. . One small step for Rubens... . .

Ruby is 2 and a 1/4 and can

* talks in almost complete sentences of 3-5 words.
* loves reading books, can read his favourite books without us
* love repeating simple rhymes, playing with sound combos as found in Dr Suess
* pharaphrases simple stories from pictures or books
* loves singing and can carry a simple tune: B-I-N-G-O, rolly polly, Old Mac Donald, Mary had a Little Lamb, Twinkle Twinkle, Three Blind Mice, Sleeping Bunnies
* picks up on sentimential emotion of songs like 'some where over the rainbow' and mimics it as he sings
* understands "now, soon, and later"
* stacks blocks and toys
* can put together his tricky wood puzzles of 6-12 pieces puzzle
* matches shape silhouette to object, such as silhouette of a animal to the animal
* knows basic shapes: square, heart, circle, triangle, diamond
* loves drawing and painting draws a circle, but likes detailed text likes drawing with fine pens rather than crayons
* matches an object to a picture of that object
* identifies colors such as red, blue, yellow, green, pink, purple, white, black and can often tell you what colour something is
* can count to 12 in english and 7 in spanish
* is very interested animals, he likes picking out their tail, feet, ears, etc. etc. likes showing you what makes them different form another one, like a Moose and a Reindeer or a gorilla and a chimp.

He is amazing

I can sing a gaggle of crazy songs now, twinkle twinkle the was first, but zoom zoom zoom we are going to the moon, see the sleeping bunnies, old Macdonald has a farm and A B C D are now part of my repertoire. I also like making up my own songs.

I can make 3 - 5 word sentences which is pretty cool. And can recognize basic colour (red green blue yellow) with out Mum and Dad's help and can count about three to five objects which I spot them).

I love swimming, Mum and I just found the Park Road pool, which is SO much fun. I quite happily throw myself into the water and Mum's arms.

I met a T-Rex today, ahhhhhhhhhh! I am very glad my dad was holding me tight and telling me everything was alright. I don't know what animatronic means, but I can tell you that it roared, snarled and looked like it could eat me without chewing. I was amazing that dinosaurs come from eggs, an dmore curious about the eggs that I help mum crack open for my breakfast

We also stopped at a Christmas Fair and ice skating rink. I got to ride the carousel all by myself, which may not have been a great idea, as it didn't have anything to keep me in the car that I was whirling around on and I did it all by myself. Phew I made it, which seemed to make ma and pa relax a bit.

London is amazing. Our second weekend in London included wandering through the woods bumping into a huge Remembrance day parade (with tanks, marching bands and lots of bag pipes), seeing a huge crack in the floor of the Tate Modern (Shibboleth by mum's art hero Doris Salcedo) , popping into St Pauls, see an amazing Christmas fair complete with olde fair ground rides.

We have thoroughly enjoyed living in Canada for the last year and a half. We will sadly miss many things, but most of all:

• Ashely - our amazing girl Thursday, a ECE trained child care worker extraordinare who came to us once a week for a year with out fail and gave Ruby the same love and attention that I would! A truely extraordinary person


• Karen and Fool (read Phil - Rubens is working on the pronunciation) Amongst the gems: Saturday morning adventures with Karen and Phil that always start with eggs and fire trucks ans usually end with a walk down Queen Street West. Exceptional friends who I hope will always be with us some how.
  

Our little star has started to sing the words of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with me when I sing him to sleep at night. Part of our little sleepy time ritual is to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Roobs has heard the song almost every night for his whole life, last night, out of the blue, he sang the whole thing with me.

Gosh he is clever

Tonight Rubens was choking on a mouth full of rice cake and camembert cheese, and I mean seriously choking. The whole thing took about 30 seconds, but that was 30 seconds of no fun at all.

He was hanging around my legs and I was cooking him dinner, it was later than usual and he was mega hungry so I was feeding him chunks of food as I went... he was wolfing his pre-dinner treats down, when I look down and he has tears pouring down his cheeks and was trying to get a breath opening his mouth like a fish. So I wacked him on the back twice, he coughed, I clawed stuff out of his mouth (he did to) then starts breathing properly. I dont think his airway was completely blocked but...

I was shivery all over afterwards. Afterwards he got a treat of playing in the sink and making a huge water and bubble messy.

I looked this up afterwards

Step 1
- Determine if the infant can cry or cough. If not, proceed to the next step.

Step 2
- Give 5 back blows.

Step 3
- Give 5 chest thrusts.

Step 4
- Repeat steps 2 & 3 above until effective or the infant becomes unconscious. If the infant become unresponsive perform CPR, if you see an object in the throat or mouth remove it.