While I frequently find myself wanting this two year old phase to be over and done with there really are SO many things that I cherish about it. I took a ton of photos of our little hambone last Friday on his half-birthday and want to jot down a few things so I don’t forget anything about my precious boy at this difficult yet wonderful age.

-If possible his obsession with cars has grown. He wakes up and plays with them and goes to bed with one in hand. Everything, everything, everything is an accessory for cars- random string on the ground- tow rope for cars, infant brush- carwash for cars, cup- holder for cars… you get the picture, right? Obsessed!
-Roll play. Jay has started role playing and using his imagination SO much these days. Frequently I overhear him having conversations with his cars or setting up pretend lunches, car washes, races for them. We also have frequent dinosaur sightings around here. His imagination seems to be developing at warp speed and I love it! I can’t wait to see what he dreams up next.
-Fruit is our main method of supper time bribery. The kid has become less than a stellar eater over the last few months, most of which has to do with being two rather than actually not liking the food put in front of him. However, he will do and eat pretty much anything in order to have fruit- score!
-He has been saying the funniest things lately. This is honestly a post within itself but seriously I don’t know where he comes up with most of it.
-He loves to snuggle with Mommy before bed. He always gets a story or two before heading off into dreamland but lately he has been requesting snuggles too. This is really nothing more than a stall tactic but I am currently choosing to ignore that and enjoying every minute of my sweet little boy snuggles.
-He loves on his brother constantly. Just the other day Jamie had to tell him to stop kissing on Charlie as we were walking home from seeing the diggers (big construction vehicles down the street). In the morning he lights up when he sees Charlie and always greets him with a huge “morning Charlie”, he talks about him when he is napping, checks on him as soon as he starts to fuss and is frequently doing things to make Charlie belly laugh. I love watching their relationship grow with each passing day
-We are currently working on sharing. Frequently he wants whatever Charlie is playing with and must have it N-O-W! To decrease the amount of toy snatching going on day-to-day we told Jay that if he wants something that Charlie has that he has to give him another toy before “asking” for the toy Charlie has. Lately, when he wants something that Charlie has he will frantically look around for something to give to Charlie and after he finds something he usually tosses it in Charlie’s direction and then grabs whatever it is that he wanted. It’s not exactly sharing but it’s progress :)
-He does not understand the concept of a quiet voice… well okay, he does but the quiet voice lasts for about 2.5 seconds before the louder-than-anything two year old voice returns.
-He will stop everything, even playing with cars, to listen to a story that is being read. Frequently while we are playing I will pull Charlie in my lap and read stories to him. Sometimes Jay will ask to join us, other times he will say that he doesn’t want to after being invited. However, regardless of what he says, the moment I start reading he drops everything and comes over to where we are to listen.
-He calls Hot Dog Heaven, “Hot Dolphin” and announces our arrival at Hot Dolphin as soon as we turn into the parking lot
-He loves to swim! He has a ton of tricks that he does in the pool most of which are announced to his audience by proclamations of “look at me!”

This little boy is funny, sweet and on the go, his heart is huge, his imagination is running wild and I love him with every ounce of my being. I am so proud to be his Mommy and so incredibly blessed to be able to watch him grow each and every day.

Sorry in advance for the ridiculous amount of photos…

It’s no secret that books are important to us and as another way to encourage reading and excitement about reading we started a family tradition two years ago of getting the boys (or any of our children rather) a book on their half birthday. So far we have been choosing the books for them and giving them to the boys on their half birthdays but we are hoping that when the boys get older that this will turn more into a special trip that they get to take with us to pick out their own book. This year we got Jay “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”, he was super excited to open his book in the morning.

This year Jay was so excited about his half birthday that I figured it was ok to go ahead and really celebrate in style- so we had a half cake! We were headed to publix for grocery shopping anyway so while we were there I picked up all of the fixings for a cake and while the boys napped in the afternoon I made him a pineapple coconut (per his request) half cake.

It was hard but I stopped him both times before he actually touched or licked the cake :)