Jack at 2 Years

Jack had his two-year check-up at the pediatrician last week.  Consistent with EVERY check-up he's ever had, we determined that he's a big boy.  He now weighs 35 lbs (98th percentile), is 36.5" tall (93rd percentile) and has a 19.5" head (71st percentile).  Everything else with his check-up was great - developmentally he's right on track.  The best part of the visit: NO shots until he's 5!! 

So here's a summary of Jack's interests at 2 years old:

• Trains - He is still very much obsessed with choo choos.  The latest is the addition of "nunnels" (tunnels) into the mix - man, does he LOVE nunnels.  We are constantly building them out of whatever toys happen to be laying around, whether for his trains to go through or for Jack himself (and Maggie too if he has his way) to go through.  It's so exciting to go under overpasses on the highway (those are nunnels too, you know) and especially exciting to drive over choo choo tracks.  Luckily there are some by our house, so we can generally drive over some without too much of a detour.  He also loves to point out every water tower he sees ("boo wawa!" or "white wawa!") - turns out there are a lot of them around that I've never noticed before.

• T-ball - Jack has gone through a big t-ball phase too. Unfortunately that phase hit during the crazy heat of the summer, so we caved and started letting him play in the house.  Boy, that child can hit a ball off a tee!

•  Big boy bed - Jack is still doing great in his new room and big boy bed.  He generally stays in bed until we come in the morning and get him.  Since we have his lock turned around, occasionally he'll get out of bed when we first leave at night, but when he tries the door and it's locked he gets back in bed and goes night night.  Our bedtime routine consists of first brushing his teeth.  He's gone through phases with this - occasionally not minding, but usually despising it.  We've had to get pretty creative to get a good scrubbing in - sometimes we "race" Daddy, sometimes Daddy holds him upside down while I brush him, etc.  Whatever it takes to get those teeth clean!  After that we either go back out and play choo choos for a little while or we go in his room and read 1-3 books (depending on what time it is).  Just in the last week or two he's discovered his Dr. Suess books.  He especially likes The Cat in the Hat and will dig in his bookshelf until he finds that one.  Those are fun books to read!!

Notice the shoes in this tooth brushing picture:

• Twos room at day care - Our big shot is now transitioned to the next classroom at day care.  His new classroom is the Butterflies room and his teachers are Ms Cindy and Ms Lauren.  He is doing surprisingly well with the transition - I underestimated him!  I thought it would be pretty rough on him because he was pretty attached to Ms Jill in the Comets room.  He's done great from day one though - we're so proud of him!  The new classroom has pint-sized bathrooms and sinks for hand-washing, a Lego table, a toy kitchen, a computer and lots of other new, fun toys to play with.  Drop-offs are still a little tough (Ms Cindy generally has to pry a crying Jack off of me), but we're only through week two, so it will get better.
• Speech - Jack has turned into quite the chatty chatster!  He says lots of words and strings together several words.  We can have real conversations with him, which is so much fun.  Of course, his pronunciation is not perfect on many words.  Some of our favorites: the aforementioned "nunnel," "pu" (cup or up), "tat" (hat and cat), and "pippow" (pillow).  He also sometimes makes his "S" sound with a lisp, but only for some words (mess, yes).  Other "S" sounds come out like "SH," for example "peesh" (please) and "keesh" (keys).  In the last week or two, Dada has suddenly become Daddy.  That seems so grown up to me!!  He's also playing with how he refers to his grandparents...MawMaw has become more like MaMaw (rhymes with Grandma) and PawPaw has transitioned to PaPaw and yesterday it became PamPaw (closer the Grandpa, I suppose).  He still calls me Mama, but sometimes I think he's saying MomMom.  The other thing he just learned is "Why?"  Jason and I can't believe he's already picked up on that (where do they learn these things??), but sometimes the only way to get him to stop asking "Why" after everything you say is to just change the subject.
• Potty - Jack is still dabbling with the whole potty thing.  We're not pressing him too hard because he's young and about to have a big uproar in his life (a.k.a. Sparky's arrival), BUT he does surprise us sometimes and tell us he needs to go potty and does just that when we put him on the potty.  I will say that I've noticed him paying more attention to this now that he's in the new classroom at school.  Since the ages range from 2-3 I think most of them are either potty trained already or working on it now, so that should help the process for us.  We'll see!

I think those are the highlights - our little boy just continues to grow up before our very eyes!!