Monday, January 2, 2012

A New Year

Hurray for a new year! Perhaps the only good thing about this past year is Poppet himself. Two has been a fantastic age, and as I said to mum and Rich last night, I think this age - two and a half - is my very favourite age so far. I did love it when Raf was 15 months, too, but he is such a little boy now and I just love spending time with him.

Just recently, Raf's speech has exploded! We're so happy that he's doing so well. He's putting words together much more consistently and seeming to understand lots more, too. I sort of miss the grunting and hand signals (though he does continue with his finger pointing, etc). We're really proud of him.

The other highlight is our new home. Rafi has already adjusted really well to his new pad. It likely helps that he sleeps with us - but he loves his new bedroom (well, playroom), which is really big and comfortable. He gets to look out the window into the front garden and enjoys, very much, looking for Daddy as he drives up in his car. "Daddy's car", accompanied with a vigiorous pointing of the finger, signal the return of Rich. Raf also likes the downstairs of the house, which is very open plan. There's a cloakroom which divides the space, somewhat, and Raf has tremendous fun running around being chased by either me or Rich.

The very sad thing about our new house, though, is that Raf has left his beloved nursery. One of the reasons we moved was to cut down dramatically on my commute. Well, this we managed but the consequence is that we live too far away for Raf to attend his lovely school. We're hoping we can make it work logistically when Raf heads to preschool. In new adventures, we're doing a nanny share with Raf's little friends' Rosa and Nico, which should be a blast, too.

In other news, Raf seems to have two major passions:

1) trains - specifically Thomas. He's especially enamored with the Diesel trains - particularly Mavis, which mum managed to buy him a few days ago. His collection is getting so big, and he was a lucky boy to receive so many trains from Father Christmas (aka us, mum, my sisters, and Lou). Indeed he keeps getting bought them... (naughty Nana!)

2) Music - playing it, dancing to it, singing to it. For Christmas we bought him a big organ. Though it is a big boy present, he loved playing the piano when at nursery, and since we definitely don't have the room or budget for a full piano, this seemed like a good option. He really loves it! It has lots of extra features which provide background beats and all sorts of hip hop effects (he loves dance music and hip hop, especially!) Here he is practicing his singing, dancing, and music creating!

5 comments:

  1. Lovely post! We are very happy in our new place and to see 2011 end for many reasons. Rafi's love of music/dance and trains certainly have been highlights of the past year. Though Sammy doesn't seem too impressed in the video by Rafi's exploits!

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  2. Sawyer does the same thing about our cars. Every so often he'll run to the window to do a car check. "Mommy's car, daddy's car" and if one of us isn't there he's always very concerned. Our boys really are so alike. We will miss having you at school, but we will definitely still get the boys together often.

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  3. lol, Rich! I know.. poor Sammy is very unimpressed!

    Lou, thanks for being such a good Poppet friend!

    Karla, I keep thinking of Raf and Sawyer jumping around in your kitchen to the Popcorn song. You'll have to give me the proper name of the music so I can download it! S and R really are so alike! I mentioned S and C the other day, and all of a sudden Raf was bouncing around shouting 'Soy, Soy'! Aha! We'll have to have you guys over really, really soon.

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  4. I agree this is a wonderful age. So glad to hear about his language skills, too! I hope he enjoys the nanny sharing and everything gets worked out for future nursery or whatever you want for him.
    (and of course, being very sleep deprived right now when you said he left his nursery I thought you meant the room you painted and made so nice for him at your previous house, but this makes more sense).

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