I Have Stopped Counting His Age in Months, Too

Around the time HR turned one, I stopped keeping a baby book. It wasn't a conscious thing, I had just filled up the one I had with his first-year milestones, and everything kept coming so fast and furious, so it fell to the bottom of the pile. His life's been exhaustedly documented through pictures (the cell phone camera is a particularly helpful tool here), but I realize that my only catalog at this time is this here blog. Which is cool by me, I mean it might not last forever, but I think I can find a way to preserve what I get down in here for some type of posterity. But as my child grows and changes, there's so much that never even makes it into here. In an effort to catch these fireflies before they go out of season, here are my favorite things about two-year-old HR.

-He is still a mighty cuddler, both accommodating my not infrequent requests for hugs and offering them voluntarily. I don't expect this to last forever, but I really hope it does.

-His little voice and ever-expanding vocabulary. Someday I might worry about his speech, but for now I love every mispronunciation. I always say, "Hi buddy!" or "Hi honey!" when I see him, so he's started repeating it back to me, combining it sometimes into "honeybuddy." I love the way he names things, either repeating something we've said or bringing it up from his own interpretation of information. Right now his farm animals are his most cherished toy ("fumm emmuls"), and his "small animals" ("fmall emmuls" - tiny pigs and bunnies), not to be confused with his "fmall guys" which are just miniature Thomas trains. The other day we returned from an outing and he was thrilled to get back to the toys we had left behind. It made me crack up the way he shouted "small animal time!" like that was a thing (excuse me, "fmall emmul dahhhhhhm!"), and he got to work lining them up on the stairs for reasons only he can know.

-Witnessing independent play like the animal line-up, and hearing him babble to himself after he's in the crib for the night. I can already tell I'll be keeping that video monitor active far too long - my kid is just too amusing to warrant privacy.

-The information gathering stage in full effect - he wants us to make lists for him all the livelong day: lists of his friends, his family, who works with Daddy, who works with Mama, never accepting when we run out of answers. He likes to hear each day's schedule, who he'll see and what he'll do. I love that he's curious, and he's also pretty skilled at remembering people. Part of that is because we've drilled loved ones into his brain since birth - we have a LOT of photo books and he's always loved looking through them. But part of it is that he's smarter about things than we're ready to accept.

-The surprises, every day. Saturday morning all three of us were shocked when he made his first #2 on the potty - I do not believe that potty training is imminent, I'm not in a rush at all, we just keep giving him a chance to try, and make a big deal when he's successful, so he starts making associations. He's really quite good at puzzles and matching objects, he counts to 20 almost perfectly (not a big fan of the number 5 for some reason, and everything from 14 to 19 is pretty much the same word), and since neither of us made a major effort to make him learn, it's cool to see what he's internalized.

-Finally, and knock wood eternally, Mr. Worst Sleeper Award is sleeping consistently well. He always ends up in our bed at some point, but the norm now is much closer to daylight than it used to be, and as much as I look forward to 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep (if there is such a thing?) with just Mike and me in the bed, I know I'll miss the closeness of that few hours of sleepy snuggling. I really will.

I honestly didn't write this to brag on my kid, I do not believe HR is extraordinary or gifted in any way, I mean compared to other kids. He's extraordinary to us because, hey, we made him, and he delights us every day. Sure he has plenty of not-great moments, but who cares? Who wants to look back on the difficult moments?  I just wanted to get down the little details, because soon they will be replaced with other ones. And what can I say, I'm just smitten with my own creation. It's how it's supposed to work, I think.

And thus concludes today's installment of "Cherish Party." Tomorrow: a meditation on the insidious dickery of body image. Stay tuned!

We're sort of going through a family Bob Marley phase right now.