-The photos in this post are just random ones from the last few weeks that I had on my iPhone. They don't match what I'm talking about, but, you know, this is what Judah looks like as a 25 month old toddler.-
Anyway, he started crawling around 9 months and was walking at 16 months... Those are two major milestones that I can easily recall how old he was for them.
Now that he is 2 he:
• talks. All the time. He uses sentences most of the time, but also will just do one or two word statements. He also refers to himself as "you", everyone else he calls by name (toddlers and pronouns are a funny combo).
• is potty trained. He still wears a diaper for nap and bedtime though. He usually needs prompting to go sit on his potty, but he is slowly getting better at telling us he needs to go. We made the transition to underwear right before he turned two. It was actually pretty easy and seamless due to our half-assed EC that we had been doing with him since he was 4 months old.
• can count. He can get to 10 with no problem, but 11-20 is a bit more hit or miss. It usually goes something like 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, YAY! He has pretty good one to one correspondence up to 6 or so. Sometimes he gets it up to 10 (specifically when counting his sister's toes- which, fyi, is adorable).
• sings. He has a variety of songs that he can sing. The alphabet song is always a winner. He also can sing Twinkle, Twinkle, 5 Little Monkeys, Row, Row, Row your Boat, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Old MacDonald (which he refers to as E I E I O). I'm pretty sure there are some other lullabies he knows, but those are his go-to songs.
• knows his letter names and sounds... At least when they are capital letters. We are working on his lower case letters. He knows quite a few, but doesn't have them all yet. He can also "read", as in, he has memorized The Very Hungry Caterpillar and can "read" it to us. I've been trying to video him reading it, but he always stops as soon he sees the iPod on him. He can also "read" Rocker Babies Wear Jeans. He does a good job matching the words to the pages based on the illustrations. He knows if he skips a page and will go back to correct it.
• sleeps. He naps once a day (anywhere in the noon to 3pm range) and is in bed for the night by 8pm and gets up some time between 8-9 in the morning. He usually gets up around 6am and has a little bottle in his crib and goes back to sleep.
• takes care of his pets. He feeds the dogs twice a day (morning and evening). He feeds his two beta fish right before bed time and helps Bill change the water every few weeks.
• helps cook. He has a step ladder in the kitchen that he uses to help us cook. He is very in to using his stool. It is a pretty new development, as we just got the stool out a few weeks ago. He will help by handing us ingredients, pouring, and stirring... And always by sampling!
• takes photos. Constantly. Videos, too. All on my iPhone. I have the screen locked so he can't just play Angry Birds all the time. However, you can still access the camera from the lock screen and taking photos has quickly become one of his new favorite activities. When he first started he pretty much only took selfies. Like this:
But he has since expanded his oeuvre and takes pictures of his sister, his dad and myself, his dogs, and pretty much anything else that is important to him (like certain toys, or a bottle, or the fan in his room, or...) The photos and videos are a pretty hilarious snapshot into Judah's life (especially when he disappears with the iPhone and we only get to find out later that he took pictures of his trash can and a box of tissues).
• has timeouts. Which 99.9% of the time are for throwing things. At the dogs. At us. At his sister. At the window. The kid loves to throw. He has specific throwing toys (soft little round crotcheted monsters and owls and a variety of balls outside), but he stills throw metal cars, wooden blocks, and hard plastic dinosaurs all too often. He can go for days without a 1 minute timeout, then he will get stuck in a timeout loop and get 5 in an afternoon. The first one is legit and the subsequent ones are from him testing his limits (hello, two year old!) and repeating the exact same action that initially landed him the timeout. He will look at us, say "timeout?" and then chuck a toy at our head.
Two year olds are very funny little people.
