X is 2.5!

X turned 2.5 last week on Friday.  He's quite the little man.  He's still too cute for his own good.  His adorable little grin makes me laugh all the time.  He loves to crawl up on my lap and say, "You're my best mommy ever!"  It melts my heart every time.  He's quite the little schmoozer.  "You could get that out for me?!" or "You could turn Thomas on?"  He'll ask so adorably that it is difficult to say "No."

X is a marvelous big brother and a somewhat pesky little brother.  X loves looking after C.  He gets quite disturbed when C is crying and no one is doing anything about it.  He always hears him wake up first.  He fed C his first solids...honeycomb cereal a few months before C really needed to start solids.  X loves giving him things to chew on.  When C was a newborn, I would always find X with his fingers in C's mouth because X was trying to soothe him.  C laughs and laughs at X's antics.  X can get him giggling like none other.  It is precious.  On the other hand, X is a nuisance to his big sister.  He loves pushing her buttons (as she does his).   They make me laugh when they aren't driving me crazy.  Sometimes they play together so well...and sometimes all that they do is fight.

X still adores Thomas the Train.  We have a wooden set, several take 'n play sets and even a motorized set.  We watch Thomas on Sprout.  We read about Thomas.  We know about all things Thomas.  It is his first real obsession that doesn't really seem to be slowing down.  We've figured out that we can sometimes see an engine from our house when it passes on the tracks behind IGA.  So, it is big excitement when we hear the engine blow its whistle.

X's imagination and vocabulary is exploding.  That is a blessing and a curse.  Nightmares are a real problem for him.  He stopped sleeping in his crib last week because he refused to go in it anymore because it was 'scary'.  So, he's sleeping the first half of the night in E's room and the second half he ends up in our room.  We aren't quite sure how to make things less scary for him.  But, the darkness is a real concern for him right now.  But, the flip side to his imagination is very fun.  I love to listen to him play.  His engines are always getting into trouble.  It is fun to overhear.

Potty training is going really well, if we could just get those BMs in the potty.  A few weeks ago, he decided that he was done with diapers and wanted to wear his Thomas undies.  He hasn't looked back.  Pull-ups are commonplace on Sundays for church but all other days, he wears undies and we have very few accidents.  He even wakes up dry sometimes.  He's doing great and I'm so thankful to be washing diapers only every other day instead of every day!

Naps are still common.  Although, he's staying up later and later each night and I'm thinking that its time to start winding them down.  Sad for mom but I'll be glad to have him going to sleep quicker at night.

X loves doing 'school' with E.  He has his own journals to record things.  He sits right up to the table.  He loves identifying letters and is currently in love with the magnetic alphabet letter sounds thing on the refrigerator.  "Every letter makes a sound..." gets played each time we are in the kitchen together.

I'm learning more and more about boys...he is exuberant.  He throws toys.  He loves to wrestle E, whether she's ready or not.  He runs everywhere.  He makes things into guns and swords frequently.  Keeping up with him is a full-time job.  Hopefully, one of these days I'll write a separate post about how the neighbors could have called CPS on me when I didn't do such a great job at keeping up with him.

Life at 2.5 is fun.  I don't enjoy the 'no' that I'm hearing more frequently, but I enjoy the other forms of independence that is starting.  He loves picking out his own clothes in the mornings.  I don't enjoy the trembling lips and crying when he doesn't get his own way.  He's starting to get much harder to redirect, but I love the bright sun-shining smile that I get most of the time.  Life is good.