Julian is 2 years old!

Happy Birthday, Julian! Julian turned 2 on 28 May 2009.

We celebrated his birthday with a dinner at Sea Palace Restaurant in Taman Pekaka last Saturday night (23 May 2009). We ordered him a cake with his favourite character, Pocoyo, on it.


[Julian's Pocoyo birthday cake]


[Julian with Mummy & Daddy]


[Yummy!]

On 28 May 2009 (his actual birthday), we sang him a birthday song and he blew candles on a muffin. We baked him orange butterfly muffins :-).


[Julian admiring the Butterfly Muffins Mummy baked]


[Close-up of the muffins]


[Happy birthday to Julian... Happy birthday to you...!!]


[Julian's presents: He also received a number of red-packets]

He still loves counting, and is now able to count to 12. He still starts at 2, but can say 1 when shown the number. He's also progressing with his alphabet. As with counting, he does not start with the first letter. We say 'a' and he can now continue 'b', 'c', 'd' and occasionally 'e'. Then it's 'o'.

For Julian's prayer time, we normally say his prayer for him. Yesterday, when making the sign of the cross, after we said "In the name of the Father" he said "Son" - something he has never done before :-) And a few days ago, when he was supposed to say "-men" (for 'Amen', after we say 'A'), he said 'b' :-)

Quick updates: 

• Julian had his first mouth ulcer when we were in Ho Chi Minh :-(
  
• We took Julian for deworming at the Taman Tun Sardon clinic on 19 May 2009. He weighed in at 11.2kg.
  
• His height on his 2nd birthday is 85cm.
  

Other observations:

• He is fascinated with butterflies and frogs.
  
• His vocabulary has grown quite a bit. He's speech is still limited to one and two syllables but he can 'complete' many words or say the last syllable (e.g. 'can' for pelican).
  
• He likes to say 'big' and 'wow'.
  
• He's beginning to understand 'big' and 'small'.
  
• He has fallen into the routine of having bedtime stories. He can even 'help' tell parts of the stories when prompted. E.g. Daddy: Once upon a time there was a...? Julian: can (pelican) :-)
  
• He seems to be playing "games" with us, e.g. he'd give us his pacifier and say "uhm-mai this" (don't want this). When we take it away, he'd whine or cry. How cheeky!