You are two! This seems impossible to me, like you only turned one last week. But mommies are no good at time-keeping and so, here we are, anyway, with you in the throes of toddlerhood and Nora about to head off to kindergarten.
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| I've never seen you as happy as when we sang you happy birthday. Because we celebrated at home and with both sides of the family, you got several renditions and loved it every single time. |
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| Buddy the T.Rex is your favorite. In the grocery store last week, we sang the T. Rex song through the whole produce and meat sections. (I'm gonna stomp my feet and gnash my teeth and eat and eat and eat!) |
Two has brought with it determination and a lot of mess-making. You throw your food if you don't want it, or simply to announce that you're finished eating. You will eat twenty strawberries one day, and turn up your nose at them the next. You say no at least 50 times a day, to a variety of requests: eggs for breakfast, sitting on the potty, going upstairs for a nap, not pinching your sister. (Speaking of pinching your sister: stop it.)
Summer offers a new set of things to love: bike rides to the pond with a fountain in our neighborhood (one day I asked you what your favorite thing to do outside was, and you said "frow rocks, fa-fa" -- throw rocks in the fountain), swimming, playing in the sandbox and filling it up with water from the hose, boat rides at Mimi and Papa Joe's, and lots of parks and splash pads.
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| Boat rides at the lake always bring lots of smiles. |
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| I must have 20 pictures of you just like it. You would do this all day. |
You have lots of funny words these days - -
Boo-ah bah - granola bar (this is your favorite food)
Munana - Moana
Ta chi - Lion King
Ah-yo - Oreo
Smee - smoothie
Fuf fuf - bug
Iiiiice wa-wa - ice water
hair pay - airplane
farks - fox (sometimes this also sounds a lot like another f word)
Shauw-she - shower
Bas - bath
But-bu - Butler
Sesu a melch - cereal and milk (you eat it with a "poon")
Elewewan - eleven
Jump-een - trampoline
***I started writing this in July. It's now the end of August. I'm picking back up here...>>>>
You are starting to put phrases and short sentences together frequently now. You were fussy during your first swim lesson a couple of weeks ago, so this week, we told you if you did a good job, you would get a sucker. We also ride bikes to swimming, so I promised you that we would stop at the pond on the way home and you could throw rocks in the water. You did a good job, got the sucker, and threw rocks in the fountain from the little bag you filled from the leftover landscape rocks. When we got home, you ran to Daddy and said "Joe-Joe good job! Frow rocks fa-fa pond!"
This week, you've been obsessed with Zadie. You follow her around, commanding her to "Sit! Stay!" When she's trying to take a nap, hidden quietly in a corner somewhere, you find her and give her kisses, and put your arm around her with a goofy grin. She's not terribly thrilled with this, but you give her more treats than anyone else in the family, so she puts up with it.
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| You love salad, shrimp, and steak, because apparently you're a grown man in a toddler's body. |
All things music, singing, and dancing are your favorite. The Moana soundtrack is on permanent repeat in the car; you dance to Nora's VBS CD several times a day; you ask to "watch Elmo song" on my phone constantly. There is a song teaching the "e" sound that we've learned (Ed the Elephant likes red eggs, he rolls them with his heavy legs, eh-eh-eh-eh) and we sang it twenty times today, and now you have it memorized.
Dinosaur Train is still your favorite and you're learning different kinds of dinosaurs (and so are we). You're cautiously obsessed with school buses. You want to ride one (Joe-Joe bus!), but when we meet Nora at the bus stop in the afternoon, you hate that it's loud and cover your ears and cry. But, while we're driving Nora to school in the mornings, you screech "BUS! BUS! BIG-A-BIG-A-BIG BUS!" when we see them. Sometimes this is the whole way to school, since they're all heading in the same direction.
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| You are both so excited to see each other at the end of the school day. You often hold hands the whole way home from the bus stop, and it makes my heart happy. |
Often it's you that reminds the rest of us to pray at mealtime and bedtime, and you make us laugh and bring so much joy every day. We are so glad to have you as a quarter of our four and can't imagine life without you.
Lots of love,
Mommy
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