The Stories of our Lives

Transl. “At the birds”
[French expression, close to "on cloud nine", delighted, enchanted, lovely.]

Little mish-mash of news from the small Gélinas family:

Baby 2

Baby 2′s pregnancy album is now online! It’s a little website similar to the one I kept when I was pregnant with Xavier (and similarly in FRENCH only, sorry!); it presents ultrasounds, doctor’s appointments, probably some belly pictures to come and the accompanying measures. The URL for the site is http://bebe2.emilieonline.com/ . Happy browsing!

Xavier

I sort of stopped lately jotting down Xavier’s progress step by step. At his age, it’s like an explosion of discoveries he takes on, and while he’s surprising us daily with new levels of comprehension he demonstrates, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly which development stages he’s getting at.

He’s experimenting a lot through his playing : he loves to roll his cars and trucks (or just push around various toys on the floor), as well as any object, in fact, while making an abstract steady noise that could be an engine imitation. He can fit two bristle blocks together better and better. He likes to ride his little ride-on and push himself forward or back, and he loves starting music from a toy or another and dance by shaking his head or bending his knees a little (actually, he bends his knees a little, slowly, and only once, while leaning his head forward, then he goes on doing something else, it’s quite funny). The cats (particularly miss Wang) are still highly interesting. We have also noticed he’s starting to imitate us as he can – notably, we let him have the vacuum, and he applied himself to pass it on the floor in a rather funny imitation of his parents, especially as he presented a big proud grin all the while. I will bug François for him to get the video out and online.

What we are working on a lot lately is language. He chats a lot, and he has started putting a lot of effort into imitating the words we repeat to him. He exclaims “allô” (hello) once in a while, which he learned at daycare (apparently the kids say hello to one another often when they run into each other), and sometimes a deformed version of “poisson” (fish), accompanied by the bubble sound we identify as the fish’s language. He doesn’t quite associate word with concept, but we are actively working on that. There’s also the word “chat” (cat), which he doesn’t say at all, but he seems to associate it with the cat when we mention it.

But most of all, most of all! are the “oiseaux” (birds). My mother repeated the word to him a couple of times while pointing a bird in his image book, and we pointed to birds in the sky a couple of times, (and the babysitter mentions the kids like to point at the birds they see when playing outside), and now everything is a bird. “Oiseau!” exclaims Xavier while pointing in the air, again and again; sometimes, he even points any object in the house and indicates to us that, surely, this is a bird? “No, Xavier, this is a ball, BALL” we correct him. He looks at us, tries to decide if we’re telling him stories, then repeats “oiseau” pointing. “BALL” we prononce clearly the object’s name. Finally, he tries to pronounce the new word in a version that usually ressembles “oiseau” again, but more transformed, and we congratulate him on his efforts. He pronounces many words randomly, in fact, but they all ressemble “oiseau” a lot : bateau (boat), gâteau (cake), cadeau (gift)… etc. It’s a work in progress.

The parents

Frank and I are mostly well. The fatigue and nausea from the start of the pregnancy are starting to wear down, and even if I don’t have illimited amounts of energy yet, it’s a lot better than it was – I almost stopped taking Diclectin and I probably will in the next days. I still maintain casanier tendencies a little, but oh well… François, for his part, is a wonderful dad who takes good care of Xavier when I’m feeling so-so, and with whom I’m happy to share this new parent experience.