Letter to our 2 year 4 month old.

Dear William,

On 04/08/2014, you turned 28 months old, or 2 years 4 months. You are 38.5 inches tall and weigh 35 pounds.

NURSING/FOOD:
Some of your favorite foods this month are broccoli and chicken tortilla soup. You also love cantaloupe and Greek yogurt. You tried lettuce or “leaves” (as you called them) for the first time this month, and actually wanted more.  Brussel sprouts and turkey are also favorites.  And, yeah, Mac-n-Cheese.

Nursing is a constant in our lives, a comforting thing for you.  When upset, you ask to nurse.  Sometimes I forget and am always a little surprised when you ask for it if you’re upset.  This month we tried some new “tricks”… nursing in our Tula carrier  and we figured out how to “snuggle nurse” so we can watch a movie together and nurse. I joke that I am your popcorn. ha  I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to figure out a few other ways to nurse, but I’m glad we have.

MILESTONES:
Potty Trained!
For the last couple of months, you’ve been telling me at random times that you don’t want to wear diapers. In addition, you’ve been waking dry from your sleeps, both overnight and naptimes, and then letting loose about 20 minutes after you wake and flooding your diapers. Since you came down sick on March 12th with a horrible virus (see more under Sleep & Health) that caused blisters in your diaper area, and since I had read the 3-day potty training method book, on Friday, the 14th, I decided to go with it. Since you were sick, and not eating, I was home with you anyway, I immediately implemented the language and ideas set forth in the book. On that first day, I was impressed that you articulated when you were going, but you told me too late. Then you thought that the running to the bathroom part was fun. Then you had to learn that you were in control of it, vs. it being in control of you. The next step was to learn to interpret the feeling of having to go, which would take 4-5 practice runs. The next thing to learn was how to release on command… this part of the skill still takes some concentration on your part. Since the 4th day (March 17th), you’ve not had any accidents. The only issue we’ve had is making sure that you’re aimed right in the toilet so we don’t have “fountain” (as you call it) problems, and that we pay attention to you when you say you have to go, even if you’re in bed or we’re driving on the freeway.

 

Climbing!
You’ve really started getting the hang of climbing with confidence. You’ve climbed before, but always requested help. Now you’re starting to do it on your own, without help. This is an exciting thing and a frustrating thing!  Exciting because it’s a new skill. Frustrating because you now climb out of your bed!

Hanging!
You’ve started to use just your hands and arms to hang from things. The footboard of our sleigh bed, the counter in our mountain cabin, and bars at playgrounds!

 

Forward Facing Car Seat:
In two of the cars you travel in (your father’s car and Grandma D.’s car, we turned your carseat to face forward.  You are still rear facing in my car seat and will be until you reach the limits of the seat.

SLEEP & HEALTH:

On March 12th, you came down with a 102.9°F fever that didn’t respond to Advil or Tylenol. We took you to the doctor who diagnosed you with the Hand Foot Mouth virus. You had blisters inside your mouth, on your tongue, roof of your mouth and throat. They spread on your lips, around your lips and on and in your nose and ears. In addition, they showed up on your feet, between your toes, the bottom of your feet, up your calves and on your thighs. They were in your diaper area, specifically in your butt crack. They were on your hands, between your fingers and on the palm and back of your hands, and up your arms. Itchy and painful. Poor baby!

 

Even now that the blisters have healed, if you have an itch you’ll start to scratch it, then stop and say, “I need anti-itch cream!”  It’s so funny and so sad.

Combined with this illness, you learned a new skill — using the toilet.

As a result of those two things, your sleep has been absolutely awful.  It’s been inconsistent and nuts.  You’ve been waking at night, sometimes staying awake for 2 hours in the middle of the night.  You’ve been refusing your naps. You’ve been either waking super early, like 5 am, then you’ll go back to sleep until we wake you at 8am to maintain a semblance of a schedule or wanting to sleep late.  If you do take a nap, we implement a hard stop at 3:30pm, no matter how awful the night before was.  If we don’t, even if you’re exhausted, you simply cannot sleep until 9:30pm.  Your father and I are exhausted. We have just recently worked out a strategy for dealing with this. That strategy is to just have your father go in and sleep with you. I tried to do that, but then you just want to nurse all night long and neither of us are sleeping if you’re nursing.  I’m beyond grateful that we moved you to a bigger bed so that we CAN do this.

If I do put you in your bed, when I think you’re mostly asleep, before you roll over, you say, “Mommy be rrrriiiiiight here.” It is the sweetest and most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever heard.

THINGS WE DID/PLACES WE WENT:

Because of your sickness and then potty training, we stayed home a lot this past month.  We canceled a trip to the mountains, but scheduled another one in place of it.  So, on 04/04 – we had our Mountain Getaway for three days.

PLAYTIME AND CHILDREN INTERACTION:
Parks and playgrounds – You haven’t met a playground or a park that you don’t like. You beg to go to them. You love interacting with the other kids. You adore going down slides. This past month you’ve starting climbing and hanging with confidence (without assistance)!

We went out to dinner with some long-time friends of ours.  You were enthralled with their daughters and one friend has a newborn babe.  You just loved being with everyone and hanging out!

THINGS I WANT TO REMEMBER:

When asked “Where did your food go?” You respond, “Down the hatch!”

You took off with some of your father’s dental picks the other night, ran and hid in your bedroom. Upon opening the door, you were intently flossing your teeth with them.

You sing random songs with “do doooo dooo” for the words. One night, for example, you were painting a waterfall in the bathtub and you were singing a song.  Mid-song you stopped and said you were singing the waterfall song. The next morning, you were singing something with “noo nooooo noooo” for the words and your grandma asked you if that were your no song.  You replied, “No.”

You role play with your toys. Your froggy lovey has a high pitched voice.  Eeyore plushes have low voice. They talk to each other, and along with the voice changes, each item when talking moves and wiggles according to your whim.

We went out to dinner one night.  Mid-dinner, you asked, “Where did Rachel go?”   Mystified, I asked you, “Who?”  You replied, “Where did Rachel go?”  After some thought, I vaguely remembered that our waitress had introduced herself when we sat down, and her name was Rachel.

Then, later that night, you were running around before bath time and you said to your father, “I want to climb the ladder?” Your father replied, “No, not right now.”  Without missing a beat, you turned to run away and said, “I go ask mommy.”

Just like mommy does, you like to sit on your “yoga” ball to watch movies.

You love your music, and sing the Hokey Pokey song and put your whole self in and your whole self out.  You love to sit on my lap while I put my makeup on and have me give you some first, but only “after mommy has some.”  You love Tuggy and constantly walk around him asking him to sit on your lap.  An interesting development to this relationship is that now Tug follows YOU around!   You love looking out your window in your room!  You love Eeyore, Lightning, Tow Mater and Froggy.  You love the candle and lotion aisles in stores, and especially smelling all the different scents — Bath and Body Works is kind of a nightmare to navigate with you.  You love to read books and I’m impressed that a couple times through them, you can “read” them to me.  You love to order your own food off of menus at restaurants.

 

I love you, in all your wonderful, observant, detailed silly self.  I love how you watch, listen and learn.  I love the sweetness of your spirit and how kind and gentle you are to the living creatures in your life.

Love always,

Momma