Our little guy turned two years old on October 4! A full blown toddler-wanting to be outside all of the time, running around and chatting away. He is pretty dang cute. Some of his favorite activities are to throw and kick balls, read books, sing and do the actions to songs (we do most of the singing), take baths and getting wet in general, run around the yard with daddy, yells "truck" or "bus" when he sees them, go to the garden (now almost all dead) to pick tomatoes, kiss his pumpkin, or to water it, color, paint (water color), find sticks and rocks, point out the moon or airplanes in the sky, look for rainbows, push his stroller and to give his baby sister a hug and kiss (my tummy). He is in the 70-79% for height, weight and head size, although I could have sworn he was way over 30 pounds (he's just at 30). Luckily, he is still napping for about two hours in the afternoon and doesn't use a binky anymore. Some of his favorite things to eat are fruit snacks, cheese, toast with bam (jam), eggs, beans, marshmallows, noodles, bananas, peaches, raisins, whatever cereal we are eating, peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and yo yo (yogurt).
I've seen such a jump in these last few months in his speech and understanding of things. I remember being a little worried that at 18 months he wasn't saying many words. That changed! He knows a lot of words now and has started to copy a few things his parents say. Jack started saying "How 'bout..." and I wondered where he learned that. Oh, I guess I say that a lot? He's always liked to read and I try and point out letters to him. Months ago, out of the blue, he started to recognize and say the letter "o" in books we were reading. Slowly he picked up more and more letters and now knows the alphabet! What? He can also point out and say different shapes, the numbers 1-10, and colors. It's all thanks to books and coloring books that I've drawn those things in for him. One of his favorite new birthday toys is a Melissa and Doug alphabet puzzle that says the letter and a word that starts with the letter when you put the right letter on top of it. That really helped him to correctly say some of his harder letters like "q" and "r".
Speaking of his birthday, we had a small party for just family and a friend. I wanted to keep it simple and relaxed so I made pumpkin spice and chocolate peanut butter cupcakes that we had with ice cream. The weather was so nice that we all ended up outside. His cousins helped him open his presents and he got some new books, crayons, water colors, stickers, bubbles and clothes. We gave him the alphabet puzzle and a little basketball hoop which turned out to be a hit with all of the kids (as you can see in one of the photos below). Both sets of his grandparents ended up coming to the party a little early so we got to take a few special pictures of the birthday boy with them! He was loving all of the attention and love he felt from everyone! We sure love this little guy.
