Jadon had lots of fun with Uncle Rick. Uncle Rick taught him how to recognize and say "icicle lights" (a type of Christmas decorative lights), and Uncle Rick was Jadon's best buddy while he was here. Jadon took a liking to Uncle Rick immediately, which is unusual for him; he is often a bit cautious (but not cold or scared) for a while after meeting most new people. Almost four months after Uncle Rick left, Jadon still calls our guest bedroom "Uncle Rick's room", and still calls the soap in the guest bathroom "Uncle Rick's soap".

Jadon loved the outdoor Christmas lights. Well into March, he could tell us which houses had particularly special decorations at Christmastime, and what they were ("baby deer flashing light", "purple light"). We have not asked him since then, so he may still be able to.

He has a very good memory. He can usually recall who gave hinm a toy or a piece of clothing, even if he received it several months ago. He also remembers events from several months ago. One recent night, he was sitting at the dinner table, when he started chuckling to himself. He said enthusiastically, and with a happy laugh "I drop rice... scare Uncle Tom!". We realized he was referring to an indcident when we had Tim's grade school friend Tom over for dinner a couple months ago, and Jadon accidentally spilled a rice bowl on the floor.

Jadon can now easily carry on conversations, although his vocabulary and grammar are still developing quickly. He is somewhat better in English than in Chinese, but it quite good in both. By February, he was able to switch languages appropriately depending on who he was talking to. In addition, he can translate many things when asked. For example, "What do your grandparents in China call an apple?". His (correct) answer "Pin-doe" (his way of saying "Ping guo"). His most serious pronunciation challenge is the word "computer", which he always pronounces as "pa-NYEW-ner" despite our best efforts to teach him.

He continues to be a very happy young boy, who loves to take baths (most of the time), play in the yard, and eat. He prefers the company of adults to the company of children. He loves many fruits and vegetables, and will eat some meat. His favorite vegetables are broccoli, green beans, potatoes, rice, and tofu. He likes almost all fruits (apples, bananas, watermelon, grapes, peaches, pears, asian pears, kiwi, strawberries, raspberries, cherries,...). He now likes "sammy-iches" (sandwiches), which to him means a slice of bread with the crust removed. He does not like any foods with even a hint of spicyness; even the mention of the word "spicy" in conjunction with a food is enough to keep him from wanting to try it.

Jadon loves it when mommy and daddy bring him small food presents when they come home from work. Julie occasionally brings home a lollipop in her purse, and Jadon now asks for her purse when she comes through the door, and searches it. Tim brings home an occasional apple in his jacket pocket, and Jadon knows to search daddy's pockets as soon as he comes home. Lately, Tim has been bringing a couple miniature marshmallows for Jadon, after Jadon learned about them in a vocabulary book, and asked to try them. Needless to say, the marshmallows are a big hit. Jadon now makes requests for snacks when mommy and daddy go to work "mommy, you bring lollipop!" "Daddy, you bring apple and marshmallow and macaroni" (macaroni is another vocabulary word from his book, which he wants to try but has not yet had any). Vey sweetly, he also tells us to drive safely; "daddy, be careful 'ow doe' cars!" (we're not yet sure if 'ow doe' is english "all those" or the Chinese equivalent "Hao duo"). One area in which Jadon seems to have inherited mommy's genes, not daddy's is the way he handles lollipops. Daddy would unquestionably devour them in one bite no matter what anyone told him, but Jadon has learned from mommy that he should take a couple licks on the lollipop, then put it away. He now does this quite easily (much to daddy's shock).

Jadon has a great sense of humor, and loves to occasionally play tricks on his mommy and daddy, in a very cute way. Several weeks ago, he threw a small rubber ball into our front bushes, then later realized it was really gone, and demanded that Julie find it. She looked unsuccessfully for quite a while, when Jadon came running up saying "I got 'tumting'(something)!" or "I found it". However, when he opened his hand to show her, he was holding only a leaf, and he started laughing and smiling broadly. He did the same thing to Tim, when Tim returned home from work later that evening. (Tim eventually found the ball the next weekend). Jadon also tricked Julie one day, and after telling Tim about it ("I trick mommy!" with a big happy smile), he immediately said "Sometime I trick you, too, daddy!", again with a big happy smile.

As has essentially always been the case, daddy is his daytime best play buddy, but mommy is his best nighttime comfort. When going to bed at night, if Jadon is a little extra tired, it is not unsusual for him to say "Go away, daddy". When asked where daddy should go, the answer is usually "Downstairs" or "downstairs, wash dishes". Within the past few months, Jadon developed his own scapegoat hierarchy; if mommy does something that he does not like, he will rarely tell mommy to go away, but will generally tell daddy to go away, unless the woman who sometimes helps us take care of him is around, in which case she almost always gets told to go away. Of course, after a few minutes, he is smiling, and all is forgotten.

Jadon, mommy, and daddy still sleep in the same bed, and all of us like it that way. It's going to be more of a challenge when our second baby arrives at the end of May, but we'll figure that out when the time comes. Since Jadon was born, he has been almost magnetically drawn to mommy at bed time. Every night he snuggles right next to her. When he was a baby, he would snuggle right under mommy's arm. Now that he has grown up a bit, he snuggles right next to mommy's head on her pillow. When he wakes up briefly in the middle of each night, he puts his arms around mommy's neck or tucks his hands under mommy's shirt, and he doesn't seem to mind at all breathing with just a little open space around his face (like daddy, he could sleep under a pillow if he wants to, while mommy requires a one-foot clearance all around to sleep undisturbed).

Now that Julie is almost eight months pregnant, and has developed a big tummy, she protects the new baby from Jadon's kicks with two soft down feather pillows surrounding her belly. But every night, she ends up with only about a foot wide space by the edge of the bed to sleep in, as Jadon wedges himself right underneath her. She loves the closeness with Jadon, though she has to move the little guy towards the center of the bed several times every night. Jadon often seems fast asleep, but as soon as mommy pushes him towards the center of the bed, he immediately returns so that his head touches mommy's head. In less than two months from now, when our new baby arrives, this will have to change. But in the meantime, we let Jadon enjoy his babyhood as long as he can. Things will workout when the time comess, we keep telling ourselves. He will be potty trained before he goes to school, and he will be sleeping more or less by himself or with daddy when his brother comes.

Jadon is looking forward to "new baby" appearing (that's what we call him until we choose a name). He sometimes says "I want new baby come out, play". A few times he said "I protect new baby". Tonight, after bath time, he told daddy "I want new baby take bath with me".

Julie's pregnancy is going reasonably well, although Julie is getting quite large already. In addition, she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes at the beginning of April. She suspected something since Jadon was born so big, even though we have no history of that in either family. Julie passed the normal mid-pregnancy glucose tolerance test again this pregnancy, but asked to take it again late in her pregnancy, and just found out that she failed. She will try to control her blood sugar with diet first, and see how that goes. Preparations for our second baby's arrival are much more relaxed than they were for Jadon's arrival. In part, this is because we already have almost eveything we need, from when Jadon was born. In part, it's because we have less time and energy to devote to preparing, since we also have to take care of Jadon. About the only thing we have to do to prepare is to pick a name, and that process is going very slowly. We never were successful in starting from the English name side with Jadon (we picked a Chinese name first, and that easily became "Jadon" in English). This time, we have completely given up on starting from English, but are having little luck mapping Julie's Chinese name suggestions onto an English name. We're not worried yet, though!

He loves to help clean, and loves to help daddy with anything that involves tools. He has his own sets of plastic and wood tools, and he is almost always doing something with them, such as pounding lightly on the wall with his hammer, like daddy does when hanging a picture. Jadon helped daddy hang a picture tonight with a real hammer, and it was clearly a highlight of the past month for him. He will often grab a mop from the closet,and run around mopping the floors randomly.

Jadon loves the sense of accomplishment he gets by doing things himself, and in the past couple months, has started to sometimes get quite disappointed and frustrated if mommy of daddy helps him with something he'd rather do himself. There are rituals of who-does-what for almost all of life's daily tasks (bathtime, bedtime, dinnertime, getting dressed, brushing teeth...), and if somebody violates the routine (particularly if we do something he is supposed to do himself), Jadon sometimes starts crying and demands that we start all over. If we do that, happiness returns, and all unhappiness is immediately forgotten, as soon as the ritual is done "properly".

Jadon learned to recite the complete alphabet (except that he often misses "E" and "N") by New Years, when he was two years two months old. He learned from a book he loves. Soon after, he learned to recognize all 26 uppercase letters quite reliably. By January, he could also count to ten in both English and Chinese. He can now count to twenty pretty reliably in both languages.

Jadon likes books, but we have a hard time finding books that we like. He memorizes books he likes pretty quickly. We got one book less than a week ago, and recently found him lying on the bed "reading" it correctly, page by page. He's also done that with several other books he really likes. Even if he cannot recite a book by himself, he quickly learns what it should say, and will correct you if you make a mistake ("he put it into a ... blue... box", "no, brown box!")

He still likes "Little Bear" cartoon on TV, although his enthusiasm is waning somewhat now that he has seen every episode several times, knows most of them by heart, and often tells us what each episode is before more than 10 seconds have elapsed into it ("Ice boat!"). He knows many of the scenes, and parts of the dialog, by heart. We now often find him acting out a scene, or reciting dialog, by himself. It's quite amusing to us, and he has a great time!

He went through a Pooh-bear phase in January/Feb, when he wanted to watch nothing but the animated Disney movie of Pooh from the 1960's (the one daddy watched when he was a baby). Jadon did not want to have anything whatsoever to do with the newer, puppets-in-front-of -computer-animated-background Pooh Bear movies, which illustrates his good taste as far as mommy and daddy are concerned. He also went through a Charlie Brown phase around the same time, and loved to watch all the classic Charlie Brown cartoons that daddy watched as a kid (Thanksiving, Christmas, Valentine's day, Halloween). He seems to have gotten over Charlie Brown and Pooh Bear, at least for now.

Between his Chinese programs, Charlie Brown, and Pooh Bear, he learned quite well what a DVD is, and would walk around and say "watch charlie brown DVD" or "daddy, pooh bear dvd?"

Strangely enough, Jadon fell in love with the Simpsons cartoon the first time he saw it, although we stopped watching it almost immediately, since it's not especially appropriate for 2 year olds. He still recognizes the theme song and characters if he sees them, and asks where the missing characters ("where is Simpsons baby?") are if he sees a picture with only some of the characters.

Jadon has realy loved music since he was a baby, and this still continues. He loves to put on certain pieces of music and dance to them. He also has certain DVD scenes that cause him to pull out one of his musical instruments (toy piano, keyboard, saxophone, accordian, flute, drum) and play along enthusiasticaly, often marching or mimicing the behavior he sees on TV (stamping out some not-necessarily-related rhythm with his feet). He loves to do this, and we encourage him. He seems to really enjoy classical piano music, and will sometimes ask put on a Chopin paino CD by himself at home, or ask daddy to find paino music on the radio when we're driving in the car.

As we were watching a rented movie one night in January after he had gone to sleep, he woke up and wanted to come downstairs to be with us. We figured he would lay down on mommy's lap and go to sleep, but he quietly and intently watched almost an hour of the movie with us. We were very surprised, since it was just a dialog-heavy, not-very-visually-exciting movie.

Jadon started taking a weekly toddler gymnastics class at the beginning of March; 45 minutes of stretching, playing on the equipment, doing a weekly obstable course, and of course the foam pit. Our main goal was to get him to spend classtime with other children, in preparation for starting preschool next September. He enjoys his class quite a bit, but is very cautious around the foam pit (undoubtedly the influence of mommy's genes, Julie and I joke); he often refuses to jump into it, but rather sits down on the edge, and scoots down into it.

One of the things he loves about class is that everybody gets rubber ink stamps on their hands and feet at the end of class. This caused problems for us for a couple weeks, when Jadon decided he did not want to take a bath, because they washed off. He previously loved baths, but for a week or two it was almost impossible to get him to take one. He would say "I don't want take bath, I not cho cho ('stinky' in Chinese)". After a week or so, he resigned himself to his fate, and his nature is to be proactive about it. As soon as it got dark (an hour or more before his normal bedtime), he would say "its dark, take bath" and start walking up the stairs by himself, crying because he knew he had to take a bath. We helped him get over this temporarly dislike of baths by having mommy draw decorations on his hands and feet with markers after he takes a bath. After just a couple weeks, he loved baths again. One of the added bonuses for him was that we had daddy go in the tub with him to help on nights when he was really upset, and he now loves to ask daddy in the bathtub to play some nights, then "wahses" daddy with a washcloth and a small pail of water, just like we wash him.

Surprisingly to us, Jadon loves to brush his teeth, and even to floss! Toothbrushing is now a two-person, two-toothbrush operation. Jadon demands to have his own toothbrush, which he uses to do a pretty good job (for a two year old) brushing his teeth. He still demands (and we agree with him) that mommy have another toothbrush which she uses to "help" him. After watching mommy and daddy floss, Jadon started asking for "string" every night, and pulls it between his front teeth, then asks mommy or daddy to help him a bit. Jadon is also very good about reminding mommy and daddy to give him his vitamins every night.

He is old enough now that he is very mobile, which (as any parent knows) has its good side and its bad side. On the good side, he can get things without always needing mommy and daddy, and he can usually even get something for us if we ask him to. On the bad side, he can (and does) get into almost everything now. Around New Year, he realized that he can use a chair as a ladder to get up on countertops, to cabinets, etc. He soon started dragging our kitchen table chairs around to provide access to whatever he wants, which is usually some snack on the kitchen counter or in a cabinet). He also climbs on top of our leather sofa and dives down onto the sofa cushions for fun. This is generally OK, but we don't want him to fall backwards (into a large window) or in the wrong direction forward (and hit mommy's heavy wooden glider chair).

There is not one day that goes by we don't marvel at how fortunate and grateful we are to have such a beautiful, wonderful happy child. He is the sunshine in our lives. We look forward to the arrival of Jadon's brother and can't wait for the day when the two brothers hold hands together walking in front of us to the park.... We wish for such happiness and peace to all the families in the world.