketchup, in steak sauce, in tzatziki, in maple syrup (to you, simply referred to as "sauce" with your waffles), in hummus. The speed at which you go through a dollop of ketchup is astounding. Upon closer observation, we can see that a single tiny bite-sized piece of chicken sometimes get dipped a couple of times.

One of my favourite games to play in the car to keep you awake is the game where I ask you which is better, and then give you two choices. Ketchup or ice cream? Ice cream. Ice cream or chocolate? Chocolate. Ice cream or chocolate? Chocolate. Mommy or chocolate? Chocolate. I'd have to say that the way this usually stack ranks is that chocolate is number 1, followed by ice cream, ketchup, your Papie, and maybe some chips. Every once and while, one of us happens to trump ketchup or chocolate, and that's where we really feel good about ourselves. ("Yeah. I beat CHOCOLATE.")

This past month, it's become increasingly more difficult to put you down for your nap. Most days, you don't nap, but if there's a car ride close to noon or in the afternoon, it's guaranteed snoozeville. Your temperament when napless shows that you're ready to drop the nap - usually you aren't cranky or irritable. We still think it's pretty outrageous for a kid who's not even two to drop his nap - in fact, when we tell other parents that you are on a nap strike, they gasp and shake their heads like they've never heard anything so unreasonable. Some weekends, I manage to convince you to nap, but most of the time we let it go because anything more than a half hour nap results in a difficult bedtime routine.

We've realized recently that our habit of letting you sleep with one of us (usually Mom) for half the night has got to stop. We are now a few weeks shy of your birthday and for the past week and a half, your mother has experienced the wild delight of waking up in her own bed for the first time in months. It's been a rough week to say the least - I'd gotten used to going to get you when you start to scream in the middle of the night, and then just zonking out with you in the guest bed until the morning. Since we resolved to no longer do this, there are nights where you wake up seeking comfort so many times that we start to lose count. One night, you were up from 3:30am-5:30am doing various combinations of being happy, angry, and sleepy. Another night, your father gave up counting the number of times you'd woken up when he got to 15. In the last few nights, you've only gotten up about two to three times, and it takes a special effort to rock with you a few minutes in the rocking chair and then put you back in your crib. You're usually just looking for comfort, and thankfully it seems like you actually only need a few minutes of it, not five hours of it from 2-7am. Things are looking up in the sleep department - for the first time in a long time.

In your bed, you always have your blue ball with the fire engines on it, tucked away in the corner within arm's reach. You still sleep with your Lapin, though in the last week or two, you don't talk about him as much and I can't remember the last time I saw you walking around with him tucked under your arm during waking hours. There was a stretch of a couple of days where you insisted on adding a small soccer ball into the crib interior decorating scheme, as well as a couple of farm animal figurines - the cow, the goat, and the horse. I managed to phase out the farm animals, especially because they kept falling out from between the crib rails during the night and I would hear you start to wail "CHE-VAAAAAAAL!" (horse) or "CHEEEEEEEVRE!" (goat) like you'd just lost the most precious things in the world.

You have become really good at playing independently and playing with your brother. Your favorite toys at the moment are your balls, your farm and all the animals that go with it, and this plastic toy pumpkin that's been around since Caleb's first Hallowe'en. You like to load up your pumpkin with all kinds of toys and then complain that it's too heavy ("trop lourd, Maman!"). Whenever we get ready go to upstairs to start the bathtime/bedtime routine, I always ask you and your brother to bring a couple of toys upstairs in a backpack, box, or in your case - the pumpkin. You then go and pick up every single toy in sight as though you're preparing for the apocalypse, and make me carry it upstairs for you.

Your ability to speak is pretty mind blowing. You speak in short sentences and have become something of a little social butterfly in recent months. We love to do imitations of you when you eat something you enjoy - you say "C'est bon" (it's good) except the way you say it, it sounds like "Heeeeey bon!" You know all your animals in English and in French. You know your colours, some of your shapes, how to count to ten in both languages, and have a full vocabulary when it comes to the day-to-day routine. You know when you're in Mom's car as opposed to Dad's. You enthusiastically point out the moon when you see it. You are curious about your environment and are often asking "Quoi ca, Maman?" (What's what Mommy?)

It's been many, many months now that we've been stroller-free. You now walk everywhere with us when we go out. The best is when you and your brother hold hands as you walk around some public place. There's always a flurry of little old ladies that swoon at the sight of you two. (I especially love walking with the two of you right by some parent that has a five year old in a stroller with their knees tucked up as high as their head.) You love to say hello to everyone! Sometimes as we're walking around a public place, you will make eye contact with someone and say "Hello monsieur" or "Hello madame!" I think you have quite the future as a ladies man, judging from your present luck with the ladies.

I remember just six months ago, you were so shy around strangers that you would cry at the sight of someone new. Last month, you met your idol, Caillou, on an outing to the Biodome in Montreal. Your brother wouldn't go within five feet of Caillou, but you were game to sit on his lap and have your picture taken. It was hard to get you to keep moving after that, you kept going back and calling out "Bye bye Caillou! Je t'aime Caillou!" (I love you Caillou)

Your hair is starting to finally get a little thicker! This week your hair started showing signs of those delightful curls again, and I can't wait to see a full head of curls on you. You never had a mohawk, but perhaps a fro is in your future.

You've picked up a few bad habits from your brother - like the "mean face". Occasionally, you say a bad word (stupid) and are sent to the corner to repent. You're still not old enough to understand why you can't say bad words and hold yourself back from saying them. Occasionally, we see you act your age - like when something doesn't go your way and you break down into a full out fit of crying. There are many times when you are wise beyond your years - you learned to blow candles before your brother did (he just spat on them) and you can already spit and swish water (or milk!) in your mouth.

Noah, you are just an awesome little fella. Your laughter is infectious and you go about your day with such zest and happiness.

We can hardly wait to celebrate your 2nd birthday.

Love,
Maman & Papa

Back by popular demand, I give you, Pamplemousse: The Sequel! (It's a sequel to this.)

Heck. Why stop there - let's make it a trilogy! Noah gives "pamplemousse" (French for grapefruit) a try.