That 2 year milestone is creeping up on us and will be here before we know it. In fact, I've already started planning your birthday party, which I am really excited about!
The past month has been a whirlwind with the holidays and me getting busy again with work. You repeat anything and everything you hear and you are starting to put more words together to say longer phrases. You say things like "want up" instead of just "up" and you can tell me things like "finger hurt" or "bumped head," which is extremely helpful.
For a long while now you have been jumping in while we read books to finish sentences and phrases for us. At first it was mostly with rhyming books and I would pause before the last word and let you finish to complete the rhyme. But now you jump in all over the place to let us know you pretty much have the books memorized. I don't think it's an indication that we read the same books all the time either because even when we check out new books from the library you are jumping in on those within a day or two.
Everyone pretty much knows I love Christmas music. I used to start listening on Thanksgiving Day and play nothing else all the way until New Year's. But I have to admit in the past few years I've been starting even a little earlier (shhh, I do this only in secret), several days or even up to a week before Thanksgiving. So of course you heard more than your share of Christmas music over the holiday season. By the time Christmas arrived you had your favorites: Jingle Bells, Rudolph (or as you say "Reindeer Song"), Frosty, etc. And the cutest thing ever was when you started singing Jingle Bells on your own. I think I already posted a video of this, so I've pretty much already burst my own bubble, but I thought I would share again anyway because it's just so stinking cute. It goes something like this: "Jingle ball, jingle ball.....WAAAAAAY." You eventually started adding more "jingle balls" before the "way" to where it really resembled the actual song in the end. You haven't been singing it as much lately since we aren't playing the holiday music anymore, but every once in awhile you still throw it in there just for good measure.
Daddy has been teaching you your full name as well as his name and my name. You actually seem to have picked up on it more quickly than I would have guessed. You will do things like point to him and say "name Daddy, name Johnathon" or point to yourself and say "name Britz" and point to me and say "name Britz too." It totally took me by surprise though one morning last week when I was working and you were coloring with Daddy and out of the blue you said, "Brittany color" and held a crayon out for me. I'm not sure how I feel about that just yet.
One day last week when you were being particularly whiny I was being silly and asked if you wanted to be held like a baby burrito. When you were an infant I would wrap you up in your hooded towels after bath and tell you that you were my little baby burrito. So on this day I picked you up and cradled you in my arms and started rocking you like a baby. I was really just being silly at first but you were eating it up, so I started singing "Baby Burrito" (like the tune of Baby Beluga), but since I had no other words to the song I just kept repeating "baby burrito" over and over again and you loved it. Now it has become something that you seem to find comfort in. If you get upset sometimes I sing it to you and you smile so big. And at pretty much every naptime and bedtime you tell me "want baby budito" and I sing it to you while you lay in bed trying to go to sleep. Sometimes you even sing along.
We had a big breakthrough on potty training when you started using public potties. Daddy and I are now pretty sure you are sampling public potties as it seems that every time we go somewhere new you immediately declare you need to go potty. I think you just want to check them out, but you usually pee, even if only a tiny bit, so I don't really mind. We still use pull-on diapers when we're out but it's not uncommon for us to come home with the diaper still dry. As for potty training in general, you're still getting better but not quite there. It feels like a 1 step forward, 2 steps back process. Last week you were doing amazing, but we've been having a lot more accidents again this week. A few weeks ago we started a new reward system with stickers that seems to have gotten you back interested again and we've been improving overall since then. One day we will be fully potty trained I just don't know when. This whole process makes me fully confident that anyone who claims to have potty trained their child in 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, etc. is a bold faced liar. Or maybe those people just have a really lenient definition of what qualifies as potty trained.
We recently got you your own little table and chairs that you now get to eat at. This sounds cute and it really is, but the real reason is because you were pushing your chair out from the table so hard that we'd started seeing the front feet come off the ground and we weren't interested in waiting to see how long it took for you to push hard enough that you pushed the chair over completely. I'm telling you this, so that I can tell you the next story....
On the weekends, Daddy is generally allowed to sleep in a little since I wake up early anyway and he gets up with you every day during the week while I work (or he's supposed to anyway). Last Saturday I had finished my breakfast and was cleaning up the kitchen while you finished eating. I looked up and you were gone from your table. This is not entirely surprising as you are enjoying your new freedom and like to roam during meals now. But on this particular day I noticed that your bowl of oatmeal was gone too. I called to you and didn't get a reply, looked around the corner and the living room was empty. At which point I was sure you'd gone back to wake Daddy. I walked to our bedroom and sure enough there you were with your bowl of oatmeal sitting in our bed next to him. I'm not sure if you were trying to feed it to him or just say hello, but it was pretty funny. The next day I caught you in time before you made it out of the kitchen with your plate. :)
Finally, I am certain you have a special place in your heart for your Grandpa. We spend a lot of time looking at pictures of all our family so naturally you talk about all of them a lot. But Grandpa seems to always be the name that comes up first. When we look at pictures, he's often the first person you point out on each page. When you pretend to talk on your toy phone or my cell phone and I ask who you are talking to, it's usually Grandpa. When we were at the park and needed to get home for a Skype date with Grandma Norma and Grandpa I was having trouble getting you focused on heading to the car. But when I told you we were going to go home to talk to Grandma and Grandpa you changed your tune and headed straight for the car saying "Grandpa" the whole way. No offense to anyone else, you talk about Grandma Norma and Grandma Tami lots too, but I do love the way you love your Grandpa.
Okay, one last note. This week we took Daddy to visit the two preschools I had narrowed it down to. He really liked both of them, so I am patting myself on the back. We are pretty sure we have decided which one you are going to, which is a big sigh of relief for me. Yay!
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