Andrew at two

Andrew turned two years old on Friday, February 24. Happy birthday, sweet boy!

Here he is with his "Elmo boon" that he got for his birthday (don't worry, he got other presents, too. He might be the second kid, but come on, give me some credit):




















You know, I often fretted about how it might be hard for a second child to come into our family, what with William having such a larger-than-life personality. I wondered how on earth another child could possibly keep up or compare.

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha! As it turned out I had absolutely no reason to worry whatsoever. Andrew more than holds his own. No worries about this kiddo. In some ways, he is more tentative than William, who has never met a stranger, but in other ways, he is far more fearless. He is most definitely His Very Own Self.

He loves Elmo, canteloupe, his big brother Wuhhh-lum, balls, diggers, Special K, fish sticks, Corduroy the bear, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Cookie Monster. He tells everyone to have a good day, and he loves to ride in the beep-beep car. His favorite item of clothing is his new red shoes, followed closely by his zip-zip jammies. He ends every meal by inquiring hopefully, "Go play Elmo?" He is not afraid of the big slide in our backyard, and he wants to brush his own teeth, thank you very much. Sometimes he gets very quiet, and I get nervous, but when I creep off to find him, he'll be sitting there in a pile of books, very carefully flipping the pages and studying the pictures.

Here's a retrospective, since I always enjoy looking at old photos of my little guys, and I hope you will, too.

Andrew, shortly after birth:







































Look how small he was on that big quilt!







































































Oh, yeah, check this next one out. He's never been afraid of those stairs at all. As soon as he started crawling, he wanted to take on the staircase. And then, once he started walking, he was determined to master walking up and down the stairs as soon as possible. None of that babyish crawling or scooting on the stairs for Andrew. No sir. In fact, he goes up and down those stairs so fast now that it will take your breath away. I'm trying not to think about it.











































































































And the birthday boy with his white chocolate raspberry birthday cake. He bypassed his own plate of cake and tried to go straight for the rest of the entire cake with his little monkey fork. Silly boy. Although I can't blame him...it was darn good cake.

A weekend snow day

Snow!



Sort of. We've had a mild winter, but we had a big long wave of wet snowy flakes this morning. Even though William had a fever last night, he begged me to let him go outside for just a few minutes. He couldn't bear to miss what might be his only chance to get out in the snow.

And since I had ZERO pictures of Andrew in snow, I needed to take him out for a little while, too.



Poor Andrew. He finally managed to get over the unpleasant sensation of big wet things landing on his face and started enjoying himself. He went off, having fun toddling around for a few minutes. Then he took off running and wiped out on the wet sidewalk. That about did it for him. I had wanted to get a picture of the boys together, but he was sobbing. Then he fell in the yard on the way back to the porch and got his knees and legs all muddy and wet.

And so we came back inside.

Incidentally, I am grateful that today is Sunday and tomorrow is a school holiday. We won't have to use any snow days for this, woohooo!

Talking up a storm

Andrew is talking up a storm these days. A veritable storm. He's repeating things that we say, and we can actually understand him. And he's making up his own little short sentences and phrases, and most of the time, I can actually figure out what he's saying or trying to say.

Relief!

David says that Andrew's right in the middle of the normal range when it comes to speech and language development for his age. It's just that William was so freakishly verbal from such an early age (in a good way, sweetie, she says, in case William is one day reading this) that it seemed odd that Andrew wasn't talking as much as William was at the same age.

Well, Andrew seems to be making up for lost time.

My current favorite thing is what Andrew always says when William leaves him. Every morning, William hops out of the minivan and scampers down the sidewalk into the school. And every morning, Andrew looks longingly after his beloved big brother and says, "Bye, Wuhhhm. Ha' a good day!" He says a similar version of this if William happens to leave the house too. I wish you could have seem him standing at the front door the other day, waving after his brother and calling "Bye, Wuhhhhm! Bye, Wuhhhmmm!"

"Wuhhhm" is also starting to sound a lot more like "William," too. I think I might really miss it when Andrew no longer calls him "Wuhhhhm." I still miss a lot of William's old toddler expressions, like "tomos" instead of "tomatoes" and the way he used to say "Super Rocketship!" when he got all excited. Very few of William's Williamisms hung on for a very long time, much to my dismay. David and I still call the remote control the "mote-can retrol" because we think it's funny, but honestly, William only called it that for a month or so. It wasn't even like we tried to correct him, either. He just figured it out on his own and started using the correct words. Bummer.

My other favorite Andrewism right now is the way that he says "beep beep car" for "car." William, David and I have all fallen into the habit of referring to a car or any vehicle as "a beep beep car." And Andrew's zippered pajamas are now the, you guessed it, "zip zip jammies." I have a jacket that is the "zip zip coat." I love this. Something about the way he gleefully says "zip zip!"

Ah, my sweet baby boy. He's going to be two in two weeks, and I can't quite believe it.