Linnaeus 24.0

Baby's first wine tasting. He had the crackers.

My baby is two! I need to stop calling him my baby. I try to call him my little boy, but it doesn't feel that long ago that I was holding his head up & waiting for his first smile. Even a year ago was so different--Sprout had only been crawling for a month & still wasn't walking or talking yet. In the last year I've learned so much from him & about him. Here are some recent discoveries:

• Aside from the leaf aversion, Sprout will eat pretty much any vegetable or fruit. He likes garlicky food, spicy dishes, onions raw or cooked, & has learned to love frozen food like ice cream.
• Sprout is afraid of the sound of the blender. It used to make him screech with fear, but now it just makes him a bit scared & cry some of the time.
• Sprout is not afraid of lightning or thunder. In the recent storm, he went outside with Papa to watch it for a while & came in telling me about the "Cwash! Boom!"
• Trying to force him to do anything is like herding cats. We haven't yet seen a full-on limbs flailing temper tantrum, but they're getting more extreme. It's best to get him excited about whatever it is I want him to do or better yet, make him think it was his idea in the first place.
• Apparently whatever they flavoured the children's amoxicillin with tastes great to toddlers. Or this toddler, anyway. Medicating him has been no problem at all.
• We all sleep better if the three of us share a bed when staying at Oma & Opa's.
• Our child is obsessed with driving. Every time we got into or out of the car in the past month or so, if we didn't let him sit in the front seat & play with the steering wheel, there was hell to pay.

• 

  Pretty happy in his little seat back there.
  

  Though he preferred 'driving' to being a passenger, Sprout did really well on our recent road trip. He squalled a bit on the way there, but he was fairly happy on the trip back. The three stops, one with a great playground, probably helped.
• Sprout is equally obssessed with bicycles. He likes to spend at least an hour a day in the iBert on a ride &/or walking his runner bike along. He's gotten fast enough that I can walk at my normal pace along side him. Soon I'll start taking him to the park this way.
• I'm trying to start taking advantage of is his willingness to help & desire for order. He likes things to be in the correct place or state. Sometimes this is useful--he'll close a door after opening it, or put his toys back in their place. However, other occasions it's annoying. Like with the swiffer. It had become his toy, as we haven't used disposable cleaning stuff like that for years. When I tried to put a cloth cover on it & actually use it he vociferously insisted I remove it.
• Sprout's realized that he'll get what he wants faster if he says please, so he's started to toss "Pease, mama," in with his requests.
• His separation anxiety has returned with a vengeance & he will often cry when I leave him at daycare or even when I leave him with his Papa. He got upset when I left him with his Uncle Mikey in a store--I only went out of sight for a minute or two. I have realized I really need to be consistent with goodbyes & explain how long I'll be going for. If I'm just running downstairs for the laundry & I tell him, that's usually fine.
• Lastly, when measured this week, Sprout came out to 35" tall & 28 lbs (89cm/12.7kg). That puts him at the 65th percentile for weight & the 75th for height.

This past year's been amazing--I look forward to watching him grow & learn over the next year.