45 1/2 months

Papi Bello,

You are, for all the world, a sweetheart. Your favourite thing in the world remains birthdays, and it is how we mark the time for you: a thing might be after great-grandma's birthday but before your birthday: you get that. We're still working on the days of the week thing.

During the past couple of weeks, your cognition has taken off in leaps and bounds. Today, you first built a tower out of blocks. All the way up, you made sure that all blocks on each row of the tower were the same colour, creating a stripe effect. You are a boy after my own heart: when left alone with the Lego, I sort it by size and colour.

The next thing you did was to make a Dolly, and then a Baby, both with little feet, arms, stripey bodies, eyes, and hats. Then you made the Baby a blanket. You briefly put her in Time Out for Not Listening, but then you thought better of it. "Baby cranky," you said sympathetically. "She tired. Time for a nap." Then you sang two lullabyes: one that went "lullabye... lullabye... lullabye..." and another, more traditional: "Rockabye baby."

You love nothing more than to play pretend. You are, variously: Superman, Diego, and Space Man. I am Princess. I swear to God this is your invention, not mine. I would never have come up with it; nonetheless, you never fail in charming the pants off me.

"Help me Princess, I stuck in the mud! Oh, Thank You Princess."

"Princess, say: 'Help me Superman! I stuck in the mud. I in a tall tower.' Say it! Don't worry, I save you, Princess!"

And you always do.