"How Long Have You Been Living Here?"

This is an excerpt from a conversation that Max and I had the other day. He loves to shut the screen door behind him and then knock on the day and say"helllloooo". I respond with "no thank you I already gave last week" and then walk away from the door. Being my son he does not get upset but chuckles his head off. Mostly because he knows I will run towards the door and open it and then tickle him. The other day when we played this game I changed it with "Oh, you say you live here?" "Oh you say it has been 2 years" What made it extra funny was that it was on Sunday on Max's birthday when he came into this world 2 years ago.

In the last year his character is becoming so apparent. The things that you hope he gets from his mother and the things that he develops from you so that he has the best of both worlds.

I am not sure if this is the same with all 2yr olds but Max seems to really value people and friendships. This has come out time and time again. Today we visited a dear friend of the family Marg Watson in Ipswich. Max has only seen Marg a handful of times but he so wanted to hold her hand in the park and when she went and got a cup of tea he got all upset and wanted to see Aunty Mark. After we got home from Ipswich and he had a sleep he got all upset that Marg was nowhere to be seen.

Tonight we were watching tv and an actors name Zoe came on the screen. I said to Jo when we have twins we could have Chloe and Zoe. Max then got excited and said "Zoe Party!" Jo then said "Wow, Max that's awesome". It had to be explained to me that Zoe was the name of the one year old girl whose party we went to at Boracay!

My favourite was when Max was around 20 months he and Jo went to the Park when Max got really excited and was dragging Jo over to another family and kept saying "Aiieee". Jo had no idea but it became clearly evident that he knew the toddler with the other family. It turns out that Aiieeee means Ali and they go to Daycare together.

Max has a cool sense of humour. When he was 18months old he was learning body parts and we would use his favourite soft toy leo the leo-pard as an example for eyes and ears. It is much safer than let an 18 moth old poke your eyes out. We would also point out Leo's tail. Max would say daddy tail? and the go and look for my tail and when he looks he then chuckles Daddy no tail. He has started doing this publicly. He has also done it most members of the family checking if they have a tail or not.

He also has a sense of slapstick he likes to run up and tackle people and then head butt them in the groin with his head. He loves to do it at weddings or church or somewhere else where there are crowds. The best was when he got confused and hit the wrong groin thinking it was mine but it belonged to the head of our church in Queensland. Max's face was priceless when I said Max daddy is over here. I think even at his age he realised that he had done something pretty funny.

He has developed a real palette for good food. He also loves to cook. He loves to help in the kitchen. He and Jo make biscuits together every couple of weeks. He enjoys cooking pasta with Jo. He can now clearly tell us what he wants to eat. This made dining in the Philipines pretty easy. He very rarely baulks at food. The last couple of nights he has been eating spinach and ricotta cannelloni with a tomato and white bean sauce. He has tried everything we feed him: olives, salt and peper calamari, fetta, hommus, blue cheese and raw capsicum. I once saw him favour raw capsicum over dessert. While in the Philippines he was very cultural sensitive and kept asking for rice. He pretty much stopped till we went to the local Asian supermarket and he then started to ask for rice it was quite strange.

Max loves music! Max has always settled him since he was very little. If he was tired and grumpy we would play the Living End and he would be asleep within a song or two. Max loves all sorts of intruments and his a great mimic. After seeing a violin on a wiggles dvd he grabbed his drum stick and started to use it across his guitar like it was a violin even resting it on his shoulder. But I think he had his pick he would pick the drums he loves watching the drums at church and plays his drum at home with great vigour. He plays along to drum solos on his knees when in the car. When he and I see a drum kit at a concert or after church he can point out the cymbals and the kick drum which i think is pretty good for a 2yr old.

I could write on and on about some great aspects of Max's personality but even the most ardent fan must be getting weary. We must thank you all that read this blog for your impact on our family and your prayers and generosity over the years are ver much welcomed and appreciated.

And to Max who will hopefully read this one day. Your Mum and I love you very much and hope that you will continue to develop into a strong, gracious, caring and respectful individual.