The Atkinsons

When did my baby turn 2?

Since my little Elijah turned two last month I thought it would be a good time to do a post about him and all the little things he's doing these days. At his two year check up he was about 98th percentile in height and about 50th percentile in weight, so he is a tall skinny little guy and I just can't stop squeezing and kissing his tiny little body. He is getting a little too attached to his binky and so I think we are going to cut him off from that within the next couple weeks or so, which should make for fun sleepless nights had by all! His red hair and rascally smile are irresistible, and he is full of charm and charism which helps him get away with the fact that he barely says any words.

Olive also started to talk after she turned two. I don't know why my kids talk so late but they have no problem understanding everything going on around them and figuring out ways to communicate. Elijah recently started saying a few words, but still has a hard time making the correct sounds with lots of other words. He says "MOM" loud and clear about 50 times a day, which I love because he says it like a teenager and then when I come over he grabs my hand or signs something. He has started to say "cold" a lot when we go out in the cold and over our thanksgiving break my mom asked him to say "cheese" and he repeated that no problem. He has a hard time saying "dad" but he tries, and yesterday he said "bye" for the first time at church while we were waving good-bye to nursery leaders, so you know we'll get there someday. Slow and steady. He mostly communicates through signs and pointing, or grabbing my hand and dragging me toward the things he wants. It gets easier for me because I know his personality so well and all the things he likes, but I think other people just stare at him like "huh?" which makes him so frustrated. He will throw a really big fit if you can't understand him, and that is always frustrating for both of us. His most frequent signs are more, food, water, horse, and crocodile. He also like to makes up lots of signs and it takes me a bit to figure them out. He made up a sign for binky (of course) which is him rubbing his fingers together like the money sign, he recently made up a sign for sun which I think he got from the motions of the song I sometimes sing him "oh, Mr. sun, sun." He also modified the sign for fish to mean swimming and it is a very enthusiastic sign that he did every single morning over our vacation this weekend because he wanted to be in the hot tub every second. He is a busy little body, that is for sure.

He loves to cuddle and give kisses and hugs. If you ask him to give one to someone he has to give one to everyone in the room and sometimes asks that you give each other hugs and kisses too. He is so affectionate and always likes to be held and puts his little arms around my neck. He and Olive are always competing to be held and it causes some big drama because I can't always hold them both, Olive is getting so big, don't know how we will manage another one whenever we get one! He has a sudden spike in energy lately and I am beginning to notice a big difference between having a little girl and a little boy. At breakfast he will often just growl and shout and shake, as if he just has so much energy he can't contain himself. He is impossible in stores and always wants to be running wild everywhere we go. At his two year check up he was out of control. He was up on the counter turning on the sink and spraying it everywhere, then on the exam table dive bombing into my arms as I talked to the doctor, then opening all the drawers and pulling out all the supplies, then opening the door and running down the hall. The doctor told me she was concerned for his safety and I was like, "well then you watch him!"

His favorite things to do are to sit on my lap for hours and point to things in books and have me say what they are. He often corrects me because he think he knows better than me at this point, so I sometimes have to run the gambit of options to figure out what the thing "really" is, for example hamsters don't exist, they are all mice. Tadpoles look more like snakes apparently and so on and so forth. He loves it when I sit down to play with him using toys and he likes to show me the different parts of the animal and have me say what it is, like "oh that's your tail!" and he smiles and nods. He likes to build marble mazes and watch the marbles go down over and over agin. He loves to watch shows in my bed and snuggle with me, he will climb right in and pull the blanket over himself. It's so cute. His favorite shows right now are Octonauts and Dinosaur Train. He loves to get up and dance when he hears the intro music, and really he will dance to any beat that he hears. It's adorable. This stage is just so cute! He loves dinosaurs, which is something I think comes from his sister. I bought ornaments for them this year, Olive got a triceratops and Elijah a horse. I thought it would be a good memory since he loves to go visit the horses but he was mad he didn't have a dinosaur one too. He does love visiting the horses though, and signs and asks to go all the time. They moved the one across the street so now we go down the street and feed the three half-lingers. They are so pretty and fun and run to us when we come. He loves to eat salad (which is something Olive has never really eaten) and hasn't really cared much for chicken nuggets. His very favorite thing to eat is pasta with pesto. He will eat three bowls of that if you let him!

Two is such a fun age. I feel like each day that passes he learns something new and we all delight in it. Olive is so anxious for him to talk so she can interact with him more. She is also really frustrated with him most the time because he really wants to do whatever she is doing and that means he often takes her toys of messes up her room. It's always hard to find that balance between teaching kids to share and letting kids know that some things they don't have to share. Elijah is so good at sharing though, and for that I am grateful because there is already enough drama with the toys. Some days I want to throw them all out! He is so generous to usually give Olive anything she asks for, sometimes Olive takes advantage of this as older siblings often do. It's fun to see younger siblings do things earlier because they see their older sibling do things, like Elijah's insistence to stir the pancake batter too when he sees his sister do it. He's figuring out little tricks and finding out which things his mommy will give in. He begs to have books in his bed when goes down every night and during his nap time and I always let him so at the end of the week he has a stack of books as tall as he is sitting in the end of his crib. I delight in every moment of my day with these two kids, even moments where I want to scream and pull all my hair out. Can't believe I have it so good to have these two happy, healthy, red heads. Life can be hard, but that's why it can be so wonderful.

Elijah is grabbing his hair here because I put some gel in it and he thought that was so funny he wouldn't stop touching it,

We took him to his cousins to have more of an audience to sing to him and he surprised me by getting really shy and putting his head down the whole time we sang.

Rascal REFUSED to wear a costume so we just put little mouse whiskers on him and let him run from house to house.

He loved it of course.

Elijah loves story time at the library. He loves to dance and sway to the music and plops himself right in the middle of the blanket when they put it down to read the story.