Two years old!

Nov 09, 2009 13:38

Mica turned two on Saturday. It's hard to believe how fast he's grown, and how far he has come from the little baby he was just two years ago. It is also a little tragic how infrequently I've posted about his milestones, so here's a little snapshot of Mica, age two.

He had a dentist and a doctor's appointment earlier in the week. The dentist confirmed, yet again, that his teeth do look terrible, but it is a genetic (by which I think she really means structural, or inborn, ie caused while the teeth were forming in the womb) flaw and not a sign of decay. She did say to call if his teeth chip any more. The doctor's visit was mostly interesting because we got to listen to the receptionists fielding lots of calls about the flu vaccine (they were all out-the pediatric office that shares the building were not all out but were saving their “extremely limited doses for very high risk patients” who had known compromised immune systems and the like.) Mica weighs a little over 30lbs and is 33 inches tall. He did not like getting his shots, but got over them relatively fast. The doctor talked me into giving him a combo shot, which I don't think I would have done if I knew how Mica's body was going to react. The poor guy still has a bit of swelling at the site.

Mica has a really large vocabulary and doesn't hesitate to use long words. A lot of his sentences are still fragments, missing either objects or subjects, but he has a good grasp of adjectives, and will use words like “another” correctly. What he says is still a little difficult for other people to understand and he certainly uses code phrases. At bedtime, he'll often say “How I” which is what he calls “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Sometimes he'll even use it in a sentence like, “Daddy sing How I.” Often with an emphasis on Daddy since he certainly prefers Daddy's singing to mine. It took him a while to get the labels right on his parents (he called us both “Mama” sometimes with great agitation because it was actually Daddy he wanted) but these days he is quite clear on who's who. He can express some pretty sophisticated concepts too like “Daddy working in Portland. Miss Daddy” though I think a lot of that is mimicry of what he's heard me say with a limited understanding of what it means. We were discussing possible locations for Mica's birthday party at the dinner table one night, and I mentioned the train park, which he got super excited about. Every time his birthday came up in conversation after that he would excitedly say “Train park! Train park!” though I'm not sure he really understands what a birthday is, he just knew it was going to happen at the train park. We made the cupcakes for the party the afternoon before, and then they got added to his litany about about his birthday. “Pancakes at train park!” And at this point he's at least got a few birthday rituals figured out. “Pancakes at train park. Big blow!” We'll see if he insists on going to the train park for his birthday again next year. Presumably by then he will have outgrown calling cupcakes pancakes.

Another big milestone is that he is now in underwear all the time. We have a mostly unused box of diapers and another one of pull-ups because underwear is just so much easier. It's funny, because I hesitate to call him potty trained, since he still often needs reminders to use the potty (though he is getting pretty good about letting us know when he needs to go) and toileting is not a self service kind of deal yet. He's only just figured out how to use the step-stool to get onto the potty, and while he tries to push down his own pants, the task is really beyond him at this stage. I think in a year he will be putting himself on the potty with no assistance, but we really aren't there yet. When I told the doctor that he's in underwear, he asked if he was also dry at night, probably because Raine struggled with that for so long, and only weaned off of wearing pull-ups at night this past summer. It is very strange to have the two of them move beyond pull-ups so close together, but Mica has always been dry at night. We've actually struggled with the fact that he wouldn't pee in his diaper at night, and would get restless and uncomfortable, but would also mightily protest getting up to pee at night. As he's grown older his bladder has gotten bigger, and this no longer seems to be an issue, thank goodness.

The final big change that we're going through right now, is that Mica is now going to day-care two mornings a week. We took a trip up to Seattle at the beginning of October, and gave a ride to a friend who runs a home based daycare. After we got back from the trip, Mica woke up saying “Amie come back,” and spent half the morning requesting her, so we decided to look into having him spend a couple of mornings a week with her. He seems to enjoy it, and only had a couple of difficult drop offs (both of which were followed by difficult pick ups, so I think he just wasn't digging the transitions) I really should spend those child-free mornings writing, but it is really difficult not to run errands instead. Shopping is actually an enjoyable experience when I don't have children to herd around, so it is really really tempting to just stop by a few places after dropping the kids off in the morning. It doesn't help that writing is half an exercise in frustration these days, but really that's a topic for another post.

ecing, teeth, day-care, talking, milestones, mica

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