A few weeks ago Lex officially entered
toddler-hood. I say this because it was that day he learned the
fine art of throwing himself on the floor and kicking and
screaming. It was a fun few days :/ I think we did a good job
of handling it and it lasted for less than a week, though he
did have an impressive performance at playgroup one day.

Now he has moved on to the more defiant act of
throwing other things, instead of himself. He is being very
scientific about this whole process and is learning that it’s
ok to throw his bouncy balls around the house, but not ok to
throw his milk cup in anger. These extremes are easy. The
exhausting part is when he’s annoyed and throws something
unrelated. You can watch his little questioning face as he
picks up a boot, looks right at you, and throws it (never at a
person, so far, thankfully!) Of course he gets a “so sad” and
goes to his room for a few minutes. But then what if he throws
something (his truck, for example) when he’s not really angry?
Or throws something in his room after I’ve put him there for
throwing things. It’s like every day he thinks of new “what
ifs” to test out and I have to decide, on the spot, whether
it’s ok or not. Very tiring. I was getting a little lax about
putting him in his room (it’s not easy carrying a squirmy
toddler up stairs twelve times a day when you’re bursting in
the belly!) but I think that was part of the problem, so the
past few days I’ve been much more consistent and he’s
definitely catching on. It’s interesting to watch him
experiment on me. I know he’s just testing out his boundaries,
but I feel like I’m always just one step behind in making the
boundaries! It’s like he’s always running and I’m always
running right along side, trying to install the fence before he
gets too far, but always just one fence post ahead… never any
time to stop, think, plan, etc. Geesh! I’m going to take a nap
now!

He went down for a very early nap
today. Every time I put him in his room this morning (lots of
throwing) he grabbed his blanket and climbed in bed. Finally I
just closed the shade, turned on the fan, and left him there.
Silly boy. Testing the boundaries is probably just as
exhausting for him as it is for me. It would be nice to get
past this little game before new baby arrives though… nice,
but not likely :)

Lex got his first real haircut today. I cut
Alan’s, and then we put Lex on his lap and cut his hair too. I
wasn’t sure how he would react, but he was great. He seemed
mildly annoyed that I kept poking him in the head with
scissors, but otherwise he was content reading his books and
pretty oblivious to me. Do you like? Can you even tell from the
photo? He wore his 2T clothes today and looked like such a big
kid. He seems to have hit another speech burst too, so all day
I kept getting struck by how much of a kid he was. Weird, but
cool.

Tonight we had friends over for dinner and they
brought their two boys. We have been home all week and Lex was
thrilled to see other kids, particularly big kids (his
favorite). They played so well together. Lex has started giving
great hugs and he was hugging the boys all night. They were
cute and hugging him back. Tallis, the four year old, even gave
him a big hug on their way out. Then Lex stood by the door
waving and saying “Bye bye Tallis and Luca” over and over. Sooo
cute.

Ok, I remembered the other one. Can you
tell it’s a snow day and I have nowhere to go?

Letters
Along the lines of the alphabet, Lex has started pointing
out letters wherever we go. We pulled into the grocery store
parking lot yesterday, which is in a strip with a Borders
bookstore, and when I opened his door to get him out I hear him
saying “there’s an ‘o’, there’s a ‘r’, there’s a ‘d’, etc. I
presume he pointed out the “b” before I opened the door. He
also likes to sit at the table with me in the morning and
“read” the newspaper. He tends to prefer the advertising fliers
:) He’ll point out different letters (“s” in “sale” is common),
count the people, and point out different articles of clothing.
Today he got very excited about a baby in a blue hat. “There’s
a baby. Baby has blue hat. There’s hat.” Very excited. We were
in a waiting room the other day (for far too long, but that’s a
whole other story) and he kept bringing me magazines (Time,
Newsweek, Car & Driver, etc.) and he’d crawl up on my lap
and flip the pages. I’d say “can you find a ‘K’?” and he’d look
and look until he found it. Sometimes he’ll even find big
letters and little letters (caps and lowercase).

Anyway, Alan reminded me that all kids like to
point out objects that they know the names of (Lex used to love
flags and clocks), but I think it’s extra cool that the objects
he’s fixated on now are letters :)

Ok,
time to do something useful while he naps. Hmmm… does
knitting count as useful???

Since this is a baby book too, there are a
few milestones that I think I failed to mention lately.

Alphabet
Shortly after Christmas, at about 19 months, Lex started
singing the alphabet song. I think a lot of credit is due to
his LeapFrog Fridge Phonics toy. These
are great magnets (I got him the whole uppercase and lowercase
alphabet) with a reader. You place a letter in the reader and
it sings tells you the name of the letter, what sounds the
letter makes, and then sings a little song. He loves it. It
also has a button that plays the whole alphabet song. At about
19 month he was walking around the house singing the alphabet.
I also make his teething biscuits in the shape of letters, so
when he gets a biscuit he’ll tell me the letter, often the
sound, then find the letter on the fridge and put it in the
player. So smart!

Books
For awhile now we’ve had a rule that Lex has to put his
books back on the shelf after he reads them. He’s pretty good
about it and it really helps keep the mess under control. He
was never able to put them back vertically, but he always makes
a pile on an empty shelf. Lately though, our bookshelf seems to
be getting smaller and smaller as the book collection grows…
this has made it more difficult for him to find a horizontal
surface to put the books away. I just noticed this week that he
has started putting the books back vertically. He’ll look for a
slot at one end of the shelf or the other, or somewhere in
between, and slide his books in. I think this is a great new
skill.

Eating
Lex gave up his highchair a few weeks ago in favor of a
booster seat at the big table. This was very convenient because
it happened right around the time I was babysitting Kaelen, who
needed the high chair. It was an unrelated event, but
conveniently timed. The table is a little messier because he
isn’t so contained, but it also has it’s benefits. Lex has
taken to eating what he wants and then, when he’s done, he’ll
push his plate and cup away and then push his chair away from
the table and ask to get down. Much, much nicer then his
previous method of trying to get his plate off the highchair
tray then crying because he can’t get the tray off of the high
chair to get himself down. So now he joins us at the table
every night to eat dinner. He still won’t eat what we’re eating
(usually), but he’ll sit with us and eat the things on his
plate that he likes. He’s such a kid now. It’s amazing.

Teeth
I think we’re on the down cycle of a teething burst. He
recently got all four of his eye teeth and spent mucho time
chewing on his hand and drooling like crazy. All that’s left
now is the 2yr molars. Then a few years off before they all
start falling out :)

Hmmm…. I thought
of another one last night (Lex had a fever, we were up *a lot*
late night), but I can’t remember it now. Oh well. I’ll try to
write it down when it comes to me.

Today is a big day for Lex. We got him a toddler
bed this week (borrowed it from a friend, really) and today was
our first attempt at sleeping in it. Didn’t go so well :) Alan
brought the bed home on Wednesday, Lex and I set it up
Thursday, and we brought it upstairs to his room this morning.
He loved it. He “helped” me set it up last night and played on
it for a long time this morning. At one point, I was my room,
and I heard Lex putting doggie to bed. “Night doggie.
Cumidifier on. Fan on. Blanket for doggie.” Very cute.

We got off to a bad start on the nap though.
He usually goes down around 1:00pm, but today we went out to
lunch and didn’t get home until 2:30! And, of course, he fell
asleep in the car on the way home. So when I tried to put him
down it was way past naptime and he’d already slept for about
10 minutes. As most of you know, once a kid snoozes for a bit
they are pretty sure they’ve had their nap for the day. So we
spent an hour with me sitting outside his door and going in
every 2 minutes to put him back in the bed. He was happy
sometimes, angry othertimes, but always got back in the bed
when I came in. After an hour (now 3:30!) he stopped getting in
the bed and started pushing back. I said, “So sad. I guess
you’ll take a nap in the crib instead.” And put him in the
crib. He screamed like mad for 20 minutes, intermingling “so
sad” and “want new bed” in with the cries. Then he fell
asleep.

Now I have to be a mean mommy
and wake him up in a few minutes since it’s nearly 5:00 and a
little late for napping. Luckily we have Alan’s company’s
holiday party tonight, so he’ll be up nice and late
anyway.

We’ll try the new bed again
tomorrow and see how it goes. I think he’ll get the hang of it
sooner or later :)

Alan was bathing Lex tonight and sat down
to read a magazine while Lex played in the tub. After awhile
Lex got bored and leaned over the edge of the tub, looking at
Alan, and said “I see you read book.” According to our pedi, by
age two children should have a vocabulary of 50 words and be
able to use two word phrases. I think we’re doing ok
here.

For awhile now Lex has been saying “I love
you too” when Alan or I say “I love you” to him. This morning
he came into the office, put his head on my lap and said “I
love you pukin.” It was so sweet!! I grabbed him, gave him a
big squeeze, and said “I love you too.” He said it again,
unprompted, later in the morning too. We were getting ready to
go for a walk and he was sitting in my lap so I could put his
shoes on. He turned his head to look up at me and said “I love
you.” He’s so perfect!!

Lex got his first haircut tonight. His
little tail in the back was getting out of control. Not in
length so much as in rattiness. It was constantly tangled and
sticking out at odd angles — so we chopped it. Lex sat on
Alan’s lap and read a book (The Great Cookie Thief — his
favorite) while I gave him just a little snoop. I tried first
with the clippers, but he wanted no part of that, so I used
scissors instead and he was fine. He shooed at me a few times
because my efforts were interfering with his storytime, but
otherwise he was great. I tried to leave as much of the curlies
as possible without the mess. We’ll see how I did in the
morning. :)

On another note, I’m growing
a gymnast inside me. This little one is constantly on the go.
Lex has started sleeping later (6:00 or 6:30am), but still
frequently makes noise around 5:30am. This usually wakes me up
and then I can’t fall back to sleep because the little one
inside is bouncing all around. Silly babies!

Holiday preparations are underway. I got tired of
unpacking, so I moved on to decorating instead. This weekend we
are going to attempt a Christmas tree. Will be our first (not
counting the fake, table-top one Alan’s parents gave us a few
years ago). I’m sure it will be quite the experience. And, of
course, I’m so excited! :) In the meantime I’ve been slowly but
surely putting out the decorations we have and teaching poor
Lex that they almost all are for looking, not touching. He has
been perfect so far, but I think the tree will overwhelm him
with temptation.