Birthday Boy

Yesterday my little baby turned two!  And boy would you know it.  But that’s a post for another day.

Tonight I thought I’d spend a little time reflecting on what Nate’s all about at the ripe old age of two:

Nathaniel is crazy good at throwing.  Better even than someone who happens to be twice his age.  He’s always climbing and can already get up onto our bed by himself.  He runs like gangbusters but usually loses control.  There’ve been a handful of headlong dives straight into the cupboards.

Nate loves books.  And doing anything his brother does.  He could eat pretend food all day.  He likes crashing cars and knocking down blocks and wrestling.  He does a killer rendition of a puppy… never breaks character.  He wakes up every morning if he hears me, turns on his light, opens his door from his crib, and then waits quietly.  He’s developing a new addiction to his baybit (blanket).  His old addiction to his nah-nah (pacifier) has not waned.

Today at swimming I dunked him under at least 5 times.  He cried and high-fived me.  Then I decided it was a fine line between polywog water training and toddler waterboarding.  He doesn’t yet love swimming but has almost conquered his fear of dogs.  And if you heard his baaa, you’d think an actual sheep was in the room.

He eats smoked salmon and prawns, broccoli and guacamole.  He likes sweet and spicy pecans, salsa and ketchup.  The grass is always greener: if he sees something better he immediately spits out what he’s already chewing.  We have to keep all our condiments hidden, otherwise he’ll spend all of dinner sprinkling cheese, grinding pepper, and pouring sauce.  He’s a fan of babycinos.  And roaring like a lilon… sound familiar?

Nate LOVES music.  He’s an unbelievable dancer.  Lots of arms.  He gets bright red cheeks like his brother and has perfect hair.  Angelic highlights.

His words are particularly action oriented: do!, dump, eat, flush, jump, see see!  Plus he’s had an actual sentence for months now, I just didn’t know it.  “Ideeyit!” was in fact “I did it!”

And for posterity, a list of his latest vocab: agua, all done, alloh (hello), ange (orange), apple, baba, baby, bar, baybit (blanket), bird, book, boy, buhbye, choo choo train, dada, dark, duck, doggie, door, evevent (elephant), evy (heavy), eewee (owie), eyes, ghost, at (hat), hi, high, horse, ot (hot), hug, ice, ice cream, jacket, JJ, lilon (lion), light, mama, man, me, meow (cat), monkey, moo (cow), more, muk (milk), nana (banana), nah nah (nigh-nigh), no (no), no (snow), no (nose), ah oink (pig), onc (off), on, outside, pants, peese (please), pillow, poon (spoon), ribbit (frog), sauce, sheesh (cheese), shish (this), shashoo (thank you), shoe, sit, sorry, snuggle, teesh (teeth), tiss (kiss), tees (keys), treat, up, & zip.

Happy Birthday my little lilon.