Three years old

On April 11th, Leo celebrated his third birthday. We were going to have a big BBQ party last Saturday, but it was SUPER windy all weekend (and in fact most of the week), so we postponed it to this coming Saturday, weather permitting. So on his actual birthday, we kept it quiet. Leo and I cooked a cake, as that it the thing he most associates with birthdays, and then some friends came up for cake, presents and dinner.

Abe had been smoking ham and bacon for most of the day, and we'd also boiled and roasted some for different flavors. So dinner consisted of all different kinds of pork (with a little rice on the side).

The wonderful thing about this year is that Leo now gets that it's his birthday. I'd bought a candle set a while ago, which he saw every time I went into the pantry. He loved those candles and we kept telling him that he would have them on his birthday. Then his birthday arrived and he got super excited about cooking a cake and putting the candles on it.

We had also bought him a two-piece train a couple of weeks ago (he loves things that pull other things, like trains or trailers) and he had to choose between a red and blue one. He deliberated for some time, but eventually settled on the red one, but Abe snuck the blue one into the cart for his birthday. When he pulled a corner of the paper back and saw what it was, he instantly recognized what it was and BEAMED - "Blue one too!". It was precious.

So what's new with Leo? The changes are more subtle - very few new abilities, but rather fine tuning the ones he already has.

Language is doing great, other than he is going through a "what happened?" stage. Every five seconds it seems like he asks what happened. I guess this is the forerunner to the famous "Why?" phase. His sentences are complex, and he tells you exactly what he wants YOU to say in reply. He also talks in different voices for his toys, and his role-playing is becoming quite entertaining. His Spanish also improves, though not as dramatically as his English.

He has bad dreams every once in a while, where he'll cry out, wake up and call for me. I go in and he says "I have bad dream."
"Oh, that's terrible! What happened?"
"Big monster hungry and tried get Leo."
"Oh, honey, he was just playing. The big monster likes Leo."
"Yes, monster Leo's friend."
And he'll go right back to sleep. Another thing he has called out in a bad dream is "Little boy take Leo's red car".
To balance things though, he also frequently giggles in his sleep, probably thinking about games he plays with his dad. Of course, all of his nighttime discussions are great for me, as I'm often awake at night right now and it gives me something to smile about.

He still loves to help us work, and he's actually starting to become useful. His only downfall, both in work and other areas, is that he wants to do thing by himself, even if the things are beyond him. He then gets very upset if you try to help. We let him figure it out when we can, and he is learning to calm down and ask for help when he realizes that he can't do it on his own.

He can be quite bratty at times, saying "No", very firmly, when we tell him to do something, and then very quick to cry when we start counting to three. I'm not sure if it's attention seeking or just something he has to go through. Either way, it'll be nice to see the back of it.

He is very interested in the arrival or his little brother. Keeps on and on about how he can share things with Nicky when he arrives, and how Nicky will sleep and sit next to Leo, and how they'll talk.

He's actually very good at sharing his toys with other kids, which is good to see. He especially likes to hand out food to people. All in all, seems to be a fairly generous character for a three year old. He is also very affectionate. His hugs and kisses are lovely. He often tells you he loves you, and will call you beautiful and good girl, etc.

All in all, it's been a pretty great three years, watching him grow and develop into the little person he is. The next big milestone for him is becoming a big brother and I have no doubt that he'll be a good one.

Didn't take many photos on his birthday, but will try and get some on Saturday. When I do, I'll put them here.

Almost two years nine months

I read through the last post I did on Leo, when he was two and a half, to see what I had written. He's now about to be two and nine months and not much has really changed.

His speech just keeps getting better and better, becoming more easily understandable to people beyond his parents. He's using some simple verb tenses, prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives. He will often sit down and chat away to himself (or some toy) for very long periods of time. His toys even have long conversations with each other, via their puppeteer.

He's at the stage when he repeats EVERYTHING you say, no matter how long and complicated. The longer your sentence is, the more he'll stammer over it, but he gets it all out eventually (if unclearly). He is also getting better with the written aspect of our language. He repeats the alphabet back to you, saying every letter extremely well except L (for Leo) and N (for Nicky, which he pronounces Micky) - I guess we made pretty poor choices in kids' names! His favorite letter is W, which he thinks is very funny.

Spanish also improves whenever we visit friends and other kids. The strange thing to me is that he will instantly use the language with which someone addresses him, and doesn't seem to confuse the two. Whenever someone comes to the house, he likes to be the one who goes outside, shakes their hand, holds the door open and says "Pase-le" (come in), which of course people find adorable. Unknown visitors, who come to see what we are doing here, are all referred to by him as "Peoples" or "Peoples and kids".

His memory is something that continually amazes me. We'll see, do or say something that triggers something in that little mind of his that happened months ago. At times, we struggle to keep up, and we'll look at each other a little confused. But then we remember what he's talking about, and realize how glorious a young mind and memory is! A couple of weeks ago, I was going through family photos for a calendar I put together and he could remember so many of their names. It doesn't surprise me that he would remember grandparents and some of his aunts and uncles, with whom we skype with and see in person fairly regularly. However, when he saw, for example, his uncle Bruce's photos (whom he has seen a total of two times in his life), he instantly beamed and shouted "Bruce" - I guess Bruce made a big impression!

He sings more and more. He loves any movie with a song and especially ones he can pick out words from. Whenever we go out in the car, he usually starts the journey naming all the things he can see (tree, rock, horse, cow, bird, sun, etc.), then lapses into a song of some unknown origin.

One huge advancement is his independence in the toilet area. He can now pull up and down his own pants, and has, over the last month, learned to "pee like a man" (ie. standing up. Like any other man, he only gets one or two drops of pee on his pants!). So we are no longer needed for his bathroom needs. Great.

He is getting more and more stubborn and defiant. He's into a stage of testing his boundaries, and we find that a lot of our tricks and bribes no longer work. I'll be cooking and hear a very firm "no" in answer to an order from Abe (like put that knife down right now). I'll look over at the two of them and they will be staring each other down (in a way that frankly makes me love each of them even more!). Of course Abe always wins, which is hard for the little guy to accept, but there are times when he just can't be allowed to get away with things. Defiance is one of those things that is very frustrating for a parent to deal with, especially when you are trying to tell them something for their own good. It is however a trait, a spark, that I like to see my son has, he just needs to learn when and how to use it. (Remind me I said that some time in the future when I am screaming and ripping my hair out that Leo deliberately disobeyed me, again, in some matter or other!!).

He is very interested in my growing belly and likes to kiss, pet and talk to it. I've already started preparing things for the baby (a little early for nesting, I realize), and Leo points and things and says "when Nicky comes". It's going to be interesting to see how he'll handle his little brother in the flesh. When his little playmates come up here to our house, Leo is very courteous, sharing all his toys happily and even showing them ones they hadn't noticed. Hopefully that's a sign of good things to come.

Christmas was a blast with him. Abe and I never really celebrated it much when we were on our own, but now we have started again. And it's a lot of fun seeing it through the eyes of a small child. Leo put cookies and milk out for Santa on Christmas Eve and was amazed to see them gone in the morning. He looked at the empty plate and presents with a look of awe rather than excitement. "Santa come. Santa flies." He then got to open his gifts, and spent the WHOLE day engrossed in playing with them. He still talks about Santa, but knows that he's now gone home, to where it's cold. We can't wait til next year!

For more photos, click here.

A day in the Life of Leo

I've had a few complaints from family about not doing any updates on Leo recently, so here's one for the grandparents - be warned, it's kind of long. I'm afraid we haven't taken many photos or videos recently, but I will try and amend that over the next week. For this month's photos (both the ones we have and will take), click here.

A typical day for Leo begins at about 6am. He wakes up, grabs his water and the toys I place by his bed after he falls asleep at night, and comes into our room. He clambers up into our bed and will either snuggle up and fall asleep for another hour or play with his toys on our heads and bodies. The toys in question are his favorites of the moment, the ones he falls asleep clutching. Right now, they consist a small elephant, pig and truck.

We all go downstairs and have breakfast. Of course, the elephant and pig have to eat some of whatever he is eating, and they seem to especially like submerging themselves in milk. Every once in a while, one of them will fart (the sound having been faked by little lord Leo), and Leo will then exclaim "Oh, oink!" and then laugh heartily with his father.

While we do a few morning chores, Leo watches one of his movies on the laptop. It is really a credit to some of the movies out there that we can see them OVER AND OVER again and still find them entertaining (examples: Cars, Horton Hears a Who, Sesame Street videos, Shrek, Jungle Book).

We go outside and play with the dogs and rabbits. It's amazing what both will put up with from the two year old terror.

Abe and I then take it turns to work and watch Leo. Work currently involves prepping for building the cistern, planting, digging trenches, and other rain season jobs.

Leo spends a lot of time outside and we encourage him to "help" us with as many of our chores as possible (dishes, laundry, planting, making rock swales, feeding, watering, etc.). He loves to go hiking, especially if a water feature is included. We'll often hike over a mile each way. He runs half the way there, over pretty steep hills, and walks the other half. However he usually wants to be carried a lot of the way back.

Inside play involves hide-and-seek, running like a madman all over the place, tipping out all his toys and then putting them back again (minus one or two "chosen ones"), shapes, alphabet jigsaw, number cards, jumping and somersaulting on the bed, jumping and somersaulting on us, looking at books, talking to his talking Elmo. The list goes on.

He has a nap after lunch. Every once in a while he won't take a nap, but that usually leaves him super grumpy in the evening.

And grumpy also usually rears its ugly little head during the day too. He's only had one tantrum so far, which we're thankful for. However, he does whine or cry some when he doesn't get what he wants. Listening is pretty selective, which is normal I guess, for a male of the species. When he doesn't listen on something important (like don't go near the electric fence without us), he gets a smack or harsh words, at which point he gets very upset and wants to be cuddled.

Language is helping with the frustration he must feel. His extent of comprehension, both in English and Spanish, is impressive, and very recently he is starting to say a lot more words. After talking very little up til now, he is suddenly taking off. He's also putting up to three words together for more complex desires. For example, "Car, wa-wa, shoes" means "let's get in the car, drive down to the river where you can put my water shoes on and we'll get in!". However, the flip side of that is that even though he can make his wishes much clearer, we still sometimes refuse to give him what he wants - so he'll just repeat it over and over, looking at us as though we are deaf or stupid.

In the evening we go feed the animals, and here comes his favorite chore. He gets to help us pick worms out of the worm bin, and it is then his job to feed them to the chickens. He LOVES this. He especially likes to hold the worms out of reach, so the chickens have to jump to get them, and believe me, they will jump HIGH for worms.

We have dinner. He eats great overall. He is a little tricky to feed, as he loves something one meal and won't touch it on the next. He also tends to snack a lot in between meals - fruit, yogurt, nuts. All in all, if you can't get him to eat what it is we happen to be eating, he will always eat meat then fruit (pretty efficient way to get your requirements I suppose).

In the evening, we'll often watch a movie. When it's not one he's interested in, he contents himself with climbing all over you and running around. We usually have to watch a movie 3 or 4 times before we have seen it all.

He falls asleep in my arms between 9 and 10. You know he's asleep when he finally releases his elephant, pig and truck, which he has had in his hands throughout the day. I am sure to put them by his bed once he's asleep, as they are the first thing he looks for when he wakes up.