Angie's BoBloG: Bob at age two {winterspring}

Dear Bob,

You are two now. Twenty eight and a half months, to be closer to exact. The terrible twos, as they say, are upon us. And I will admit, your whining seems to have hit an all-time high. But you are so not terrible. You're pretty cool, in fact. And I love you so much that I could cry at any given moment just thinking about it.

Some of what's been going on with you lately...

Grandmother brought over a bunch of games that I used to play when I was a kid, so you've now added some classics like Perfection, Kerplunk, Connect Four, and Casper to your repertoire.

Playing at your train table is one of your favorite activities -- mostly you pretend to be either Fireman Sam and Helicopter Tom or Elvis, or dirt bike guy.

There were a couple of days last month when you stuck your fingers in your nose every time you said something polite, like please or thank you. I took it as an assertion of your independence: "I will be polite, but I'm also gonna be a little bit gross."

We bought you some superhero undies to help inspire you to quit pooping in your diaper.

You were rather impressed by how you looked, and I think we got one poop on the potty out of these, but that's about it. You're pretty much sticking with diapers for now...

But we did have some success with undies the other day -- you spent the whole morning wearing them and won yourself a few peanut m&ms.

You love for me to read lots of books with you. One of your all time favorites has been La Pelota Perdida. I must have read that one a hundred times in the six or so weeks we had it out from the library. Also Perritos by Sandra Boynton -- you love to read books in Spanish. Your latest favorites, though, have been the Berenstain Bears books (it all started with the "dangerous" book -- the Bears' Vacation).

You still love basketball...

In fact, you love ballin' in every form.

You love helmets and glasses.

You love chillaxin in your "froggy chair"...

This is how you usually wait by the door when we're about to go for a drive...

... and here you are in your car seat.

You love to go for walks and explore outside.

This is what I call your muppet baby face -- the one you make any time I ask you to smile or frown or make a silly face. This is your face.

You love to pretend with your little peeps. Here the horse and cow are sharing their food.

Lots of times you just pretend that you have a tiny invisible animal in your hand. "oh, mommy, wook at my puppy. he is so so cute! do you want to pet him?"

In the course of an average day, your pretending usually takes you through a half dozen or so personalities -- from fireman sam to puppy to weasel to "buck" and back to bobby again.

You're a great eater and you love all sorts of different foods, but lately we've been having this issue with you throwing a major fit at about one in three meals because you "just want to play."

I'm thinking it's about time you started pulling your weight around here, so recently I set you to work on the dishes. You liked the idea of helping, but the real fun was in making a mess of course.

That's the real fun in a lot of things I guess, including art.

The chance to run around nudie is a special treat; you make the most of it.

At night I always sneak into your room to check on you before I go to bed. I rub your back and your hair and hold your hand and pray for you and tell you I love you and wish sweet baby dreams upon you.

We've had a pretty lame winter this year -- almost no snow at all, but we did get some a couple of weeks ago...

Crossing a snowy yard is hard when your legs are so tiny...

The wind was so strong that it blew over the basketball hoop, which you thought was awesome. You were dunking snowballs for practically an hour.

You thought the snow-covered cozy coupe looked like a ghost...

... so I gave you a tool to unhaunt the car...

... and you bravely charged forth...

... and faced the ghost...

... and worked hard until all the ghostbusting was done.

You helped daddy build a snowman...

... and you went down a big snow pile slide.

And then you came inside to warm up and snuggle -- a very important followup to outdoor fun.

You don't go crazy over sweets, but you are definitely a fan of treats here and there. Grandmother's cheesecake is one of your favorites (mine too!)

Popcorn is another. "Mom, may we tan pwease have fam-wy pop-tohn time?"

You like to play tabletop shuffleboard and had fun showing off your skills for dad's friends when they came to visit.

You ride your "bike" (tricycle) around the house, sometimes with Scout on board, and fake crash and fall onto the floor.

You are so tiny and so smart that every single thing that comes out of your mouth is the funniest joke ever said. ("Vat's my best joke of my whole life!")

You know your alphabet and all the letter sounds; you can read just about any word or phrase, but you still can't read a whole page of words in the right order or turn the pages to a book one at a time. You know quite a bit of Spanish -- the colors and numbers, lots of animals, your body parts, every kind of ball (one day you kept saying "la pelota de spiro" and I had to ask you what it meant because I didn't remember; "tetherball" you said), and lots more random words and phrases. I have to keep my spanish/english dictionary close at hand because many times every day you ask me, "What do you say such-and-such in spanish?" You can count to ten, and a month or so ago you made a breakthrough with counting objects, which made me especially proud because I'm a math lover. We got a book about Fibonacci numbers called Growing Patterns from the library and you were really into it; read it over and over. You speak in full sentences -- paragraphs really. Everyone we meet is very impressed by how well-spoken you are, especially I think because you're so small that you look even younger than you are.

You've had the same two pacifiers since you were six months old. Your green suckie has been lost for months; your orange suckie is now a goner. We caved and bought you two new ones because the orange was so chewed up it didn't seem safe, and we're just too nice to make you suffer sucker withdrawal just yet.

We took our first overnight trip in a long time to visit Cass and Kara... Ended up being a bit of a disaster because the dogs woke you up in the middle of the night, and then you wouldn't go back to sleep because you thought they were chewing up all the balls, and because you just wanted to play with all of Lincoln's toys some more. So... I was up almost all night, which never makes for a happy mom, and then, perhaps due in part to the lack of rest, we caught the stomach bug that had been swirling around.

So you and I spent one day horribly sick. (The sickest you've ever been -- you threw up several times, which was sad to watch, but you handled it very bravely.) Here are the few pictures I took on our sick day...

The weather has been gorgeous lately, so we've been taking more walks. Sometimes we take the stroller but usually you like to walk yourself. The pace at which your tiny legs and curious mind navigate us along our route is painstakingly slow. But we follow your lead anyway... because you love the chance to explore and to be in charge of your own life for a little while.

I understand that being two -- and being a kid in general -- can be hard, with parents always telling you that you need to eat, need to sleep, need to clean up, don't climb on that, blah, blah, blah.

So I let you be in charge of yourself when I can... even if it means standing still in the middle of the road burning zero calories on our "walk" while you stick your foot in a hole or pick up more rocks than you can carry...

... or stop to pet the neighbor's fake dog lawn ornament.

Sometimes we throw rocks over the fence into the river. Because you're a boy and boys must do such things.

"Pweeease tan we doe foah a widdul dwive to a pwaydwound!?"

We love to oblige -- except that you sometimes throw fits when it's time to leave or when you can't ride every bike and scooter you see.

You love play doh; mostly you love all the smushers and cutters and other accessories you have.

You are for the most part a pretty good big brother to Owen so far, even though you often "just wanna rock him fast."

You love every single sport. You go nuts over every ball you see.

You've been insisting on wearing this red hat and pair of purple sunglasses every time you go outside lately.

and you look super cool.

Other new hobbies include...

playing with the fire truck Aunt Carol sent...

"ridin bikes" outside like the big kids...

swinging like a big kid...

dropping from the "high swing" all by yourself...

You make us so proud.

And seriously, Bob, we couldn't be happier that you are ours, our firstborn son. I love you SO much more than I ever knew I could.

I love you all nudie...