Entries Tagged 'The Second Year' ↓

You’ve got charm, kid. This really represents your current lifestyle and personality. You’re in your “blue monster” towel in your newly redone “big kid room” singing your favorite song and being silly. You love being silly now….I like your newfound belly laughs. Speaking of bellies, tonight you discovered that yours can go in and out and it cracks you up. Blowing raspberries on my big pregnant belly does, too. You also like doing “nosies” now and poking me in my belly button that is currently sticking out.

I left you at your first day of preschool summer camp. You barely noticed me leave and only because I lingered and pathetically said, “bye, Jho!” When I came to pick you up, you ran in strange figure eights around the classroom tables. You didn’t want to leave! You are independent, confident, outgoing, and sweet and those qualities serve you well in group situations. You really love going to school.

You are currently about 38 pounds and are about 37 inches tall. You are often thought to be 4 years old instead of 2. You are very attentive to books and movies. You still love monster trucks, dinosaurs, playgrounds, and animals. You hold long conversations and use wild, gesticulations as you speak. I love it.

You know your letters, colors, and shapes pretty well, but have trouble with numbers. You’re playing simple board games, building (and knocking down) block towers. You don’t have much patience for coloring/drawing/painting and prefer play doh and finger-painting. You love to travel and had an amazing time on our trip to Chicago. You loved hotel rooms, walks in the stroller, and going to new places. You are my little adventurer and I love watching it.

Soon you’re going to be my super helper. Last night you felt Margot jump for the first time. It’s fun to watch you getting excited about your sister’s arrival. I’m getting excited, too.

Outside Fun Animal Kingdom and Lake Lily, originally uploaded by bburbank.

We’ve had so much fun lately. You make me laugh constantly these days. I can’t believe I haven’t written since your birthday. There’s no way I can remember all the amazing and hysterical things you’ve done since then, so I’ll just recount a couple of the best. This morning when you woke up we were laying on a pillow on the floor in the playroom and you said, “I want lunch.” I asked you what you wanted for lunch and you said, “I want water.” I asked, “Anything else?” You said, “I want a water and an apple.” I said ok and you started telling a story to yourself that went something like this, “I want water and an apple…mumble mumble mumble…and it was happily ever after. The end.”

You also discovered you can talk in a robot voice and that is really funny. You have learned to jump and you show off that skill often. You’re great at kicking the ball around the backyard and can throw the basketball in the hoop now. You love the movie, Cars, and have collected most of the cars from the movie. You are constantly asking to go to the Disney Store so you can get a new car to add to your collection. You make weird and sometimes gross food combinations that you enjoy a whole lot. We had a great New Years at Sea World with Bubby and you watched the walrus forever and never wanted to leave that walrus tank. You have the best facial expressions, too. Today you were pretending to talk on the phone and you said, “Hello? Who is it? Okay. I want to go to Animal Kingdom.” Then you hung up the phone. You really liked our recent trip to Animal Kingdom and our trip to Green Meadows Petting Zoo.

I am about four months into my second pregnancy and it’s fun to try to explain to you that you are getting a brother or sister. Part of me feels nervous about bringing another child into your life. Nervous that you two won’t become friends. Nervous that my attention will be too divided. Nervous that you might think I love you less or spend less time with you. Nervous that I won’t treat my second with as much personalized attention as you received. So many Mommy anxieties. I suppose they are normal. I see you with other kids….waiting patiently to go down the slide (most of the time), sharing your toys, being very concerned whenever you hear another kid crying, “uh oh, that baby’s sad.” I just know you are going to be such a nurturing, sweet, and loving big brother and a tremendous help to me. I only hope I can be the best possible mom I can be to the two of you.

Field Research, originally uploaded by bburbank.

That’s you these days! Here you are at almost two years old peering through a magnifying glass at anything and everything. You’re so tall and little boyish in this picture and it’s amazing to think you were ever a baby. You’ve even got on light-up shoes!

You sit and make up stories for your hard rubber toys that you like so much. Your favorite game is “Monster!’ where you point and yell “Monster!” and we have to act scared and, if possible, run and hide with you while the monster (usually Leela) chases you. Sometimes, strangely, you do the same thing while saying “Goat!” (Your Dad thinks you mean ghost, but I think you actually mean goat. I took you to see goats and you didn’t seem thrilled by them.

You ask to hear music, especially the Yo Gabba Gabba soundtrack. You love to play the wiggle song and then FREEZE. You do a funny little run-in-place-and-waggle-your-wrists dance during the wiggle part. You also like the run in a circle song. You like to run…at the moment running away from me is your favorite and my least favorite. You’re so tall and fast and your hair is so long and curly. You like to watch Sesame Street and you played your first Nintendo Wii game, the Nihao Kai Lan game. You love to go see the manatee at the Deltona Public Library. It’s your favorite place. You push every button in the interactive nature museum and point out every animal. You are really enamored with all animals at the moment. You like to act out animals, especially elephant, cat, lion, and sometimes you throw in monster. That’s my favorite.

Today is the day before your second birthday party. As usual, I went overboard. Your Dad is probably frustrated with me. I tend to set overly high party expectations that are impossible to meet. Hopefully your birthday cake turns out ok. The first attempt was a disaster that crumbled into a billion pieces. I know you won’t remember the cake, but you’ll have pictures and I think, in some way, you’ll know that I wanted to make it special for you. You are excited about your birthday and have seemed to learn what a birthday means. You didn’t want to go to bed tonight because you knew a birthday party (whatever that means to you, exactly) was imminent.

You were running around in the backyard this afternoon, sort of caught up in your own little world and I just stood there and watched you, amazed. I admit I started crying…not because I was sad, really, though time’s quickness is a little painful. Mostly I was overwhelmed with pride. You looked so confident and carefree running around, kicking at the grass, hiding behind a tree and yelling out peek-a-boo. I was just so suddenly struck by your you-ness, as stupid as that sounds. You’re just your own little person, curious and fascinated and filled with joy by the world around you and that makes me so crazily proud of you. Looking back on that statement in twenty years when you’re worried about money or school or your future career and what you have or haven’t accomplished, you might think that moment extremely trivial, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s the best sort of pride. Unconditional. Astounding. Simple. True.

Happy Birthday number two, Jho.

Sleep., originally uploaded by bburbank.

We’re both getting more of it. I am so happy about your recent ability to make yourself fall asleep. And I really like this extra sleep. Hopefully this falling asleep on your own and sleeping through the night with one 2-4 hour afternoon nap is not a short-lived phase, but something that’s here to stay for awhile. You’re doing pretty well without milk and froggy and blanky seem to be pretty comforting nighttime companions. You’ve been getting up between 7 and 8:30am, going down for a nap between 11:30 and 2:30 and then going to bed around 9:30 or 10:00 each night. That is working out great for us and it’s nice to be on a bit of a regular schedule.

You are eighteen months old now and I am really enjoying this age. You are communicating so much more with me and understand so many new things. You are such a big boy. We had to get you size 7.5 Wide shoes today at Stride Rite and you are almost 36 inches tall and 30.8 pounds! We still battle your eczema  a bit and you wake up with the occasional high fever which I think may be a result of the new molars coming in (you have three of the four back molars now). You are wearing between a size 2 and 3T and love to examine what is on your shirts each day…especially when you get to wear your Buzz Lightyear or Sesame Street shirts. I realized recently that it is often those stupid details that I want to remember and that I forget. I need to keep better track of what sizes you wore when and what ailments you have at what age…that sort of thing. I also want to keep better track of some other things:

Things you love: Buzz, Woody, and Mr. Incredible, soft pillows…especially the new “big boy pillow” we let you sleep on now, running around the house chasing (and sometimes hitting and pulling on Leela), sitting in various chairs, playing outside picking little flowers, picking up acorns, examining small objects, playgrounds, especially going up the stairs and down the slide again and again and again, reading books like My Name is Dug and your frog pop-up book, doing your “barnyard dance”, pat-a-cake, twinkle twinkle, and itsy bitsy spider, climbing up on the bed and jumping on your Dad, playing a modified hide and seek, being surprised, wiggling, stomping, being tickled, communicating effectively and then getting praised, saying animal sounds, playing a variation on Simon Says, felt boards, playing with toy phones, blowing kisses, feeding me from your dinner plate, sitting in my lap and letting me read to you, holding small things, riding in your backpack and in the car carts at the grocery store, magnets on the fridge, putting on your shoes (probably because it signals that we’re going somewhere), helping me with house chores (emptying or filling the dishwasher and opening or closing drawers being among your favorite chores). When I give you something you want and asked me for you clench your fists with excitement and grin and sometimes laugh. It’s awesome. When you don’t get what you want or something is frustrating you like something not fitting into a container or some container not opening for you the way you want you get very Hulk-like and grunt real loud and bang the object down. You are a lot like me! (Something I’m noticing about parenting…you parrot my actions and bring attention to mannerisms I didn’t know I had like when you started saying “okay” and I realized how many times a day I say that word!)

Things you don’t like: When your nesting cups don’t nest properly, when I don’t provide a toy you’ve asked for promptly enough, when it’s been too long since your last snack, when you wake up in the backpack after having fallen asleep in there (same goes for carseat), when we turn off Yo Gabba Gabba before it’s over, when we won’t let you get down and run through a store, sweet potatoes and broccoli, when other people pick you up besides me, when I won’t let you chase the dog any more

Favorite foods: Bananas still win. You take the hugest possible bites. Grapes are probably next favorite, although crackers are up there. I mean, honestly, ice cream would win above all but you don’t get to have ice cream very often. You love oatmeal in the morning, strawberries, and pretty much any fruit. You like tomatoes and cheese and you’ll tolerate avocado. You don’t eat many vegetables willingly (unless hidden) but you will eat just about any vegetable if it came out of soup. Weird. Broccoli is still really iffy, but I discovered tonight that cauliflower is acceptable. You like spicy foods and you do not appreciate potatoes unless they come in french fry form.

Favorite places to go: Any playground, the library (some days at the library are better than others), anywhere outdoors, especially if you are allowed to run wherever you want. Theme parks are fun but exhausting. You like going over to other people’s houses, but you don’t want the other people to pick you up and you don’t want to be left alone with them until you are good and ready,

Words you often say on your own: uh-oh, okay, ou-T, Daddy, dog, look, up, moo, quack, baa, Buzz, yes, no, ouchie

Words you reliably sign: cat, dog, more, please, thank you, I love you (blows kisses), hello, goodbye, banana, cracker, frog, sleep (you sign and say sssss…it’s adorable), bath, eat, drink

Words you have said when prompted: please, car, off, down, Leela, Mom, Jack, ….pretty much most words I try to get you to say you try to say now, even if you don’t actually use them or necessarily know what they mean. You also know many, many more words than you ever try to say. I can ask you to point to a bird, an octopus, a zebra, an elephant, all the Yo Gabba Gabba characters, some colors, almost all your main body parts, some shapes, etc. and you point at them.

It’s fun to watch you starting to interact and play with other kids and interact and communicate more directly with me. You are really exploring what your body can do, randomly trying to turn in circles or walk backwards or jump, randomly trying to rhyme words or make up syllabic rhythmic patterns, mimic the way we talk on the phone or sit in a chair or sing a song. (We’ve been putting a song to everything we do so you can get used to our schedule. You sing “away” when we put the toys away. Tonight in the bathtub you sang “away…okay…be-bay.”

I also feel like we’re getting to know you and your quirky mannerisms and your likes and dislikes more and more each day. You like to be praised, but you don’t necessarily need us to notice what you do. You are very independent and often seem to question why you have to do something that is asked of you. You can be very focused and almost have tunnel vision if something interests you. After library class you are not interested in socializing with the other kids…you run for the door so you can explore the rest of the library. Books are pretty much your favorite things next to holding Woody and Buzz. You have a very expressive face that gives away all your emotions…your latest face being very quizzical where your scrunch up your nose and your eyebrows and look very concerned and confused. You are very caring and thoughtful and like to help me do things. I broke something the other day and you came over and stood over the shattered remains nervously, sort of seeming concerned that I was upset. You kept saying with your scrunched up face, “oohhhh….okaaaaiee….okaaaaiee” as if you were trying to make sure it was okay and that I knew it was okay. You also have a mischievous streak. You run and run and don’t look back. You test your boundaries and often seem to love the attention you get when you cross a known boundary. You do not scare easily and seem to be adventurous. And you are so sweet and loving and awfully adorable and people seem to just really like you! I know I do!

Well, you can say “dah-eeeeee” which is good enough.

Seriously you were adorable today, which is true for most days, but I figured it should be written down somewhere. You did have to go to timeout twice, though. Stop messing with that Leela so much!

Boy in Blue on Boat, originally uploaded by bburbank.

You loved our Disney Cruise so much. You loved running all over the deck. You loved going up and down in the elevator. You loved the gingerbread cookie house (probably more than anything else) as well as the nightly dance parties with the band Midtown (where you totally hit on a little girl in while Midtown sang Lady in Red…amazing moment). You loved our waiter Ludo and the constant stream of junk food. You loved the constant stream of Disney movies and television programming in the room as well. You loved the framed picture of the song “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” that your Dad sang to you every time you pointed at it. You loved your Woody and Buzz toys we got you on the ship. You especially loved access to the splash zone by the pool. When we got home and walked in the house, you cried.

Windows, originally uploaded by bburbank.

You love looking out at the world. I love this picture of your big beautiful curious eyes.

Christmas Night 2009, originally uploaded by bburbank.

I am really enjoying you at 15 months. You have become a real boy! I know I keep saying that, but it’s really true this time. You run around pointing at things and showing me with your sign language and your facial experessions exactly what you want and need. You joke around, hug and kiss, dance and keep rhythm, make baskets in your new basketball hoop and then clap for yourself, get excited when we provide the thing you ask for whether it’s a banana or a TV show or pick you “up!” You had a great Christmas opening so many packages and visiting all your family who loves you so so much. You got many new books because, really, they are your favorite things. You got blocks and rubber balls and a comfy beanbag chair and blanket and your b-ball hoop and your shopping cart. For Christmas dinner you dressed up in your vest and tie and you Great-Grandma we call Oma couldn’t stop laughing and smiling at your tie. You are such a handsome sweet cuddly boy with the most expressive face and so serious sometimes! You know the signs for up, banana, eat, drink, more, kitty-cat, dog, and bird and are learning a new one every day these days. I am so excited for everything this new year has to teach you. I want to take you on more day trips this year and I want to pay close attention to your diet. It has been an amazing 2009. I’ve watched you grow from a helpless four month old to a pretty independent little 15 month old and it has been quite a journey. Thanks for making this year so amazingly special for me and for your Dad.

That’s sort of the theme for you these days now that you’re fourteen months old. You are constantly trying to be the big kid, to see who is in control, to test your boundaries and your own limits. You love walking the dog, climbing on furniture, pointing at new objects, and communicating your desires with a point or a yell. For example, you will now go to the door and grab onto the leash hanging on the hook and bang it against the wall until I take it down and hook it to Leela’s collar. Then if I try to intervene and grab Leela’s leash to direct her, you start yelling and crying. You want to walk her yourself! When you are tired, you walk over to the couch so that I can nurse you and put you down for a nap. Yesterday you walked over to the pantry, opened the door (a skill I’d hoped you wouldn’t learn so fast) and pointed to the giant jar of animal crackers. You also think you can go up and down the stairs like a grown up does and, unfortunately, you can’t. Yesterday you fell and I felt like I’d really failed you. You are a daring kid and capable of much more these days requiring me to be quite the lifeguard, so to speak. I have to make sure you’re not walking me sometimes! Whenever I get stern or tell you “no” you get a very mischievous face and laugh! I never know what to do when you do that! It seems the best course of action is just to direct you into doing something else…to get your mind off of the thing you’re not allowed to do and focus on something else. Those times are rare, though. Most of the time you are easy breezy and so much fun to be around. The other day I was taking a shower and keeping an eye on you as you played in the bathroom and your bedroom (the rooms are connected) and the minute I lost sight of you and didn’t hear you I got scared and ran out of the shower to find you reading a library book by yourself on your couch! What a grown up boy!

Your Dad’s favorite new development is holding his hand when you walk. It melts our hearts when you reach up and grab our hands to walk down the driveway. My other favorite moment recently was taking you to the Orlando Museum of Art, a place that has been a big part of my life for seven years with people who have known me since before I was married to your Dad, and with art that I’ve known and loved and shown to lots of children, some not much older than you. To see you walking those halls and looking at the art (which you did! You looked at everything!) got me all teary.

Your favorite things at the moment include: your Ming Ming robot toy which you point at every night so I’ll play it before bed, tomatoes in any form, hugging for awhile when you get up from a nap, looking at lit lightbulbs, flipping through your books, climbing onto the couch to cuddle with people or watch the Wonder Pets or Yo Gabba Gabba, any sort of ornamentation or grate on the ground, turning the XBox on and off, putting objects in and out of containers, placing magnets on and off of the refrigerator, any sort of rocks or gravel, your shoes…for some reason you are fascinated by them and try very diligently to suck on them, rolling around on pillows and blankets, and walking walking walking walking as fast as you can.

We are approaching your second Thanksgiving and Christmas. I remember last holiday season so well thanks to you. I remember you nursing under the dinner table at Thanksgiving dinner so that I could eat with everyone else. I remember setting you up on your Kota dinosaur for the first time and watching you try to eat it. I look forward to this year’s memories which will include a trip on a Disney cruise next week. I can’t wait!! Your father and I are celebrating our fifth anniversary. Five years! I can hardly believe it. I feel so fortunate to have such an amazing, strong family and marriage. I want our relationship to be an example of everything a marriage can be so that you grow up to make wise choices and to look for a relationship full of mutual respect, friendship, and love.

Pappy Peek-a-boo, originally uploaded by bburbank.

I knew that I wanted to have a boy someday to carry on the Burbank name. I knew that was important to your Dad and to your “Pappy,” too. I know that desire because I have that same wish for your Uncle Adam: that he will have a boy someday to carry on the Randolph name. Both your Dad and your Uncle Adam are the last in their respective family lines.

I love this picture with all three Burbank men together and enjoying each other’s company. We went out to your Dad’s old high school to watch the Deltona High Wolves play football. It made me feel like I’d accomplished something special by helping to extend the Burbank family and I can see the pride in their eyes when they see you and that makes me proud, too. I hope you three continue to have fun together. I hope you inherit their calm, level-headed, patient demeanor, their kindness and loyalty, their strong work ethic and their enjoyment in the little things life has to offer. Those are the qualities I love most in them.