The little man's actual birthday was on Friday, but part of the celebration was a week before, part of it on his actual birthday with his party-animal mom and dad, then came some more organized activities with little buddies in the following days. A trip to Chuck-E-Cheese and another get together here at the house. In all, it was a packed weekend and the little midget slept about as soundly as he has in quite a while - naps and at night.
His developments happen so quickly they're really hard to keep track of. It seems like every other day, or perhaps every third day, we'll notice that he's got a new word - acknowledging something by name that he hadn't before. Just as an example, in the past week, he now not only says "cookie" when he sees a cookie and wants one, but will now also say the word when he sees Cookie Monster on Sesame Street and is not prompted by anyone to say anything. That's pretty cool, when he figures things out on his own.
He's more coordinated and is 100% boy. He can't get up on the couch without going the adventerous route from the side, or even attempting to go up from the back. He's increasingly independent and will attempt to put on his own shoes. His newest, more annoying, trick is to take off his pants and diaper. Unlike when he was crawling, he's got a little independence now to roam around the house and go unsupervised for a bit ... until it gets uncomfortably quiet. Then we have to call his name and check on him, and more times than not recently he's on the floor with his pants off and working on his diaper. Kathy has tried putting the diaper on backwards, but he eventually figured that out. We tried duct tape, and that is effective, but sometimes makes it hard to get off when it's time to actually change him.
He is very musical. He loves to sing, and he can quickly be hyptnotized by a song - or most often, by the opening theme song of a cartoon, or really even a commercial jingle. Not that he watches a lot of TV, but when he does it's on the Sprout Channel - which is a PBS-owned cable network, with lots of Sesame Street and Barney. But two shows in particular that he likes are 'Bob The Builder' and 'Roary the Racing Car' - mostly because of the opening theme music. Another show is 'Wiggly Waffles' in the morning, a show with lots of nursery rhyme songs and dancing. He dances and sings right along with it. If Kathy really wants to settle him down and get him calm, she'll slip in a DVD of nursery rhymes and he stops, listens and loves it. We've tried watching movies with him before - including 'Tarzan' and 'Toy Story', but he just has a short attention span for that with no music involved. Kathy and I will watch TV at night and he'll be playing or annoying Maggie, then when the commercials come on he perks up. There's a Progressive car insurance commercial with a bright white background, lots of blue, and the brunette girl with bright red lipstick - and elevator music in the background. He sits in a trance watching that anytime it comes on. Academy Sports and Outdoors should put him in a commercial, because here he is with a vocabulary of 100-200 words, but when that commercial comes on and has that tag jingles of "the right look - the right price ... ACADEMY!" and he hums along with the whole thing and tops it off with a resounding "ACADEMY!" It's hilarious., There's no way he has any concept of the store or what's in it or what it sells, but the jingle is stuck in his head and he likes it.
We are working on putting two words together now. He has lots of words, and can ask for a cracker; when we ask him what he's supposed to say he'll say "please", but we always follow that with "cracker, please!" prompting him to put both thoughts together, but he hasn't quite grasped it yet. Same with other things - going outside (his word is "gus" - a sort of combo word from
go outside) put on his shoes, when he wants water ... "water, please!" , "shoes, please!" etc. He hasn't caught on.
He also hasn't taken to potty training, but we're on the path. He definitely knows the word "poop" and many times has said the word right before the room fills with his diaper aroma. A few times he'll stand there, hitting the back of his diaper, going "poop! poop! poop!" so we get excited and run him into the bathroom, put him on his training potty, then he has this look like - "What the hell did you do that for? I was just about to take a poop!" He stands up and gets aggrivated when made to sit back down. He just doesn't make the connection yet. But, heck, he just turned 2 and some groundwork has been laid. In the end we put the diaper back on, then five minutes later he's crapped his diaper, quite on cue.
He can be a handful for Kathy during the day - skipping naps, not being cooperative, making a mockery of timeout punishments (he quite enjoys sitting on his timeout chair - laughing and practically mocking his mother); being generally grumpy. All the negative things of 2-year-olds being two years old he is already beginning to acquire. But, he has a laugh that echos in my head each night when I go to sleep, and he is affectionate and loving to his parents at all the right times when it's really needed. I don't know how it's possible that another child is loved more than this one is by his mother and I.
Kathy is again watching her friend's little girl, Sarah. She and Kole have become regular buddies over the past few weeks. Today, with a little prompting, they caught each other's gaze and the mood overtook them both. We'll call today his first kiss with someone near his own age.
