The Adventures of Noah and Maya: Noah's "big sister" Stella

During our stay in Switzerland, we spent half of our time in Ferney and the other half in our old apartment building with our neighbors from olden times Myriam, Marco and Stella. We did not expect Noah to remember anything from that time period. In fact, he identified our old entrance and explained that he lived there as a baby. He also pointed to the place where our shoe rack used to be and explained to us that that's where we put the shoes (he also noted the next day upon seeing the boat to Yvoire that he had had his milk on the boat... he was 1.5 months old when we went to Yvoire!). We were floored. Here is Noah at the entrance of our old building.

Noah and Stella go way back. When Noah was still a Mr Coconut in his mommy's tummy. Stella would come around and touch the tummy and say "Coconuuuut" with an adorable French accent (she was almost three when Noah was born). Then Mr Coconut became Noah and here was Stella meeting little Noah.

The pair saw each other A LOT during the year Noah lived in Switzerland - so much so that Stella started calling Noah her "little brother". Here they were the last time they saw each other before we left for Singapore (though as those who followed twitter know, they came to see us out in Singapore a few months later).

The first morning we arrived in Nyon, the kids walked around the market - hand-in-hand.

Although there is quite an age difference between the two (almost three years), they played extremely well together - cooking up a storm in the kitchenette, morphing into wild animals... Stella took her big sister role very seriously and helped Noah and tried to care of him.