Twenty-Four Months Old!

Today The Bean is twenty-four months old!  

 

As our regular readers know, this past month has been an extremely eventful one.  We're happy to say that The Bean seems to be taking things in stride.  

-We've switched our evenings around and The Bean seems to have taken to the new schedule nicely.  We used to do a bath directly after dinner, but now he gets to play for a bit while Mommy cleans up the kitchen and Mama wrangles both kids in the living room.  When it's time to go in for the bath, we give him a five minute warning and usually he just walks right into the bathroom and tries climbing into the tub.

-He started having more difficulty going to bed shortly before Sprout's birth and that's continued, but so far it's been reasonable.    He's started to get four books (vs. three) and four songs while Mommy rocks him in the rocking chair.     

-Over the last month he has started developing attachment to a "transitional object."  There's a particular receiving blanket that we'd been putting on him at bedtime that he's now bonded to.  He'll often want to take it out of bed with him in the mornings, but so far we have been encouraging him to leave it in the bed and he usually does so with only a little suggesting.  We haven't talked much about our philosophy on having it out in the apartment, but we're on the same page about trying to make sure it doesn't leave home regularly.  Any opinions/advice on things you've done in this area?

-Our daycare provider has done a lot of talking about big brothers lately, and The Bean is acting the part of proud big brother while he is there.  This week, she asked who in the class was a big brother, The Bean and one other boy (senior/half-day kindergarten age) were the big bros in the crowd so they were paired together for math work that day.  I feel like she's doing a lot to help him with the transition. 

-We are trying to give him a little more control over his world, especially when it comes to food and clothing.  We'll offer him two choices and encourage him to pick the one that he prefers.

-The Bean has become quite opinionated on how he would like the flow of events to proceed.  For example, when listening to music, he'll be very emphatic as to who is to dance and where there are to do it.  He'll also let us know who he wants to sing songs to him and who should "stop singing!" (Picture a "talk to the hand" sign thrown in there for that last bit.)

 -Some of the nicer phrases he's taken to saying are "Thank you Mama!" (or Mommy) and "I love you MUCH!" which is just about as adorable as you can imagine.  In fact, it's what he was saying when his 24 month photo was taken.  The arms thrown wide show just how much.  He also is into giving compliments.  In fact, just the other day he told me, "Nice PJs, Mama.  Nice penguins."  (And in case there was doubt, I was indeed wearing penguin pajamas.)

-He still loves music and dancing.  His new favourite song is "Jingle Bell Rock".  We probably listened to it at least 500 times in the past month.  He got various percussion instruments (and a harmonica) for Christmas that he often uses to accompany the music we are listening to.    

 

-Christmas with The Bean this year was a blast.  He's such a social guy and loved having family and friends over.  He also is just starting to get into the present thing and loved opening his gifts and playing with them. 

 

- Even though we've never really let him watch shows more then twice in one week, The Bean will ask to watch Blue's Clues (we have a DVD) most days (he requests it complete with the sign of hands opening and closing by his face).  It surprises us how often he asks for it. Santa brought Jen a new tech device for Christmas that will let us pull video snippets from YouTube and play them on the TV.  We've been looking at expanding his viewing options to include Sesame Street and other educational things like National Geographic, though the latter is still a bit beyond him at this point.  Unfortunately, there aren't may full episodes of Blues Clues on there. 

 

-Lift-the-flap books have become very popular over the last little bit.  He got Biscuit's Snowy Day as a Christmas gift, and that was also quite popular for a little bit along with Duck and Goose -It's Time for Christmas.

 

-He's still between sizes on clothes.  Size 2 tops fit a little big, but not crazily so.  12 month pants are perfect (or sometimes a little big) in the waist, but too short, so we've moved him up to 18 month ones.  They barely stay on.  My aunt noticed this and got him suspenders ("Penders!") for Christmas.  Good thing the boy loves his accessories.

-Edited to add: At his two-year check up The Bean was 24lbs and 2'9".  That's about the 7th and 13th percentile, respectively and somewhere around the 25th percentile for weight vs. height.

 

Even with Sprout's arrival, I still think of The Bean as our baby.  It's hard to believe that it's already been two years since he was born.  It's been such an amazing two years and I absolutely cannot imagine our lives without him.