the jellyball family blog

Dear Noah,

You are 32 months old now.

You are SUCH a big boy now. Some days, we look at you and we just do NOT know where the time has gone. Our sweet, fat, chipmunk cheek baby has been replaced with this delightful, hilarious, sensitive little man.

You have become so articulate and good at expressing what you want with your words – your beautiful, wonderful sentences. There are some points in the day where your age gets the better of you to the point where you are overwhelmed with your emotions and it all comes out in a tearful, incomprehensible mess of wailing. But most days, you wow us with these complex thoughts and lovely words, and every day you are learning more and more new things to say.

You have all these little insightful things that you say – like how you admit – “Parfois j’ecoute, et parfois j’ecoute pas" (sometimes I listen, sometimes I don’t listen). You tell me a million times a day, and even in the middle of the night when you are sleeping next to me in my bed, “Maman – t’es belle" (Mom, you are beautiful). I certainly have no shortage of compliments! You express your feelings with grace – “Je vais m’ennuyer de toi pendant la journee Papa" (I am going to miss you during the day, Daddy) or “Content de te voir, Maman" (happy to see you Mom). Sometimes you say the funniest things because you haven’t quite mastered the words – “Moi l’aime toi" (Me love you) but the intent is still very clear. You crack yourself up with your own jokes and you love to laugh. I have a feeling you are going to be a little class clown.

Since you started school in September, you have learned all kinds of new songs and English words, and you talk about your new friends in the “Yellow" classroom. The first couple weeks were a little rough – there were still some tears at drop off, but now you proudly march to into your class while greeting your teacher after giving some hugs and kisses! Your teacher says that there are no more tears during the day – you do your lessons and engage with other children, and you take a little nap in the afternoon with your Elmo doll tucked under your arm. There are days where you say that you don’t want to go to school, but once you’re there, I know you have a good time. (And when you stay home, you get bored.)

You are a total ladies man at school, charming all the female teachers with your lovely, suave words. Your favourite assistant is a teacher named Stephanie, who you met when she was a substitute assistant in your toddler camp this summer. She gained your trust and your affection during that one short week where she helped out in the classroom. Even though she is not the teacher’s assistant in your class, you are always chatting with her at recess and after school, and she loves you so much that she wipes your snotty nose in the playground, even though you’re not even one of the kids she’s responsible for. When it’s time to go home, you run around the playground to say goodbye, give hugs, and shake hands with all the teachers and assistants, at which point I feel a collective swell of female hearts melting.

Whenever we drive away from the school and you see the toddler’s playground in the back, you talk about how you see your old friends from the toddler class playing outside, but I know that you are so proud that you’re in the big kids group now.

You continue to be a bit of a picky eater but in the last few months you have made some really good strides in the eating department. We started you out on school provided hot lunches, but after a month and a half, we gave up on that. There were just too many unfamiliar foods served that you simply would not touch, and since we’ve been sending you to school with home-made lunches, your teachers have commented that you are finally, happily eating now. You’ve added a few vegetables to your repertoire – you’ll now entertain things like asparagus, cucumbers, red and yellow peppers, broccoli, and Caesar salad (though let’s face it, your favourite part of salad are the croutons).

The other day, we bought a hot roasted chicken at the grocery store and after watching your big brother Caleb and I happily munching away on pieces of hot chicken, you decided that you too wanted to have some. This was a pretty big deal – you’ll usually eat chicken if it’s breaded, but to eat chicken in its unbreaded form was previously unheard of. You will also happily eat brisket sandwiches and pulled pork sandwiches (which I christened the “Bob the Builder" sandwich and this seemed to do the trick) so we’re starting to expand our variety a little bit beyond our standard fare.

You love to pour milk into your cereal. You will eat ice cream at an alarmingly fast rate. We’re still working on getting you to eat with your mouth closed, and you are usually the last one to be sitting at the table, especially if you are trying to work through your vegetables in an effort to get to dessert.

Sleeping through the night continues to be a bit of an elusive goal. You’re still waking up once or twice during the night – usually around midnight or so when we take you to do a quick trip to the bathroom. You have started showing up at my bedside in the early hours of the morning with your Lapin (bunny) tucked under your arm, just waiting to be brought into bed with us.

Sometimes when you wake up during the night, you ask to come sleep with us, and as much as we love to snuggle with you, we try to postpone that as much as possible until the late hours of the morning. The longer you seem to sleep in bed with us, the more sideways you tend to end up, so while it starts out all nice and snuggly, eventually it ends up with someone getting a foot to the throat. We’ve figured out that you love to have physical contact, whether it’s your foot or your arm, so you will inevitably gravitate towards your father’s side in an effort to snuggle up to him, but unfortunately for him that means that you eventually take over his spot until he is sleeping at the foot of the bed. Still, sharing a bed with you remains the last bit of baby joy we have that reminds us of your infant days.

You occasionally talk in your sleep – I’ve come to your room alarmed to hear you screaming or crying, only to hear you half-asleep, babbling away about how Caleb stole your toy. I’ve heard you scream out, in the middle of the night, “LIGHTNING MCQUEEN!"

You have become so independent – you can go up and down the stairs on your own. You can get yourself on and off the toilet. You can put on your hat and your shoes, though zipping up your jacket still remains a small challenge, but you’re always trying! You can get dressed and undressed on your own except for shirts. You are usually a bit of a monkey when it comes to convincing you to get dressed or undressed, but usually with a little motivation (or threats) we can get you going.

Your independence comes through even when you are half asleep. The other night your father took you to the bathroom in the middle of the night and you started WAILING because he had the nerve to put you on the toilet as opposed to let you climb up on your own.

You know most of your alphabet and will proudly announce that N is part of the word Noah, or hey, there’s an M, like in Maman! You can recite your favourite book (“Bob") almost entirely by heart, word for word, which is a pretty amazing feat considering you are only two and a half years old. The other day I heard you count to fourteen in English! You play “Memory" with your father and brother, where you hold your own with Caleb and you beat the pants off your father.

You are this great little worker bee. In the past month, we’ve had lots of landscaping work to do outside, and you are so game to pick up rocks, fill up buckets of dirt with your shovel, or bag up some leaves. I’m amazed that you will be happiest working by our side and doing lots of physical work, and that you don’t get bored or sidetracked.

You will proudly declare to anyone that asks that Caleb is your best friend.

I love seeing all these new dimensions coming out in your personality. You are a wonderful, cheeky, and smart little bugger and we hope you continue to make us laugh every day.

Love
Maman & Papa

Dear Caleb,

Happy birthday to you!

You are four years old today.

Caleb, I cannot tell you how amazed that we are that you are FOUR years old. We can still remember so clearly the day you were born. The seemingly never-ending labour that started on a Friday night and ended on a Sunday afternoon. Those harrowing first 24 hours when you wanted to do nothing but feed, feed, feed, and how your dad had to trick you into sucking his gloved finger in an attempt to distract you from your perpetual need to suck on something.

There were those first weeks where we didn’t know whether it was night or day – it seemed like we were up all the time and never sleeping. You started to show your delightful personality, as you learned to flip onto your belly around Christmas time and dance circles in the exersaucer. Before we knew it, you were walking, talking, and now you’re four years old and you are your own little man.

You sleep in a big-boy bed. You still have this habit of rolling all over the place in your bed during the night (thankfully not overboard) and you never sleep with your blanket – you always end up on top of it. You sleep soundly during the night – you hardly ever wake up during the night even when your little brother is wailing in his bed right next to you.

You and Noah share a room, and we often hear you two laughing or whispering after we’ve turned out the lights. You each have a basket of toys next to your bed – these are toys that you have “reserved” for yourselves. You are a good big brother – you look out for your brother and while you two do a lot of play fighting and generally get on each other’s nerves, you love him very much and you miss him when you two are apart.

You are so independent – you can get dressed and undressed, you can climb into your carseat and buckle yourself up. You love to be a good little helper – whether it’s helping to measure flour when we make cookies or putting away your bicycle in the garage. Personality wise, you are a spitting image of your mother – calm, caring, disciplined, and a complete wuss when it comes to amusement park rides.

You love routine and predictability. There are certain things in your daily routine that you depend on, and when we change up these things, it seems to really turn you upside down. Something as simple as not hanging your helmet on your bicycle once you’ve put it away will drive you to tears when you realize that you’ve forgotten to do it. To you, these things are important and I am perpetually reminding myself that while it isn’t a big deal to me, it’s a big deal to you.

You are making friends and socially aware of your surroundings. We remember a year ago when you were in preschool, you were fairly oblivious to the kids around you and what they were doing – you were happy doing your own thing, and if someone joined you in your game, that was cool. But when we asked you what were the names of your friends, you didn’t really know. It wasn’t until the last few months of preschool that you talked about your friends and what happened at school. I remember coming into volunteer in your classroom only to realize – to my horror – that you had a GIRLFRIEND. You two walked around playing with one toy and then moving onto the next game. You loved having a dedicated play friend – which was really all she was to you. (She, on the other hand, relished in the idea of being able to put her arm around you and hold your hand.)

A few months ago, you attended a summer camp that was run out of your new school and this was a big change for you. It was a full day instead of just a couple afternoons a week, and you’d gone from hanging out at home with your little brother and father to being in a new classroom, with new people, for a full day. The period of adjustment was hard – there were tears (from everyone) but you were a trooper and got through it. A few weeks ago you started in your new program with new classmates and teachers – and you seem to love it. You are learning new songs and talking happily about your friends, and we couldn’t be happier at your progress.

You and Noah are in the same school program but in separate classes. You see each other at recess and after school, and I hear stories about how you two will cry when it’s time to go inside, back to your separate classrooms, because you want to stay together. At the same time, I know that if you were in the same class all day long, you two would be fighting like cats and dogs, so I think you guys have just enough together-time because you still miss each other. You are almost always playing together when I come to pick you up after school.

You speak French and English fluently, switching between them effortlessly but sometimes getting kind of “stuck” speaking English when you are playing with your friends. You already know how to write your name and several other words. You are starting to recognize words around you – whether they are on boxes of cereal or signs on a store. You are learning to put words together with sounds, and I know it won’t be long before you are reading like a big boy.

You have an excellent ear for music as well – you recognize songs during the first few bars of music, and when “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas comes on the radio, you are as happy as a clam. You love to sing and you are a quick study when it comes to learning new songs (definitely NOT your father’s genes). You are – and have always been – amazing at puzzles, since we bought you your first puzzle at the age of 2.

You are a good eater. You are usually game to try just about anything – even if it’s just one bite. You are a ruthless negotiator – you are always looking to understand how many pieces of food you need to eat before you get your dessert or can go play. You love to go eat at a restaurant! The other day we were out having dinner and you were serving salad onto plates, buttering your bread, and making chit-chat about how the food smelled good.

Your favourite toys these days still include your Thomas trains, our friends from the movie “Cars”, the cast from “Bob the Builder”, and more recently, Wall-E. When you play outside, you love it when I chalk up the driveway with signs and destinations, so you and your friends next door can ride around on your bicycles and tricycles.

You have become best friends with our neighbours’ four-year old daughter, Morgan. You and Morgan are both avid fans of Thomas, and you both enjoying playing with each other. Morgan’s little brother, Oliver, is a couple months younger than Noah, and the four of you guys will play endlessly in the driveway whether it’s with the bicycles or digging holes in the garden. The line between our houses has become blurred – it’s just one big playground. The other day, you went to play inside Morgan’s house and when you smelled pie baking in the oven, you declared that it smelled good in the house and that maybe you’d stay for lunch. We love that you have friends nearby that you see every day.

You love your bicycle and going to the park on your bike is one of your all time favourite things to do. Our neighbour’s blue and red tricycle is a close second, though. You love it when I chalk up the driveway with street signs and destinations so that you and your friends can do laps and go to exotic places.

Caleb, we are so very proud of you. You are a big boy in every way – you are smart, articulate, kind, caring, and curious. Please continue to grow into the stand-up little guy that you are.

Love,

Maman & Papa

There was a great deal of celebrating after every successful trip to the potty, especially at the beginning of Noah's potty training. Noah loves the wild clapping and cheering, and does this awesome dramatic bowing in the midst of the celebrating.

(Also, here is Caleb test driving his new shoes.)

Dear Noah,

Hey there, big fella. You have gone through something of a growth spurt lately, because I've started to notice that there are pants that you wear that we don't have to roll up anymore, and how when I am carrying you up the stairs, your feet bang against my knees. You are now 29 months old and so so so grown up.

In the past few months, you have become articulate (in two languages), fiercely independent, and talented beyond your two years. Sometimes I have to remind myself that you are JUST two years old and that despite the fact that you walk and talk like an older kid, sometimes you behave and react like one your own age. You are silly, goofy, and often times you hear exactly what I say and choose to do your own thing. You can also be sensitive, affectionate, patient (when you want to), and be a real "big boy" like your brother. You are tough as nails – if you fall or hurt yourself, all it takes is a "magic kiss" to cure the hurt and within seconds you're off running again. You are fearless – you are game for new and exciting things and you will do things like embark on an amusement park ride or jump in a cold swimming pool without a second thought. (Or, in some cases, jumping in it naked because you couldn't be bothered with wasting your time putting on your bathing suit.)

When asked what your name is, you easily respond "Noah", but occasionally (and especially if asked by your beloved Papie) you will answer "Noah Bam-buuuuni", which is apparently your Italian name. You speak in these long, beautiful sentences and master so many of the social rituals you've observed around you. I've heard you repeat the most hilarious things, like how you will say "Salut, mon grand" (Hey big guy) or "Ca va bien, mon amour?" (How's it going, my love?) You love to say hello to strangers, wave a "thank you" when someone yields to let us cross the street, fist bump, shake hands, give kisses and hugs.

The biggest breakthrough in the past month has been your toilet training. We'd started slowly several months ago, but when we realized that the start of school only months away, we put the toilet training in high gear and decided to make it a priority. We put you in underwear all day and watched you like a hawk for a week. There were some accidents, and some reluctance on doing the number 2 on the potty, but with a little help from M&Ms and an incredible amount of celebration after every success, you quickly got the hang of it. It really helped when we had you toilet-train Elmo at the same time, a job you assumed with real zest.

You're now fully toilet trained! We're now just refining things – making sure that when you declare you have to go, it's not a burning emergency where we have a mere seconds to make it to the potty. A few days ago, we put you in underwear for the night after having seen dry pull-ups every morning for a week. The best part of celebrating your success on the potty is when we cheer for you, and you take a bow – with one hand on your belly and one hand on your back, you dip forward with a dramatic bow to the sound of thunderous applause. It's truly awesome.

You are able to switch seamlessly from French to English and back again. Your English pronunciation can be a little rough sometimes but you never let a lack of vocabulary get in the way of trying to express yourself. You will yammer away in "English" to anyone who will speak it with you, and I'm often amazed at how much you are able to speak considering we still speak French at home and you're learning it from TV and from these occasional conversations with other people. You and Caleb will often play in English when you're doing train voices or car voices, and I can foresee that maintaining French as the language at home is going to be more of a challenge in the future.

You have these funny little expressions that you say that always make us laugh. You tell me a dozen times a day that I am beautiful ("T'es belle, Maman"). If you're a little slow at putting on your shoes and we've started to head outside, you will call out "WAIT UP GUYS!" as you run to catch up. You have a pretty good ear for repeating new words, but on the odd time that you mispronounce something, it will just make us laugh, like the way you say "all the time" in French – itself of saying "tout le temps", you say "toun-temps, toun-temps!"

Your sleeping habits have come a long way. You still sleep with your white bunny rabbit, Lapin, tucked under your arm and you have a small blue ball with fire trucks tucked away in the corner. (Up until recently, you also had a mini foam soccer ball in the mix too, but we recently found a couple big bites missing from it and pieces of foam next to the bed, so that was the end of that.) You still wake up a couple times a night and I've started to think that the frequent waking that you've always had have been attributed to night terrors, because there are times when you wake up wailing, with your eyes closed, and it isn't until you have your eyes open that you are able to respond to any kind of comfort.

You occasionally nap, though most days you don't. You usually wake up around 4-5am and ask if you can come sleep with us in our bed, sandwiched between the two of us. Once you're done with sleeping, you like to amuse yourself by sleeping sideways, kicking one of us in the face and neck, sticking your fingers up our nose or in our eyeballs, or – my personal favourite – slathering our faces with kisses while you coo "Allo Maman… Allo…." There are truly worse ways to wake up. We're trying to discourage too much sleeping in our bed (even though you've always done so to some degree) but secretly we still kind of love it, as you are a huge snuggle monkey and you still have such fat, kissable cheeks.

You are a picky, picky eater. There are days when we feel like we're banging our heads against a wall trying to get you to eat. Chicken? Only if it's in the form of a nugget. Forget an actual piece of undisguised chicken. A couple times we got you to eat some and this was only under the threat of not getting to go to the park after dinner, and each mouthful of chicken looked like it was sheer torture. Steak? Forget it. Sausages – surprisingly, this, you'll eat. Your vegetable repertoire includes red bell pepper, cucumbers (like it's nobody's business), red onion, broccoli, and roasted asparagus. Not bad considering a couple months ago you ate like, none. You and Caleb are hilarious when it comes to cucumbers – we cut them in rounds and serve them with vinegar to dip in, but usually we serve a single plate, which leads to a cucumber-eating race as you both attempt to get the most cucumbers possible. You are notorious for hoarding cucumbers on your side of the plate, and stealing from your brother's pile when he's not looking. If only you guys would fight over carrots or brussel sprouts! This is my dream… one day, maybe!

Not so surprisingly, you will eagerly open your mouth to try some new pastry or junk snack food, undoubtedly when your unhealthy-food-radar goes off. But try to introduce you to a new healthy food? Good lord, I'm so sorry to insult you. The worst is when I serve you a plate of food, you take one look at it, and then you shove the plate away as far as possible from you, declaring "Moi veut pas ca" (Me no want this). I wish you would do a lot more of "Moi l'aime ca!" (Me love this!) You've been so stubborn that you have basically skipped your dinner, even on the threat of no dessert. The other day you pretty much went to bed with no dinner because you refused to eat. I'm really worried that you won't eat anything when you start school next week, but experienced parents have told me that after a couple of days, hunger and peer pressure sets in and even the pickiest eaters will start to eat.

You have got a real sweet tooth. Ice cream has got to be your favourite thing in the world. You have quickly mastered the technique of eating ice cream with a spoon to the point where you out-eat your brother when we are all sharing ice cream in a cup. Heck, you practically out eat ME, you're so fast. You're a big fan of popsicles, too. Heck, you'd probably trade Lapin for a popsicle if it came down to it.

You are an affectionate little guy who loves to hug and give kisses. I love it when you grab my face in your hands and plant kiss after kiss on my lips and my cheeks. You love to give hugs, and when you do, you lovingly pat-pat-pat us on the back as your arms are wrapped around us. The goodbye routine when I go to work is always quite lengthy – you usually get a little upset if you don't get to say your goodbyes the way you like to. It's like a checklist – you need to say "Bonne journee" (have a good day), "A tantot" (see you later), "Je t'aime" (I love you), and "bye-bye!", not to mention endless hugs and kisses. Some days you are so distraught that your dad has to distract you with "Hey, want to go watch an episode of Franklin?" to which you will react with diminished crying, because you still don't want me to go, but darnit, you really do want to go watch your favourite TV show.

Sometimes you and Caleb role-play, where Caleb is "Franklin", the turtle from the animated TV series of the same name, and you are "Bear", Franklin's best friend. Sometimes you guys are trains, and sometimes you're characters from Bob the Builder. It's quite amusing to see you guys acting out these elaborate scenarios. Sometimes we call you "Minh-Minh", Minh being your middle name, especially if we can't seem to get your attention (which is quite common because la-la-la, you are your own man and you answer to no one!)

Next week, you will be starting a four-week stint in a toddler program at your new school. We had signed you up to start school a little earlier to ease the transition into the older group, so for the first four weeks you're going to be on the older end of the age scale, and then once September rolls around, you'll go into the older group. We hadn't been sure if you would be fully toilet trained in time, so the toddler program was a good transition in that respect as well, but since you've done so well, we now just get to focus on transitioning you from doing full days at home with a parent and Caleb to a full day at school without Caleb (who will be in a different class). My heart breaks at the thought of it – but I have a feeling, especially in recent months – that you are ready for this. The initial transition might be hard, but all kids do it, and all parents survive it. I know that once you're adjusted, you're going to love it.

Because, as you love to say, you're a big boy now.

Love you very much, my little Minh-Minh.

Maman & Papa

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