The last couple months since you turned two have been lots of fun. You are just starting to talk in well-formed sentences that you thought up yourself. Which is surprising. And entertaining. Like:
"I go outside now. Bye!"
"I ride my bike."
"Yilyee (Lily), come sit down."
"There's Mezia's van."
"Mom, come back."
"I stay home."
"You coming?"
"Oh, it's suppertime."
"Motorcycle!"
"No bugging me."
Because you do get bugged a lot. And when taken to the edge, you like to bite and hit. Not that we blame you, but then we learned that you got into a fight with Lulu at the daycare. She ended up bleeding and you had two lumps on your head. She's three, but she's sweet on you. We got to see it in action at Jack's fifth birthday party. Despite having her own bag of popcorn, she just wanted to eat yours. And she was always by your side. I think she's the highlight of your weekdays.
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| Lulu is the little girl behind Finn. |
On the weekends and some evenings, playing outside or with Lily and Carly is where it's at. You jump on the trampoline and play games with them. You swing beside them. You ride your bike, push the cart and throw your balls – and try to get into the garage where all the tools are. Our patio was a smart investment as it gets used constantly and as long as the gate's shut and the kitchen window is open, you are happy to be out there by yourself. You spend fairly long stretches of time in the sandbox or up in the "tree fort" scribbling over Lily's birthday party invitee list written in chalk. Some mornings before work, we send you out just to keep you busy while we finish getting ready. One day, you were eating a popsicle in the tree fort when you put in down on the chalk board ledge, then just came over and gave me a tight hug around the next before going to get your popsicle again.
You can count to 12 and say your ABCs (or something akin to it). You like to sing and read books about the babies on the bus, diggers and garbage trucks. You still sleep fairly well...until 5 a.m. when you request my presence. You spend at least the next hour in my arms until Lily comes in. Usually you spring right up to see her, even though she immediately starts poking and irritating you. She and you eat cinnamon toast or smoothies for breakfast. Usually you help Dad make the smoothies because they taste better then. You love ketchup on everything, maybe because we eat a lot of home fries as a supper side dish. Dipping is high on your list of suppertime demands. But you say "yucky" a lot, even when you don't mean it. Don't know if you picked that up from Lily or from daycare.
You go grocery shopping with Dad. I can't come because it all goes to heck then. I send you on a mission for broccoli, which you dutifully accept. You actually will go anywhere with Dad which is so, so nice.
While you haven't done it for a while, you'll put yourself in a time out. You sit on the stairs while I put the timer on. You can't move until it beeps. (We're just impressed that you listen because Lily never did. We still can't put her in her room without her literally trying to claw her way out!) But if you're well rested, you rarely have bad days. On the weekends, you slip into a two to three hour nap around 11:30. Weekends are so nice, especially since you don't require a whole lot of structure or entertaining. And we try to never have much to do, just play it by ear because the more you can play whatever you want, the better.
You still love to help. You scrape plates and stack the supper dishes. You put the condiments away. You help with the food processor and the mixer. You get toilet paper for Lily when she screams that there is none. You close the door when we leave the house in the morning. You start Nana's car. You pull weeds. You say you want to help water, but I think you just want the hose.
You want to play t-ball because every Monday through Thursday, kids and their parents walk behind our fence to the ball diamond. There are two games. One at 6 and one at 6:30 p.m. Sometimes you want to play with them so bad, you lay on the floor and cry. On Sundays, the older kids play football right behind the fence and you want to join them, too. Oftentimes, we'll just go to the park to be near all the action. That seems to help. You love climbing and going down slides with Mommy.
And I'm sure there's a lot I'm forgetting... You change constantly, always for the better.
