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.

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.

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?"

BUGGERS.

Sometimes as parents we have this bad tendency of comparing ourselves to each other or even to other parents. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how Luc and I are really different when it comes to the things that we like to do with the boys. I'm so grateful to have an active partner and see the boys picking up things from both of us.

Luc is great at inventing games, building elaborate ramps and forts, he's rough-and-tumble with them, and is great at doing boy stuff with them like going to the park and playing in the dirt. He's especially good at just letting them BE KIDS and explore their personalities.

Me? I'm the singing, dancing, goofball, arts-and-crafts person, let's pretend kind of person. I can't tell you how much I love that they're getting into colouring. In the past week, they've both really gotten into colouring books. On Saturday, we went out and got a fresh new stash of crayons and some more colouring books, and the boys did a LOT of colouring all weekend. There was more colouring than cars.

Caleb is starting to really "get" colouring and is learning how to colour inside the lines. I can't tell you how amazing it is to see your kids get into something you enjoy. I guess that's why so many parents aspire for their children to grow up to be just like them.

The boys went out trick or treating for the first time last night. Caleb was a real pro - saying "Crick or treat!" and making conversation with everyone at the door ("You have a big dog!" or "I like this house!"). Noah followed along well and while he couldn't say "trick or treat", he managed to say "merci" and "bye bye" to everyone.