Letter to our 2 year 2 month old

Dear William,

On February 8, 2014, you turned 26 months old.

I took you to the doctor this past month for your 2 year appointment. You weighed in at 35 pounds and were 38.5″ tall. The doctor was impressed with your size, and said you were taller than most three year olds and weigh more than most 4 year olds. He was not concerned with your size since you are consistent with your overall growth curve. I had delayed your shots this past year, because every time I wanted to take you in, you seemed be coming down with something… after awhile of this, I finally just decided we would wait until all your teeth were in. Now, here we are, all your teeth are in and we’re playing catch-up. So, this past month you were given your MMR vaccine and a flu shot. I expected side effects, and sure enough, 8 days later you started running a fever of 102°F, a common side effect of the MMR vaccine. It lasted 3 days (the doctor said it would), and then you seemed to be OK, just a bit fussy, cranky and clingy.

LANGUAGE:
You continue to excel in mastering the English language. You fearlessly tackle the pronunciation of most any word and own it with a grin. You eavesdrop on any conversation around you, including those of people in the store, and like to repeat parts of it to us. For this reason, I love to talk to you while we’re nursing, because I know you’ll regurgitate it at some point later. For example, the other day while you were nursing, I was trying to keep you awake, so I told you, “When we’re done nursing, we’re going to Costco to get gas. And THEN we’ll go inside and maybe get some raspberries. We might get some blackberries! And when we’re done shopping, we might get some ICE CREAM!” Sure enough, after we were done nursing, we headed out and when we parked you told me, “We’re going to get raspberries, dude! And blackberries, dude! AND ICE CREAN!!” (You still say “ice-crean.”)

You tell me about your day with Grandma when I get home, that you go to library storytime, and what activity you do.

You are also putting words to your feelings, which kind of boggles our minds. Example: When we were driving around this past weekend, you didn’t want to go back to the cabin for your nap. You told us so, and when we continued on our journey to the cabin, you screeched and then, mid-screech, you stopped and said, “I AM SO ANGRY!”

You correct yourself and make jokes when talking… for example, you will say, “That is red car. No, that’s NOT red car, that’s BLUE car! haha That was funny!”

NURSING/FOOD:
You are doing well with your food. You continue to be willing to try most anything at least once and are curious about what we all have on our plates. One evening I was packing my lunch for the next day, and you wanted to sample my protein snack mix. It was the funniest thing to hear nuts crunching in your head as you sampled my mix and decided you really liked my freeze dried black eyed peas. The cashew you sampled came right back out, though. ha
You continue to enjoy nursing, and request it when you need to be reassured, or if you get hurt, if you are cranky, and when you wake up or for naps or bedtimes. I enjoy the blessing of nursing you. You love to hum your favorite songs to me while we nurse and, oftentimes, I join in the humming just to see you smile.

SLEEP:
Your nighttime sleep is great. You regularly get about 9 hours per night… you just won’t sleep longer than 9 hours at night. Your morning wake time has moved to 6am.
Naps — at least once a week, sometimes twice, you skip your nap.

THINGS WE DID/PLACES WE WENT:

01/15, 2 year doctor visit
01/18, mini train rides in Costa Mesa
02/01, breakfast with Grace & family
02/02, mommy & son date to California Adventure
02/08 weekend, we went to our family’s mountain cabin

PLAYTIME AND CHILDREN INTERACTION:
Library story time on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Music class on Tuesdays.
Neighborhood kids, Josh and Melody, Abigail and Connor… and a whole bunch of other kids down the block that you love to play with and use their toys.
You continue to love your Cars and trains. When we’re out to dinner, you put the Cars in the “garage” ( the triangle food advertisers on the tables) or drive them on the window ledge or booth dividers.
Your favorite movie continues to be Cars.  Your second favorite is Frosty the Snowman.
Your favorite song is Trot Old Joe.  You also like to sing Frosty the Snowman, the ABC song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Zoom Zoom Riding in the Car, Working on the Railroad, No More Pie, Jingle Bells and the Hello Song.  You also really like the soundtrack from Cars the movie.

THINGS I WANT TO REMEMBER:

How you love to give “character” to your toys, often calling me over to “be” one of them. “Mommy, be Eeyore, please?” You’ll ask. Then you will often involve another set of toys; blocks, for example, and then you will build the blocks and Eeyore is supposed to knock them over.

How, for the first time this month you said, “Mommy, watch this!”  You came running in the kitchen with a beaten up box and a car and you showed me how the box acted as a ramp and the car rolled back and forth on it because it was bowed in.

How you love to help us and one of the chores you’ve taken on is to take our empty water bottles and put them in the recycle can, which is inside a lower cabinet. Sometimes, in the interest of cleaning speedily, your father and I will put them in the fruit bowl which sits on the counter above… apparently we do this more often than I thought, because last week, you took our empties (ha ha, empties) and promptly walked over and put them in the fruit bowl and walked away.

How you love shapes, and you’re very “into” drawing shapes (with a little help from me). You adore your chalk board on the fridge and your bath crayons, and really like to draw houses and neighborhoods. One of your favorite YouTube videos is a train that teaches the various shapes.

You really like houses and cottages. We purchased on clearance a Little People’s Santa’s cottage at Toys R Us last weekend. It has a bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and office, and the first thing you do when playing with it is to make sure Santa goes in the bathroom and you stick him on the toilet and tell me he’s going potty.  ha

How you take initiative and will put your toys away when you’re ready to move on to the next thing, singing “BOM BOM” as you do so (that’s what they do in music class). You also will clean up with a paper towel after you spill something.

How you love to go outside and run around, or just play with your toys outside.

How you are now articulating that you understand the schedule changes of weekends and weekdays. On weekday mornings, you now say, “Grandma D. is coming… grandma’s not here yet. Mommy and daddy go to work.”

How you love to choose if you want to go in back carry or front carry with our Tula carrier, and then you giggle and dance and move around, or sometimes you just snuggle in and lay your head on me.

How we met your father in Walmart one night and you were singing, quite loudly, a medley of all the songs you know. We wandered over to the toothbrush section and that’s how your father found us, by following the sound of your songs. What was even sweeter is that every person we passed grinned at you, and you grinned right back at them, singing your solo to your audience.

How we went for a walk over the weeked in the mountains looking for snow. The first day there, your father took you for a walk and you guys found some snow deep in the forest in shade. The next day I took you for a walk, but it had been warm and there was no snow to be found, as it had all melted. Suddenly you started yelling, “Santa! Where are you Santa? Santa will fix the snow! Frosty!? Where’s Frosty?”

As I write this closing paragraph, we are currently at our mountain cabin for the weekend. I’m listening to you run in the living room, your feet making a rapid fire sound as if you’re running on top of a drum. I close my eyes and just listen… I hear your feet, I hear you jump, I hear you laugh. How do I put into words how much these things mean to me?

Love you forever,
Momma