Two. Two. TWO!!! Seriously?!?!? The baby years seem like a distant memory now. We’re neck deep in the toddler moments these days & all the extra patience, love, & creativity required to parent our little man. A LOT has happened in Sammy’s development since my last post in August. I’m really not sure I’ll be able to capture it here. My brain is kind of mushy on all the details. It’s been enough just keeping up with him! Let’s try some quick bullet point highlights:
– He’s running, climbing, walking, jumping, dancing, crawling (he calls it turtle-foot), racing, chasing, sledding, and shoveling. Does he stop moving? Only just long enough to zone out & watch some of his tv shows on Netflix, or cuddle up for story time, or sleep in his crib.
– Sam is still all over the place with food & eating. Most meals feel like a battle & we rejoice when he eats something, anything, really. And then some days or weeks, he doesn’t stop eating. The food thing feels like the biggest roller coaster.
– Current fave foods include yogurt (still), milk, cheese, raisins, bunny crackers, butter, smoothies, pizza, mac & cheese, eggs & toast.
– Sam still loves spending time sorting, absolutely anything. And you can keep him happy as long as you let him help you with whatever task you’re doing. He’s great with laundry, emptying the dishwasher, rinsing dishes at the sink, vacuuming, and sweeping.
– When’s he’s not helping us, he keeps busy with all his tools, building blocks, Duplo, trucks, crayons, stickers, paints, building “fires” with wood, and books, books, books. Sam is quite the bookworm! Some days it feels like that’s what we spend most of our time doing. And it’s so adorable to listen to him read to himself! What a cutie.
– He’s totally an outdoors-type little fellow! Anything that has to do with the outside he loves, even in -20 winter conditions, he can’t wait to get outside & help daddy shovel snow. Although he’s not always crazy about the cold wind. Sam was an amazing helper with the garden last summer, watering, weeding, & harvesting! He helped put the veggies beds “to rest” in the fall, raked leaves, and hauled & stacked endless amounts of firewood (at home & the cabin). He adores carrying, stacking, & piling wood, and pretends to split wood (like his daddy with an axe… Sam uses his hammer or another piece of wood) and he has taken to building fires in the middle of our living room. Pray, he doesn’t learn to use matches or a lighter for a billion years! He enjoys the process of stacking paper and wood “just-so” to make the perfect little fire (in his mind), then blows on it to get it going. He even leaves it and then runs back later to add another log. Too darn smart!
– Sam’s language skills have exploded in the past two months!! I still can’t believe how quickly he picks up, not only new words, but entire sentences! He learns at least one new word everyday. You have to be so careful when you talk around him now. I find myself having to decide how to say some things, so that a) he will understand clearly what I mean and b) so that it is repeatable. We’ve had some fail moments that we’re not-so proud of. Sammy was pretty good at dropping the “f” word for a while, but he’s seems to have forgotten it finally. Lesson learned by all of us. We’re starting to work on “please”, “thank you”, “I’m sorry” and other necessary manners.
– Sam’s current fave shows are Caillou (still), Curious George, Magic School Bus, How to Train Your Dragon, and Pound Puppies. He also spent a lot of time over the month of December watching the claymation version of Rudolph, and Mickey’s Christmas. Since Sam wakes up around 5:00/5:30am, he starts his day with some Netflix time (after cuddles) so that mom & dad have a chance to wake up a bit. Then he gets to watch a couple of his shows after nap time (he’s officially down to just one nap these days).
– We’ve started doing a bit of potty training, but like most things, we’re letting Sam lead the whole process. If he’s interested in being on the potty one day, and then not so much the next day, that’s fine. We understand what a big adjustment it is for him (and us). At first he would barely sit on his potty, but then we grew smart and offered him a book to read (duh). That was the trick. Now, if he’s interested in trying to use his potty, he will be content to sit and read and wait for something to happen. Sometimes he actually “goes”, sometimes he doesn’t. At least he has learned to relax on it.
– Sam loves going to the zoo, Butterfield Acres (when it’s open), the cabin, and Grandma & Grandpa’s house. Let’s face it, he loves anything to do with Grandma & Grandpa! He usually gets to spend one day a week there and asks about them everyday.
– His sleep went super crazy wonky in the early fall, right around the time he weaned himself (Yep, he just decided one night that he didn’t want to nurse before bed. The next night, the same thing. He hasn’t nursed since.) I think he must have been going through some huge development stage. His vocabulary skills were just starting to take off, he went through a growth spurt & weaned himself. It was just a whole new time of personal awareness for him. And with all of that, came lack of sleep (for all of us). Once we survived our road trip to Colorado, we had to do a little sleep re-training with him. It wasn’t too bad. It’s never as bad as you think it will be (in my mind anyway) and it completely saved our sanity & got Sam back on track for the restful sleep he desperately needed. I’m sure we’ll go through more of these stages in the coming years.
And that, is as much of the past six months as I can remember. What a blur it is! I can’t wait to see the little boy he’s going to grow into this year!