Ben at 23 Months

My forgotten second child sneaked into his 24th month with hardly a nod from me. Seriously, where did March go??? As he quickly approaches two, I have been amazed by his changes. We had our friends’ boys over this past weekend and it was like all of a sudden, he’s one of the kids. He no longer just plays at being one of them, he IS one of them. It’s quite amazing and sudden.

I’ve also noticed a marked improvement in his vocabulary. We have a couple picture/word books that he loves to go through with us or Tabby. He points and says the word or waits for us to supply it. Sometimes he’ll mimic what we say, other times he just files it away only to bring it out again a few days later. Owing to this and that I hadn’t been through the book with him in a couple of weeks and suddenly he’d gone from knowing about 10% of the words to about 40% of them.

I am loving his ability to construct sentences too. He will now string 4-5 words together: “I want more juice, peeese!” and he uses the most darling interjections, “uh oh!” “Whoa!!” “oh no!” After reading him his Dora the Explorer book (he LOVES Dora, or DoDo to him), which ends with “Swiper no swiping.” He will invariably and automatically supply “Awww man!” Cracks me up every time. He also cracks me up with his long incoherent strings of baby babble. Only they’re not babble to him. He repeats them and parts of them for emphasis and he obviously knows exactly what he’s saying but we’re at a complete loss.

He is super physical and can climb and run and jump and kick a ball with absolutely no trouble at all. He is also more resilient, physically, than I’ve noticed in Tabby. Little scrapes cuts, even getting a finger shut in a door, are practically non-events. He’s too busy heading on to his next event. He loves to go for walks and desperately wants to ride his sister’s bike and trike. Perhaps this is why he’s forever demanding we put his shoes on. Still, with all this energy to burn, he’s not destructive, at least so far. He likes to take things out, but he’s just as happy to put them back and he doesn’t disassemble just for the sake of creating entropy, rather just to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

He definitely loves his food. I am happy to say he’s not a bit picky so far and eats most anything we offer him. Fruit is his undying love. He will eat a full cup or more of fruit each meal, sometimes more. He still loves his milk, but he has reacted well to our rationing it as his doctor directed. He doesn’t seem to hate spicy foods as much as Tabby and rather than spitting them out, just comments on them, “hot!” but usually asks for more.

What melts our hearts about him is what a snuggly kid he is. For all his go go go, throw, jump, physical, he loves to be held. He never wants to wake up without a chance to cuddle first. He will go to bed on his own just fine, but waking up he wants to do slowly, with someone holding him. It’s very endearing. I try to get all of it in that I can … who knows how long he’ll let me snuggle him.

I remember being a little puzzled when I found out that we were having a boy. I’m so much more used to little girls! And of course now I cannot imagine life without him. He brings us so very much joy. He is so funny and sweet and larger than life. We are unbelievably lucky and so blessed to have him in our family!!