TGM @ 2

To TGM:

It's hard to believe that we have enjoyed you as part of our family for two years already!

We had a big party (and a smaller party) last weekend. Grandma Mc, Aunt K, Aunt M, and Cousins Christina and Wyatt were all visiting for the weekend. And Jer was with us for the weekend. You had a blast playing with them all. It was a bit rough the first evening, especially, working on the sharing, but everyone seemed to adjust and get better at it as the weekend progressed.

Great Uncle Dale and Aunt Angie also made the trip for the party on Saturday evening and Uncle SC and Miss Sarah made a point of being around. We had brownies and ice cream for the evening and you blew out the two balloon-shaped candles by yourself.

On Sunday evening, we invited all our clogging and church friends and some other friends to the park and grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. I think a total of 38 guests showed up during the evening! You had a grand time playing on the equipment with friends. You weren't able to blow out the candles that evening, but I think it might have been that you just were so excited and intimidated by all the attention that you weren't ready to try. Jer was very willing to help you out--great big brother that he is.

This evening, you and I took a walk around the neighborhood. You'd been asking to take a walk all day. Along the way, you picked up sticks. The first one, you ended up sharpening because you enjoyed rubbing it on the sidewalk. You also found a piece of money (a nickel).

You've started to identify things that belong to people--such as pointing out Mama and Daddy's house as we arrive home. As we were walking around the neighborhood, you pointed out cars and trucks and identified them as "not ours" along with some of the houses.

There was a lawn decoration with two birds that you counted. It also had six flowers, but you had a harder time counting them. When we climb the stairs at home, you can count to 14. Right now, one of your favorite books is the Lifesize Animal Counting Book that Grandma Mc gave you. You like to count everything 1-10 and have someone count the 20 butterflies and 100 creepy crawlers for you.

You also like putting things back away. Maybe not so much cleaning up your toys, but straightening items on the grocery store shelves. On our walk, you were picking up the small rocks on the sidewalk and putting them back in the rock beds where they belonged.

You like music and singing. One of your favorite music CD's right now is Alphabet Jam. You can sing the ABC song. You are able to recognize most or all of your letters at times (though not perfectly everytime). You are starting to talk in sentences and carry on conversations. You know a good number of signs as well and will try to use them to clarify what you are saying when we don't quite understand you.

You love watching the Signing Time videos and pick up new signs from the videos all the time. One of the videos has the sign for "roller skates" with people roller skating, so you've been asking for roller skates for the past couple of weeks. Maybe we'll pick you up a pair with one of the gift cards from your birthday party.

Other songs you like to sing include "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes", "Jesus Loves Me", "If You're Happy and You Know It", and other action songs that you've learned in library story time. At clogging, or when we put on the clogging practice music at home, we'll see you dancing along to the songs. Some of the moves--like the ending pose of "Dance" you know and can do even at home by yourself. And you often follow along and imitate the moves at clogging--like bowing during "My Country 'Tis" and holding the arm positions in "Old Dominion."

You have your first set of clogging shoes with glue-on taps. You've mostly gotten over your phase of needing to wear shoes at ALL times. But you do still prefer to have shoes on, including your soft-soled Robeez which we let you wear as night shoes. You got two pairs of shoes for your birthday--one pair with the light-up soles and the other Converse sneakers. Both are larger than what you currently wear so that you can grow into them. You've been wearing the light-up shoes, even if they are too big for you, but I found a blister on your toe this morning that might be from those shoes, so I'll be trying to curb your wearing of them until they fit a bit better.

At the doctor's office this week, they measured you at 32.5" and 22 lbs. (I think you are at least 33"--you were trying to look up and see what the nurse was doing while she was measuring you.) Based on their measurements, you are less than 20% percentile for both height and weight for your age. The doctor wants to check you again in six months, but I'm not too worried about it. Grandma G says that I weighed about the same at 2 years old, so there is plenty of reason to believe that you'll continue to grow well.

We are looking forward to what you'll accomplish in the next year and with the rest of your life!