Dear Connor: Month 24

Dear Connor,

You’re two years old!

Blue Frosting Face

You’re such a big boy, compared to even just a few months ago. Of course, you’re still little — you don’t go potty yet, and you can’t always say exactly what you mean — but there are constant little glimmers of the big boy you’ll grow up to be.

You’ve been having another wordsplosion lately — you pick up on new words and phrases every day, like “crunchy” and “raining” and “I did it!” It amazes Mommy and Daddy sometimes how much you seem to pick up from context clues, and how well you pronounce words you’ve only heard once.

You’re also exploring humor. Sometimes you’ll do something dangerous or something that just isn’t allowed (like tugging on the cables behind the TV) and then you’ll ask, “Funny?” No, Connor. Not funny. Infuriating.

Sometimes, though, you really will do something funny. You’ll lay your head down in the bathtub while the water’s draining and you’ll say, “Night-night!” Or you’ll go to your bedroom door and pull it partway closed and say (like Mommy does every night), “Night-night! Love you!” Or you’ll put anything on your head — a noodle, a spoon, those papers that come in the bottom of dim sum steamer dishes — and call it a hat.

You also like to say “Cheese!” for pictures. The resulting smile is appropriately cheesy.

Cheese!

You’ve been doing better with your numbers — you actually count to 20 sometimes, although you tend to skip 16 or 17 — and you recognize a few letters. Thanks to your Count To Ten Sesame Street book, though, whenever you see letters, you think they spell B-E-R-T.

By starting you off with drinking the rest of the milk out of your cereal bowl, Mommy has managed to introduce you to drinking out of something that’s not a sippy. Under close supervision, you can drink out of a cup. We don’t do it very often, but it’ll probably become more of a thing in coming months.

Connor with his Totoro mug

You also drank out of a straw last Sunday at dim sum! If we hadn’t forgotten your sippy at home, who knows how long we would have waited to try you on a straw. You’re still not ready to traipse around with a regular lidded straw cup, but it’s good to know you can at least work a straw now.

Also worth mentioning: your latest obsession is My Neighbor Totoro. That’s one of Mommy’s favorite movies, so it makes Mommy happy that you can sit down and watch almost the whole 90 minute DVD now, and you seem to understand what’s going on for a lot of it. You’ll mimic what Mommy’s told you (“They’re making the tree grow!”), but you’ll also come up with your own commentary based on that. Today, you recognized the ending credit music as the same music that’s playing when they make the tree grow — it surprised Mommy that you recognized different instrumental themes, but it also made Mommy (as a long-ago Music Ed major) very happy.

We expect we’ll have some new milestones this coming year — sleeping in a big boy bed, and potty-training. Your interest in Mommy and Daddy’s big bed almost bordered on obsession for a week or two, and you seemed very interested in the idea that someday you’ll have a big bed of your own. You love to be put up on the Big Bed so you can pretend to go to sleep — complete with a short song and “night-night,” followed by snoring. (Where did you learn about snoring?)

Bedtime, for the most part, has been pretty awesome recently. You’ve gone from wailing for 10 or 15 minutes after Mommy leaves (and Mommy having to listen and make sure you don’t make yourself sick) to actually requesting Twinkle Twinkle so you can go night-night.

Connor at Bedtime

You do have your own potty, but you still haven’t used it for real yet. We’re not sure if your penchant for removing your poopy diaper while you’re in your crib is due to boredom or the fact that you don’t want your poopy diaper on you anymore. Either way, it makes the idea of putting you in a big boy bed a little scary. Cleaning up poop in your crib is one thing; if you start wiping your butt on the carpet instead of the pillow, we’re going to have a problem.

Outside of daycare, Harper is your main playdate, and you love to play with her. At this age, you really don’t play together as much as just playing separately in the same room at the same time. But sometimes you’ll roll a ball or hit a balloon to each other, or just play together with whatever grown-ups are around. Either way, you like playing with her so much that you’ll sometimes ask for her by name when we haven’t even talked about her for days.

Connor, Harper, and Mark

Harper and her parents were at your birthday party! And so were your Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Cook; Grammy; Aunt Connie and Aunt Bonnie; Cousin Dawn and her son, Noah; and Uncle Matt. You had fun, I think, but were surprised by having so many people in your house when you woke up from your nap. You were also coming down with a cold or something, and you had a short nap, so you were a little out of it at first.

Here’s a slideshow of some pictures from your party to wrap up this post. Happy birthday, little man. You’re a sweetie, and your family loves you very much.

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