the jellyball family blog

Boy, is he ever getting good.

It's official - Noah walks! from knguyen on Vimeo.

Noah walks, then goes ba-boom from knguyen on Vimeo.

Every once and a while, there is a word that Caleb really mispronounces. This, one, however, really cracks us up so we have him say it all the time.

(Pamplemousse is French for grapefruit, and in the video below, Caleb keeps saying "voir photo", meaning "see photo" because he thinks I'm taking a picture.)

How you really say "pamplemousse" from knguyen on Vimeo.

Are we the only ones who find this funny?

Over a year ago, a friend of a friend turned us onto a site called Starfall, which has a great section that teaches the alphabet. We got hooked on this alphabet song, which goes through the entire alphabet, stating first the letter, then making the sound, then giving a word that starts with that letter. A year later, and lots of singing later, Caleb knows the entire song by heart. A few weeks ago I shot this video of him singing the song with me.

It probably helps to have this cheat sheet of what it is he's actually saying:

alligator, ball, computer, doll, elephant, fingers, gumballs, helicopter, itchy, jump, keys, lollipop, monkey, no, octopus, pizza, queen, rain, snake, tiger, up, vacuum, windows, ox, yawn, zipper

Caleb's rendition of the Starfall ABC song from knguyen on Vimeo.

And during a recent visit to a friend's place in Montreal, Caleb dazzled the crowd (ok, maybe just me) with his unplugged version of the song:

Caleb hits the mike from knguyen on Vimeo.

This kid cracks me up.

I am guilty of taking videos of Noah but not having time to compile or produce them into anything decent. Ah yes, the dreaded second child syndrome.

But! The other day I captured some footage of him babbling away and thought this one would be simple to share - no post production required!

Noah's got a great little voice, it's so sweet. There's a lot of juicy purring, blowing of raspberries, high pitched squealing, and this almost whisper-like "fa fa fa" and "va va va" kind of sound that he makes when he's content.

Noah's little voice from knguyen on Vimeo.

Caleb's been making great progress learning his alphabet and his numbers.

He's doing well with the numbers - he can repeat all the numbers up to ten in French, English and Vietnamese. His version of "one-two-three" still includes one and two in French, then jumps to six and ten in Vietnamese. He can recite the first seven of letters of the alphabet in order, but doesn't seem to include "D" in the list. He's getting really good at recognizing letters when we're out and about - yesterday we parked next to a van that had a logo that was basically a big "A" and he started saying "A-B-C-E-F-G-H..."

Today we were watching a Baby Einstein video about numbers and I managed to snag a video of him repeating the numbers up to four in English, which are being pulled along on a train (choo! choo!)

Caleb counts to four from knguyen on Vimeo.

Caleb is learning new words every day - it's going by leaps and bounds these days. English, French, Vietnamese - he speaks 'em all. There are plenty of multi-syllabic words that he knows, except for many of them, he'll only say the second syllable, so "pompier" (fireman) will only be "pier".

Yesterday my parents took Caleb out for an outing that included a drive through the car wash, and he came home talking about - you guessed it, the car wash.

Except he says both words, with almost a silly little French accent or something. We keep asking him to say it, because it cracks us up so bad.

Caleb says "car wash" from knguyen and Vimeo.

Watch out, Pillsbury Doughboy.

Noah's Got A Funny Button from knguyen and Vimeo.