NC meets SD: William: Two Years!

Friday, April 17, 2015

William: Two Years!

I can't think of any way to start this post that isn't totally cliché, so I'm just going to skip right to the facts.

We rescheduled William's well-child visit to April 22nd so we could piggy-back it with Garrett's 2-month visit, so I don't have his official height and weight yet, but I'll update when I do. Based on the growth ruler we made (which I promise to share soon!), he's at 33 inches, and we're guessing that he's around 26 or 27 pounds. (Update: William weighed in at 26.5 pounds and 32.5 inches. Pretty much right what we were expecting!). He wears size four diapers during the day and size five diapers overnight. We tried the size five ones during the day so we didn't have to mess with two different sizes, but William's skinny little legs aren't thick enough to keep everything contained when he is on the go and I was sick of cleaning up the accidents. His clothing is pretty much all over the place, although most of that I attribute to the fact that clothing sizes are terribly inconsistent. Most of his clothes are in the 18-month to 2T range, although he still fits into some of his (longer) 12-month pants and has outgrown some 2T shirts. So it's all just a guessing game.

As I mentioned last week, we took away his pacifier on his birthday. Prior to that, he was sleeping pretty consistently (in his big boy bed) from 8pm-7am with a nap from 1230 to 230(ish). Now? Total crapshoot. It takes him at least an hour to settle down (aka stop crying), and then he's either sleeping shorter stretches because he's overtired or longer stretches because he's exhausted himself so much with his crying. It makes me feel like a terrible parent, but we wanted him to be done with the pacifier before we start any of our traveling this summer, and his birthday seemed like a good, clean breaking point. He was also starting to use it more as a toy than for comfort; in the weeks leading up to his birthday he would often lay in bed for over an hour at night tossing it around (and subsequently crawling out of bed and banging at the door for us whenever he lost it). We aren't sure if Garrett's birth or daylight savings time caused that behavior change, but we were ready to be done with it. We tried making a big deal out of being a big boy on his second birthday by also switching his carseats to forward facing and taking him for special birthday ice cream (and having special big boy pancakes the next morning), but no sort of bribery has yet been effective in helping him get over the loss of his pacifier. Sigh. It has to get better soon, right? At least it can't get much worse... (Update on this since it's taken me a week to get this post written: The marathon meltdown crying sessions have stopped in the past 24 hours. That being said, we put him to bed an hour ago and we can still hear him talking and playing in his room. At least it isn't crying?)

One thing that continually impresses us is his eating habits. I know I always joke that he's going to eat us out of house and home (and seriously--he might), but I really shouldn't complain. He will eat pretty much anything you put in front of him, no questions asked. That isn't to say he necessarily likes everything, but he will almost always try everything on his plate at least once, and usually without any prompting. However, anything Mexican is a definite favorite. If it has cumin in it and/or you can serve it with guacamole, William is all over it. Mom doesn't always care for the diapers the next day, but I suppose that's a trade-off I'm willing to make (and why I try to plan Mexican meals for the weekends when Darrell is home). He also really enjoys eating peanut butter straight out of the jar, and I swear I have no idea who he learned that trick from :-)

While it's been super fun to watch William continue to grow into his own little person, we've definitely had plenty of trials and tribulations. He wants to be soooo independent and do everything himself (and you'd better believe that if you let him do something once he will want to do it every time), but because his vocabulary is still a little lacking he can't always communicate his wants to us, which causes tantrums on his end and frustration on ours. He has also become quite the little sponge lately, which has thankfully helped with his vocabulary, but it has also meant that we've had to be more careful about what we say and do (such as my tendency to use chips/crackers as "spoons" when we're having soup; he definitely copied that at the table the other night). Additionally, he loves to help with some chores, although I wouldn't dare call them chores around him because he seriously thinks they are the greatest things in the world and pitches a major fit if you don't let him help. The big ones he loves to help with are the dishes and the laundry. And if it weren't for the fact that he can't reach the bottom of the washing machine or the buttons to start the appliances on his own, he could pretty much do the laundry by himself. Hopefully he'll have this same enthusiasm for chores when he is a teenager.

I'm sure I'm forgetting all sorts of things; I think to myself on a daily basis that I should really be writing down the funny stuff he says and does and the milestones he's hitting, but of course it never happens. But he's happy, healthy, and pretty darn hilarious, so that's all that matters, right?