After Anabelle

My beautiful baby boy is two.

On Friday he was two years, six weeks and a day old; exactly the age his big brother was the day Small was born.  I can’t really believe it – it is a weird feeling knowing that I had a newborn when my previous toddler was this age!  Xander seemed different at this age somehow, older, less baby like. Maybe this is because he was the only one here and I had no-one to compare him to, but  either way Zachary still feels like my Small. My baby; still so young in so many of his ways – often still content to play led on his back with his feet in the air on the carpet!

Zac continues to be cheeky and feisty and determined. Once he has set his mind on something there is little hope of deterring him – even when you think you have distracted him with something else – he doesn’t forget, and within minutes is back aiming to do whatever it is that he wants to do! Of course this means we’ve seen some ‘terrible two’ tantrums like we never saw with Alexander! Zachary really is a different kettle of fish!

He is a happy, adventurous and mischievous little boy. Zachary loves a joke now, he loves to run off in the opposite direction and have you chase him, giggling to himself as he goes, he loves to run and hide and play boo, he loves to tickle and rough and tumble.  He absolutely adores chasing his big brother around the house and playing rough and tumble games with him! Zachy, is as often the ring-leader of some mischief, as Xander!

Zachary and I gave up feeding just shy of 23 months. I felt so much more emotional than I had when Xander and I stopped, although I can’t really explain why; maybe because it had gone on so much longer and had been so easy right from the start.  The 18 month upper limit went well and truly out of the window because Zac had showed all the signs of still needing that connection and comfort – and so there felt no real reason to stop. But I knew when the time was right, over a few weeks he was spending shorter and shorter time feeding before going into his cot for bed, so it felt like the right  and gentle time for us both to swap to bottles. Thankfully the transition was easy and painless for us both, but still now a couple of times a week he pulls at my top and says milk, not really seriously asking I don’t think, and he accepts that milk is 'all gone' straight away, especially as the weeks have gone on. Now I think it is more about that he is making a statement that he remembers - it amazes me that he continues to remember that time we had together 3 months on.

He is a delight.

My darling Zachary, today you are two years, six weeks and two days old.

A fully fledged toddler now. On your birthday you were 83cm tall and 24lb (although I know you have grown a little bit and put on a bit more weight since then, as we had your two year check this week!), still my small; still only tracking between the 9^th/25^th centile for height and the 25^th centile for weight.  Like the health visitor said this week – it doesn’t look like you’re ever going to be six foot and appear to have inherited Mummy’s genes for size!  Your Small nickname suits you!

At two years old you love books. Your favourite for such a long time was ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ and you could tell me all the noises that the animals on the farm said – more recently over Christmas this favourite seems to have changed to ‘Stickman’. Another Julia Donaldson fan in the making!  

You love colouring in and often ask to ‘cuger’.  You also love to paint. You are such a creative little boy and are so excited to have your hands and feet painted to do prints. You love glue and sticking.

Ironically though, for a little boy who loves to paint if anything else messy is on your hands you shout ‘uh uh uh’ at me with your hand in the air until I’ve got a wet wipe and wiped the speck of whatever it is off – you do not like having dirt on your hands.

You love puzzles and cars and dinosaurs and still love Peppa Pig. We have the cutest video of you dinosaur roaring just like George from Peppa from back in the summer holidays the day after we had taken you to Peppa Pig World – what a wonderful time you had and have since had the best time at your Peppa Pig themed birthday party too.  

More recently you have discovered In The Night Garden and have a ‘must take everywhere’ companion now in your Iggle Piggle cuddly toy. If you’re lucky we’ll get tickets to the live show in the summer and hopefully you’ll get to meet your real life friend.

You love singing and dancing and bop away to lots of different tunes. You are such a joy to watch and my favourite time of the week with you is Tuesday mornings when we go to Happy Hands music class. You are so confident joining in. Often now you ask Mummy to sing you a song and join in with me with your own singing and actions; your favourites have been Horsey Horsey, Twinkle Twinkle, Wheels On The Bus, Row Row Boat and Baa Baa Black Sheep.

I’ve lost count of all the things you can say now and it doesn’t matter what you can’t say yet because you understand everything!  You are joining lots of words together and often saying three word sentences now. You have such an ever expanding vocabulary – including of course the frequently used word ‘MINE’ – you my little one have some serious personal space issues!

Sharing at two is never going to be your forte, (although your sharing skills could also be a lot worse), your main issue is not liking other children getting too close to you when you are engrossed with a toy. I find that if you start playing with a set of something with someone else at the same time you can tolerate their presence, e.g. the toy kitchen, or duplo, or cars, but if they try to join you after the fact then you push away to keep them at arms length.  Taking turns is something we’re doing lots of work on at the moment!

You are so clever Zachy. Already you know a few shapes such as circle, star and triangle and are doing puzzles designed for much older children with minimal help. You love imitating counting, and get your pointy finger ready to touch count things in books or your toys. You are beginning to recite the order of the numbers (sometimes skipping a few) if we start you off on one. Remarkably you also already seem to recognise what a number ‘looks like’, because if you see one written down you tell me it is ‘six’ –  six is your favourite! It usually isn’t six, but you already seem to be able to distinguish that numbers and numerals mean something as symbols. You don’t know the names of the colours yet (apart from everything is blue, so you know blue is a colour, but not what blue is!) but you are colour matching and quite deliberately finding matching colour bricks when building with your duplo. We’re playing lots of colour games at the moment to help you with colour names and recognition. All of a sudden there seems to be this burst of brain activity from you and I can’t wait to see what you know by the time you are two and a half!

You are our wonderful beautiful boy 

and we couldn’t love you more.

Keep keeping us on our toes little man.