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| Happy 2nd Birthday, Bud! |
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| Birthday donuts! |
Well, we've hit another milestone, so I guess it's time to update the blog. Hopefully I'll have another blog to post before he turns 3. :) It's been a very interesting year watching him grow. It's still amazing to me the process of toddler's learning and how their knowledge seems to grow exponentially, one week he's saying a few words and a few weeks later he's talking in full sentences.
He has two main obsession in life these days: TV and Snacks (or in Seth terms, TZ and Nacks). Pretty much from the moment he's up until the moment he goes to bed, all he asks for all day are nacks. "I want a nack, mommy!" I ask him what he wants for breakfast and the answer is always "a nack" I try to be good about only giving him 2 snacks a day when we're at home and the afternoon snack is now usually some fruit and maybe a few pretzels. When we're out in public, though, it can be a totally different story. We were at a play date the other day and after I'd refused him a snack 5-6 times, he goes over to my friend and asks her for a snack. I've seen him occasionally do this with his grandma, but never with anyone else. Sounds like we may have a little moocher on our hands!
TV is his second favorite thing in the world, but I'm much better at only allowing this certain times of the day and not every time he asks. He will only watch a couple of shows and doesn't really like to watch anything new, but once he does like a new show, it becomes an obsessions. His new favorite went from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to Dora. I've heard Caillou is pretty annoying, so I do not allow that to be on, but I think Dora might be right up there with him! He does actually learn stuff on the show, so from that aspect, it's not too bad, but some of the characters on the show have the most annoying voices ever, especially Dora!
I'm also amazed at how much he has learned already. He can count to 11 and knows a few shapes. He's still working on colors, but seems to be getting more consistent with guessing them correctly. In the past two weeks his desire to color/draw has really increased. Before, I could get him to color for maybe 20 seconds. Now, he actually asks to do it and he seems to like to draw more than coloring pictures. I've now started to ask him what he's drawing and he goes through phases. For a while it was seahorses, now it's snakes. Sometimes he'll say he's going to draw something and then ask me if it looks right. What am I supposed to tell him? Of course it doesn't look right! You're 2 and just draw a bunch of squiggles, so I just ask him back if he thinks it looks right. Most of the time he says no. At least he's a good critic of his work.
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| Hard at work on his drawing |
We went out trick or treating for the first time this year! We did a practice "Trunk or Treat" at Aunt Mitch's church which went great and he really seemed to enjoy himself, even wore the costume happily (after refusing at first to put it on). He didn't say trick or treat to anyone there, or even on Halloween night, but we had fun going around seeing the neighbors in the rain. I even made him wear a poncho over his costume that I worked really hard on and didn't want ruined! We had another Halloween party for my Mom's Club, and I didn't want him to ruin his penguin costume, so he went as Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory. I thought he pulled off the costume well.
Another wonderful thing about two year olds is that they can be just a slight bit stubborn, or in our case extremely strong-willed! I blame it on his Italian genes, since we all know daddy can be a little quick-tempered as well! Time-outs are becoming a daily occurrence and we just had out first public time-out yesterday. He kept trying to take a toy off of a little girl at the library, so I whisked him off to an unused room for timeout. I'm sure it's only the first of many that we will have and hopefully he'll be a better behaved child because of it.
Speaking of stubborn, we had our first swim lesson last night. He was super excited to go and even willingly put on the swimming cap (which I thought was going to be a fight). Everything went downhill after that, quickly. He liked the water, just didn't really like to listen to the instructor or participate in any of the activities. He screamed for at least 25 of the 30 minutes we were there. Hopefully things will get better as we continue to go. At least he looks cute in his required attire!
All in all he's a pretty good kid and a quick learner. He's all boy and loves sports and dirt. Can't wait to see what this year brings for us. Should we start that time-out counter now? :)
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| Playing his "harmogiga" |
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| Pumpkin painting |
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| Riding in the longest grocery cart in the history of the world! |
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| Singing his favorite song |
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| Feeding a sheep at Soergels |
