they say it's your birthday

He is two years old today. Two whole years - incontrovertible and unimaginable at the same time.

We had a great weekend of celebration. Saturday was his party during which we unleashed 9 toddlers on a massive train table and delightful madness ensued. Sunday, he opened his presents and spent the rest of the day bouncing off the walls and taking great delight in all of his new treasures.

He continues to be obsessed with trains. He can identify at least a dozen Thomas engines in a flash and from the most random of angles. He corrects us when we misidentify the various types of freight cars. Sometimes when he is playing with his trains, he'll softly sigh "Oh, Thomas and Friends." We have no idea where he got this originally, but our reactions are surely reinforcing it at this point, which is fine with us because it's cute as can be.

He's learned to sequence activities for bargaining purposes. When we ask him to go to his room for a diaper change, he will look us squarely in the eye and say "And then, back to trains." Once we agree, he'll go peacefully to his room. If not, he'll issue a counter-offer and we'll go from there until we've reached an acceptable compromise. :-)

His temper seems a hair better (knock on wood), or perhaps our management skills are simply improving.

He has a remarkable handle on plurals, which kind of blows my mind.

We got a potty seat and he asks to sit on it from time to time. Please don't let this behavior be confused with anything resembling actual potty training. I'm pretty sure that's at least 8 years away. Ditto for a big boy bed.

Speaking of big boy beds, he's transitioning into the "younger preschool" room at school next week. This means no more bibs, no more sippy cups, less unstructured time, and naps on a cot. I'm kind of sick over the thought of it. I just keep reminding myself I had the same anxiety over him moving to the toddler room and that worked out fine, so surely this will too.

He is a superstar with his pleases and thank yous. We almost never have to remind him anymore, and when he chirps his sweet, heartfelt "thank you, mama" at the most unexpected of times, it just melts your heart.

He is fearless. Fearless. When we go to a playground, he heads straight for the highest, most dangerous piece of apparatus in sight. This is a poor complement to his pathologically nervous mother.

He does a mean "I'm a little teapot." 'Nuff said.

I'm forgetting things I'll want to remember later, but those are a few of the highlights for now. It is a privilege and a joy watching him develop; worth every painful acronym we went through to get him.

We are continuing to develop, too. I was looking through some of his teeny baby pics the other night and I came across a series of pictures we took of him when he was about three weeks old. We were trying some different cloth diapers on him to see if any of them fit (they didn't) and snapping pics of each one because they looked so ridiculously huge on him. He was screaming; not a rare occurrence in those days. At the time, we thought he was (understandably) impatient with our belabored exercise. In looking back at the pictures, I can see clearly that he was cold. On one hand... Gah! Dumb parents, freezing your child to death! On the other hand... Wow. We've come a long way, baby. I can see something in a still image now that I missed when it was live in front of my face two years ago. We were fumbling along, getting by fine I guess (if you don't count the baby-sicle), but now, we're parents. Real ones. With skills.

On this day of celebrating E's arrival into our world, I am grateful to M for sticking with me through ttc, pregnancy, labor, and all that has come since, and to E for coming into our lives and giving us "big hugs" (his term) and kisses and keeping us on our toes. He is teaching us and transforming us by the day. This day is really a celebration of our whole family, and I couldn't be more thankful to be a part of it.