Jani Penttinen

Dear Fei,

I'm writing this sitting on the bed next to you and mom. You guys are eating some delicious mandarines, ready to sleep soon. Last night we returned from a five day trip to Italy to celebrate your second birthday and today has been kind of a lazy day, just recovering from the trip.


You're now two years old! In the past few weeks there's been a lot of development, it seems two years of age really makes a difference. Most notably you have started to show a real interest in talking recently. You now easily repeat almost any word, and your vocabulary is growing every day.

Your multilingual inheritance is starting to show up, too. You understand that things can have different words in different languages and you can translate on the fly. If I say "duck", you say "ya ya". If I say "niu niu", you say "cow".

You also have your own interpretations for some of the words. For example, instead of the color "orange" you say "juice". I think it's because you know oranges make juice (your mom often squeezes fresh orange juice for you) and you somehow think juice just means the same as orange in some other language. And then, when we talk about the color orange you seem to think you can just say juice instead... not quite correct, but smart thinking anyway!


In Italy you were really popular with the local kids, especially with girls. You quickly learned how to greet people when you meet them - you'd run to kids you never met before at a department store, take a pose like "here I am!" and shout out "Ciao!". This worked really well most of the time and you'd instantly have fans who follow you anywhere you go.

Monday was your birthday and we started the day by singing Happy Birthday to you. We kept singing it during the day and in the evening you started singing it too. Somehow the word "birthday" was difficult though, so at first you were singing "Happy to you". Then the words kind of blurred in your mind and after a while you were singing "Apple Yo-yo" (you call yogurt yo-yo) with the happy birthday tune. Cute!

You are extremely sensitive about many things. For example, you will start to cry hysterically if you think something is wrong with mom or dad, or you just can't reach us when you want. I don't usually use shaving cream when I shave, but the hotel in Serravalle happened to have shaving cream in the room so I made a white Santa-beard for myself out of it. Poor you cried your eyes out when you saw me! The same happened when I was traveling in the US last month and wanted to talk to you on Skype video chat... you just couldn't handle seeing daddy on the computer's screen.


Sensitive and careful, but really smart and a good boy. After your birthday dinner you went up to the hotel room with mom, and I stayed behind to sign the bill. When I arrived to the door a little later, I realized I didn't have a key so I had to knock the door. We stayed in a large suite and your mom was on the other side washing her hair or something, so she didn't hear me... fortunately you did!

After I knocked the door, I heard foot steps but nobody opened the door. I knocked again and I hear your voice saying "Oh no!" I knew you were behind the door worried because you didn't know what to do. There was someone at the door knocking and you were alone. We had told you to not open the door, so you were just repeating "oh no".

Then I said "Fei, open the door". A really happy voice replied right away: "Oh, daddy!" I could hear you working the door handle for a while, and then the door opened and your smiling face appeared. It's so great you didn't open the door until you knew who it was, and equally great you opened it when you hear it was me!