Jani Penttinen

To say that your life turned upside down when your little sister Yuer was born would be an understatement. In fact, it is hard to think of anything that would not be at least somewhat affected.


You absolutely love Yuer. You totally adore her. When you see Yuer you run to hug her and say "loves Yuer". You like to carefully investigate her tiny fingers and toes. If she starts to cry, you are the first to get up and start running towards her, calling "It's OK Yuer! Coming!"

You get less attention from us and you sometimes do things to get more attention, but fortunately you've shown no sign of jealousy towards your little sister. Even sometimes when I'm trying to give some extra attention to you and you hear Yuer's voice, you take my hand and lead me to her.


Recently you have clearly shown us where the name "Terrible twos" comes from. You used to be such a well behaved little angel, and most of the time you still are quite ok. Much wilder than before, but still mostly reasonable. But then comes the flip-side of the coin!

Just today a piece of lego dropped down on the floor. The old Fei would have picked it up immediately. You just looked at it for a while and then pushed another piece to the floor as well. I told you to pick them up, so what did you do? You pushed both of the pieces under the sofa!


Something odd is that you wake up every night almost exactly 1:00 AM and start crying. Usually it's enough if I call you name and say that everything's ok, or at most go next to your bed for a little while. Sometimes though, such as last night, you just won't stop and nothing seems to help. As the last resort it usually helps if I pick you up and carry to the balcony to watch the moon.

Watching the moon is something you love. For the past few days it's been rainy and cloudy so we didn't see the moon, but usually we can see at least a little bit of it. When you see the moon, you start smiling and point at it with your little finger. We have spent countless of evenings out on the balcony looking at the moon and the stars and talking about the life, the universe and everything.

Couple months ago I wrote that you had almost learned the alphabets. You're long past that now and you easily recognize all the letters in capital and lower case. You can "read" a few words like Fei or Yuer, but I guess reading in this case means that you recognize the words rather than actually reading them.


You love counting, too. You often count to ten (!) before you do something. It's really funny, actually. You're just about to throw a ball, but before doing it you have to count all the way to ten. Sometimes you skip 4 and 5 when counting to ten, even though you have no problems with them if you are only counting to five, for example.

A week ago we took a train to visit Lucerne, which many say is the most beautiful place in Switzerland. It's only a little over one hour away from here so it's kind of silly we didn't go there before!


Lucerne was beautiful indeed, but the super-absolutely-most-exciting thing was the transportation museum! Little did we know, Lucerne has a museum which contains huge buildings for trains, cars, boats and airplanes. The car building was so much fun that we couldn't get you out of it without a huge cry.

The weather was perfect but unfortunately the evenings in Lucerne were quite chilly and as a result all of us except for your mom got sick. Kind of ironic that we almost canceled the trip because she was feeling a little sick when we were getting going! Yuer is better now, but you and I are still quite sneezy and coughy with a runny nosey. Oh well.

Gosh, the time runs. I've been meaning to write more often but unfortunately the two of you keep occupying all of my spare time! A month ago you and I went to see Switzerland's natioanal Circus Knie in the launch of their tour here in Rapperswil. We packed some snacks and juice in your little back bag as the show was quite long. You really enjoyed the first half, with amazing shows by horses, elephants, giraffes, zebras and even lamas. After the intermission you started to get tired so we bailed out of the arena. We ate some french fries and checked out the circus surroundings before heading back home.

You talk pretty well now, with more and more complicated sentences. Unfortunately you still cry quite easily and when do you, you seem to completely forget that you can actually talk. It would be so much easier if you could just say what the problem is, but no can do.

With all the little terrible behavior going on, you're still a really sweet kid. You love playing soccer, though for now it just means kicking the ball and then running after it. You like doing puzzles, and typing letters on a computer. You still love playing with cars and trains, too. In other words, you're great a little boy!