Wes at 2

A two-year old is so much fun. If for no other reason, but how they talk and pronounce words. Soup is boop, scarf is barf. (You have to picture Wes so pleased to be wearing a scarf, that he's laughing in a knee slapping way, saying over and over again, "Barf . . . ha ha ha Barf ha ah." He laughs a lot like this - often it seems to his own inside joke. Our neighbor says he seems a little drunk.) For some reason, open is pudding. On top of that, all the new connections they are so excited to make - nothing is boring yet. Wes enjoys pointing out trash and trash cans. I don't remember ever feeling glee when seeing a trash can but Wes does. He also just started noticing cars and is so pleased to tell me, "Mama's car" for any Honda Odyssey he sees and "Valky's car" for any CRV he sees. It's funny, Julia still doesn't really pay any attention to cars. Although, after trying to make a game of identifying different brands of cars on the road, Julia does now note now and again that there are a lot of Toyotas in this world.

It is also fun to see a personality revealed. Wes is already a little man taking care of us. When saying good-byes in the morning, he makes us all give one another a kiss. It's not enough that he gets one, he directs who should kiss whom. When I borrowed Wayne's wallet to pay for dinner at Moe's Southwest Grill, I came back and set the wallet down in the middle of the table. Wes pointed to the wallet, telling me Dada several times until I returned it to Wayne's hands. When leaving him at daycare, he told me to zip up my jacket before heading out. When leaving a Music Together class, he reminded me to take my purse. He has also reminded Julia to bring her lunchbox to school. Part of me thinks this is so sweet. But I know that in time, although he may take care of us, it will probably be with a lot of eye rolling, sighing and impatience. How many of us our with our own parents I guess. Yikes!

Wes didn't use many words until the last few months. Now he's a regular parrot, albeit one that often only Wayne, Julia and I understand. In this video (shaky because I was trying to hold the camera off to the side so that he wouldn't want to try and grab it) you see if you can understand him.



Wes turned 2 a few weeks ago and for once, we had a very, very low key birthday party for one of our kids. As parents with no goody bags to prepare and invites or evites to make, it was delightful. We did make the effort to decorate his cake with characters from his favorite TV show, Boots and Dodo (known to the rest of the world as Dora the Explorer). And Wes was more than happy to just have a few presents to open and for everyone to sing Happy Birthday to him.