"J'ai 2 ans"

Noah turned two on August 1st !

Of course I say..."two years already" but who am I kidding, it's seems like a lifetime already !
I feel that I have been a mom for the longest time and it's hard to remember life without a kid. While a kid may fill your life with happiness, it also fills it with...aging ;)

I was telling my husband yesterday if he remembered when we were 21...
Oh my god, how can one parent not remember those years were we were free of worries. And how can we not miss every second of it.

Anyway, back to Noah ;)

So, I did not know if it was necessary to celebrate his birthday or not. I actually don't think that a two year old can actually process that his birthday is in fact a special day for him.

And to tell you the truth, I have a hard time with kid's birthday here.

I remember when I was a kid, my parents made sure to attend every single kid's birthday party.
There is two things that are an absolute obligation for parents in Haiti. One of them is to go to all the funerals of everyone you've crossed path with and the other is to attend all the birthday party that your kid is invited to.

Well, here, parents don't go to birthday parties, well, at least not the ones I have been to. Birthday parties here are celebrated during the week so they send their kids with the nanny. They hire entertainers to entertain the kids, clowns and dressed up Disney figures that scare the hell out of the kids, and they mostly do things that are not targeted towards 1 or 2 year old. They play very loud music and dance to them...

Well...not my cup of tea.

So I was thinking about doing a barbecue with our friends and family but this month is the month of Ramadan and a lot of people are fasting, including my husband. So...all of this actually pissed me off and I decided that there was no point in doing such a fuss around a birthday party, since Noah would not even care. At this age, all he cares about is being with his loved ones and his friends. And that is what we did.

As soon as Noah woke up, his parents, grandfather and aunt were all there celebrate this special day. We were all singing "happy Birthday" in all languages and unwrapping many presents. He was the happiest baby on the planet. We would ask him how old he was and he would proudly say "2 ans" ..

At 10:30 we brought a cake to his summer camp, so he could celebrate with his 40 new friends. He was really happy and very proud that everyone was singing for him. The cake had his favorite superhero "SamSam" and he was very happy.

At 3, A few of his friends came to celebrate with him and he was very happy to show them his new toys.

He had a very special birthday day and I don't think I would have had it any other way.

Of course, I was exhausted...but it was all worth it.

Daycare....the sequel ;)

So, remember how I was frustrated about daycare in Abidjan and how I took now out of his daycare?

Well, I teamed up with a friend called Anne who has a son that used to go to daycare with Noah. We looked everywhere for a better daycare but we realized that the culture in Cote d'Ivoire was to keep your baby at home until he started school at 3 year's old. They have all the facilities here of having a nanny and the support of their entire family, cousin, aunts, uncles and grandparents, hence they do not find the need to put their kids somewhere else. I will not go and say that these kids have a lack of stimulation because I am sure that they are well surrounded and constantly stimulated. My case however is not the same because everyone in our family here work and Noah cannot stay at home all day and play with the nanny !

So, after we've failed miserably to find a good day care, we decided that we would go ahead and do weekly activities with our kids.
The first week was Anne's turn and the kids learned about insects. They painted a butterfly and we read a story about insects. We then taught them a song related to insects. I have to say two year old have an attention span of about 5 minutes, so after 20 minutes, they got bored and started playing with other things. Of course, this caused a lot of frustration for us....

Nevertheless, we tried again the next week. It was my turn and we did musical instruments. We created a guitar, we learned about different instruments and I wanted them to record a song in Aimann's music studio but that didn't go through.

Anyway, the point of it was that we realized that we could not force 2 year old into an activity but it was important to do a bit of art everyday with the kids. So, I had a much better idea. I printed a bunch of art stuff and gave it all to the nanny.
Everyday she did a bit with Noah. He was free to do it for 5, 10 or even 20 minutes. When he got bored, he played with something else and it was OK. Noah now loves to paint and do things but of course, he rather be playing football of doing physical activities. So...we put him in summer camp.

We found a fabulous summer camp in "2 Plateaux" it's at the Capuera's school. he goes from 9 to 12:30. He has a lot of fun. They play football, volley ball, Capuera, they play musical instrument (drum, flute), they do pottery...it's wonderful. On top of that, they have a bunch of animals over there. They have a monkey, huge turtle and rabbits.
Noah loves it and I can see that he has grown so much in two weeks just by being surrounded by older kids and being treated like a little boy and not a baby ;)

Until I post the pictures of the camp, check out his "Chef d'oeuvre" ;)