the jellyball family blog

Dear Caleb,

You are now 33 months old. We are very much into the thick of two year old territory and a few months shy of your third birthday. You've really become a big boy - you've gotten taller, thicker and heavier lately.

You are a real firecracker. You are passionate about what you love. You love to talk to people and meet new people. You are curious about the world around you - everything amazes you and interests you.

In the past month, you have shown an intense interest in speaking English. You beg me, in French, to "speak in the English" with you. You love practising your English too - and you've made some tremendous progress in the last few weeks. We used to be able to pick out a few words and basically the rest sounded like baby babbling, but now you can almost have a real conversation with someone in English, you just don't know all the words. You can say "Hello, how are you?" and respond "I'm fine thanks" when asked how you are. As we leave somewhere, you will say "Have a good day! Bye bye!" and join your brother as he blows kisses to random strangers. I'm truly amazed at how much you've been able to learn in the last few weeks and I have a feeling it won't be long before you are fully bilingual.

Your French is incredible. You speak in full, beautiful sentences most of the time, except when you get frustrated and yell out single-word commands like "give!" or fragments like "not go to sleep!" We've taught you that you need to ask nicely if you want something, complete with pleases and thank you's. You still talk about yourself in the third person, which is a habit we're all trying to break - so the concept of "I" is still a bit fuzzy to you, though you occasionally use it in sentences that we've taught you, like "Je veux faire caca s'il vous plait Maman" (I want to make a poop please Mom). You pick up the most hilarious little expressions and mannerisms from us, and you say things that make us laugh all the time. Sometimes they're little grammatical or vocabulary errors, which we find to be quite amusing. The other day, you arrived at the park and there weren't many kids around, and you asked your dad, "Papa, ou l'enfant?" (Dad, where the child?)

You still love your trains and everything about Thomas, but we've definitely weaned you from watching the Thomas DVD series. It just seemed like every time that you watched a DVD, you'd get really upset once it was done because you'd want to watch another. These days, watching a Thomas DVD is a special thing.

You've really gotten into a series called Caillou, which feature the adventures of a little four year old boy. In the car, we listen to nothing but Caillou songs, and you have almost all the songs memorized. You are often heard singing Caillou songs to yourself as you play. When you wake up from your afternoon nap, you get to watch the day's episode of Caillou that we record on TV.

Your big obsession this month has been puzzles. It started about a month or so ago when we discovered that you were able to put together this truck/vehicle floor puzzle that was given to you by your Uncle Bundy and your Aunt Yumi. It used to take a lot of coaching for you to put it together, but before we knew it, you were doing it all by yourself.

So we bought you a Thomas floor puzzle aimed at 2 year olds, and within a few days, you had it mastered. So we went back to the store and bought you a more complicated one - with slightly smaller pieces and targeted towards 3 year olds. This one lasted all of ten minutes before you had it figured out. I'd left you with the box and ten minutes later you came to get me and told me you were done.

You're now doing these 49-piece puzzles with teeny-tiny pieces - it's absolutely insane. Since then, we've bought you numerous new puzzles and it continues to be one of your favourite things to do, especially as you are stalling at bedtime - that's always when you pull out the puzzles with the teeny tiny pieces. We've broadened your puzzle collection to include themes other than just Thomas - you love your Cars-themed puzzles and will tolerate the Winnie the Pooh one, though you have completely ignored the ones with Rescue Heroes, Smurfs, and Mickey/Minnie Mouse. Who ARE those fools anyway? clearly they don't have wheels.

Your diet has really improved a lot in the last month, where I ended our newsletter begging you to eat more vegetables. It all started with these red "trainer" chopsticks that your Aunt Sarah had sent us a few months ago. You started using them and got really into using them, and it didn't really matter what you were eating. That day I happened to have made some broccoli, which you had so far refused to eat. But sure enough, you wanted to try eating different foods with your chopsticks and were anxious to try it on some broccoli - I think you had even ASKED for it from my plate. I totally egged you on as well, telling you things like "I don't think you could really pick up ANOTHER piece of broccoli, could you?" and you'd smirk and shove another piece in your mouth as I feigned surprise and cheered. You've since accepted broccoli as an acceptable vegetable, and even added watermelon to your repertoire. I love it when you eat blueberries with your chopsticks. Makes me think you'll be catching flies with them pretty soon.

You love playing outside and I really should do more of that with you, but lately it seems like the outside of our house is a bit of a mess, but you're always happy to go to the park or for a walk. You love playing with the hose outside, but inevitably, no matter how many times we tell you not to, you end up hosing the house or your little brother or some combination of the two. You love playing in the sand too - which is great because I remember when you were younger, you could not even tolerate the presence of sand in your sandals at the park (forget walking barefoot in the grass!) You have some new water guns, which I suspect will become quite a favourite of yours.

Bedtime and naptime is always a bit of a struggle. You'll nap in the afternoon if you're at home, and perhaps if there is a particularly long car ride in the afternoon, but never when we're out and about or at a family member's house. You are always at your most well-behaved right before bedtime, which really encourages us to let you stay up late, but inevitably, there's the struggle to put you to bed. You're just a busy guy with no time to sleep! You have no desire to sleep and you'll never admit to being tired. You'll reluctantly go into bed, but there's always a fair bit of whining that follows. You'll call our names incessantly. You'll do aerobics in bed. You'll kick the wall. You'll pull all the stickers off your bed and rearrange them (sometimes you wake up in the morning with stickers in your hair). Sometimes you will do this for what seems like hours! It's been a month now that you have stopped sucking your thumb, and since you no longer have this quiet way of putting yourself to sleep, getting you to fall asleep has become someone of a pain in our behinds.

You do, however, play incredibly well. You are a master track builder. You can sometimes play with your trains and tracks for hours, inventing new games for them and re-enacting all kinds of stories from your storybooks. You can be trusted to play independently and unsupervised while I'm putting Noah to sleep or doing some chore. You're a great little helper too - you love to be responsible for our cooler bag with snacks and drinks. You love to be the one to hold the cash register receipt or put items in or out of the shopping cart. Even when we're outside doing gardening work, you are a helpful little assistant, filling up lawn bags and raking piles. (And sometimes un-raking them.)

You continue to be a great big brother to Noah. You pepper him with hugs and kisses (sometimes a little too much). You love to make him laugh. You love sharing your food with him and engaging him in a clinking of drinking glasses. You love to tickle him - you approach him slowly with your two wagging fingers, which sends him into a pre-tickle fit of laughter. You're always trying to give him food from your plate - I once caught you feeding him bites of your hot dog behind my back.

You have a playdate with our next-door neighbour's 13 year old daughter, Helen, three times a week. You LOVE Helen. When the doorbell rings, you scream "HELEN!" and run to the door, and she has barely taken her shoes off before you are dragging her by the hand into the living room, spewing all kinds of Thomas-related talk at lightning fast speed. When she goes home, you slump your shoulders and tell me that Helen has gone back to her house, then run into the kitchen to demand your dinner. The other day you were eating watermelon and you were practising saying "watermelon" in English, and you started calling it "waterhelen", and burst into a fit of laughter at your own joke.

There are some big changes coming up in your life. In August, your mom will be going back to work and your dad will be at home with you. You really can't wait for this - when your father leaves for work, you beg him to not leave and demand that Mom goes to work instead. We're also applying to have you start attending nursery school three afternoons a week starting in September. Since we told you about it a few days ago, you've been telling me that you'll be going to school, and when you're there, there will be no Mommy, no Daddy, no Noah. And that there will be other children there, and friends too.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll be writing these newsletters - I think I will have to start writing them a little less frequently since things are going to start getting even busier than they are now. I'll do my best to write them as often as I can, since you are growing fast and changing every single day.

We love you lots.

Love,
Maman & Papa