Our little guy is 2!
Physical Stats:
Height: 35 inches (between 50 and 75th percentile according to BabyCenter.com- haven't been to the pediatrician yet)
Weight: 28 lbs. (According to the Wii Fit, 50th percentile according to BabyCenter.com)
Teeth: 16 (no 2 year old molars yet)
Sizes: He's pretty much a 2T, though he is wearing some 3T tops and some 3T pajamas
Sleep: grrr. ~9:30pm - 7:30am
Hair: Light Brown with some lighter streaks from the sun
Eyes: Hazel. They range from Blue/Gray to Green to Brown, sometimes all at the same time, with them being brown near the iris, green next, and blue/gray on the edge. I think he'll always have chameleon or multi-color eyes.
Favorites
Favorite Food: Cheese, Z-bars (kids clif bars), bananas, macaroni and cheese, anything chocolate
Favorite Drink: juice, hot chocolate (but he mostly drinks milk)
Dislikes: leafy greens (although if they are in a soup or something, he does eat them, unlike RJ who will try to pick it out),
Favorite Book: "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak (he can recite it verbatim along with me)
Favorite Toy: RJ's lego space shuttle, anything with wheels, anything that RJ currently has in his hands, scissors, any writing utensil he can get his hands on, blocks of any kind, shoes, dress up accessories
Favorite Color: Unknown. He seems to like James (the train) over Thomas & Percy, so MAYBE red, but he also likes some of RJ's orange cars, so maybe orange.
Favorite Outdoor Activity: Climbing stairs and going down the slide, trying to run into the street, pushing carts, lawn mowers, shoveling sand from the sand table to the ground.
Favorite Indoor Activity: Playing with whatever RJ is playing with or stealing art supplies and painting/drawing wherever he can, playing dress up (he currently loves the "Train Your Dragon Hat", which is a viking hat, but he will find whatever he can to dress up in!)
Favorite Phrase: "Spaceship..to the moon!"
Eating
Logan used to be a great eater, but now he's in typically toddler mode, where he is picky and would love to subsist solely on Z-bars and cheese and sweets. He usually has cereal (sometimes with milk, sometimes without) for breakfast, and we often eat leftovers for lunch, and a homecooked meal for dinner (see
http://delanceydinners.blogspot.com if you're interested in what we eat on a daily basis). Breakfast is whenever he wakes up (anytime between 6:30 and 8:30 depending on the day), and he usually wants a morning snack around 9:30/10). Lunch is around noon, and he usually has an afternoon snack when he wakes up from nap (anytime between 3:30 and 5). Dinner usually starts between 6 and 6:30. He basically will eat for a few minutes and then run off to play. I will try to snag him again and keep him eating a few more bites, but usually I just give up and decide that he will eat if he's hungry. He really would snack all day if he could, and I'm working on offering more fresh fruits and veggies for snacks instead of Z-bars and raisins and bananas (which yes, I know are a fresh fruit). Lastly, he has recently shown us that he can drink from a regular cup, although it is messier than him drinking from a sippy or straw cup.
Potty Training
I'm going to go ahead and call it. Logan is potty trained. As of his second birthday, every poop for 3 weeks has made it directly into the potty (as I write, it's now been 4 weeks). And most of his pee makes it into the potty too. I will still ask him if he needs to go, but it's only if I remember.
At this point, he's telling us that he needs to use the potty. More often than not, he ends up wearing the same underwear and pants at the end of the day that he started out in. That said, he does still occasionally have an accident, but it's rarely a full bladder accident; mostly just a squirt and then he goes running to the potty. We have started venturing out wearing underwear and he has handled being in the car for about 30 minutes now without incident. We only put him in a diaper at naptime and at night. His nap diaper normally comes off dry, so that might be a short-lived precaution, but his nighttime diaper is usually wet in the morning (but he is in a phase where he will wake us up to go pee in the middle of the night, which sucks for our sleep, but in the grand scheme of things, is a great developmental milestone).
Sleep
Logan used to go to sleep easily, but now he fights it constantly, much to our annoyance. We have a routine of reading a story or 2 (usually one for him, one for RJ at bedtime, and only one at naptime), and then singing a song to him, saying goodnight, and then leaving the room. This used to work great. He might talk a little and then would just sleep. Not anymore. Now there are 3-4 curtain calls where he wants a variety of things such as a.) to use the potty (even after he JUST WENT), b.) another song, c.) to get tucked in again, d.) to have a toy sitting on his dresser, e.) another hug, f.) to get the blanket OFF, g.) to get a toy OUT of the bed, etc... We try not to give in to it (especially the ridiculous demands for toys), because it is a relentless cycle, but sometimes, singing the song again (especially if he just went potty again) will get him to settle and sleep. We do think he's manipulating us with the potty thing though, because he knows we'll take him. We hope that fizzles out on its own once potty training isn't so new to him. And while he was sleeping through the night great, he has now started to wake at night again, which we think is related to the potty training, and occasionally 2 year old molar pain since they are not in yet. He takes an afternoon nap still, but he fights that too. I'd like for him to sleep from 1:30 - 3:30/4, but usually it's more like 2-4 or 2:30 - 4:30, especially now that he fights the sleep. 2 hours is the norm, but we can get by on 1 hour if we have to (e.g., Mondays when RJ goes to gymnastics at 3, I put him down at 1, and he fights it until 1:45 and then I have to wake him up at 2:45 to leave - if there was another class at a better time for RJ, trust me, we'd take it).
Fine Motor Development
Logan loves to draw. My walls have suffered, but he really likes making his marks. He can also draw a circle on demand. His new thing is cutting with scissors. He very quickly learned the correct grip on them and now makes fringe around nearly every piece of paper that comes within his reach. He is also really good at unzipping his own jacket...and then throwing it on the floor for me to pick up. He absolutely loves to stack blocks and make structures out of blocks (duplos, bristle blocks, wooden blocks; he loves them all). And in the bath he is getting better at pouring water into other things and more effectively dumping water on RJ's head (or my pants). He can feed himself with a fork and spoon relatively well, although sometimes he gets frustrated or just doesn't want to. He can also easily turn the pages of books now without ripping them (most of the time).
Gross Motor Development
I don't think Logan ever walks anymore. He runs, he jumps (up and down on both feet in place and off of things with little warning to catch him), he dances, and he climbs, but rarely does he ever just WALK. He is gaining better balance as I realized a couple of weeks ago when he wanted to walk on the skate park rail like a beam. He did really well! I'm more confident of his skills going up and down stairs, though I still lock the gates because he does still occasionally slip, and I like to be there when he's going down especially. He can throw and catch when you throw a ball right to him. Climbing is his absolute favorite thing. He regularly gives me a heart attack at the park because he climbs the structure in the big kid area (as in the 5-12 year old playground, not just the 2-4 year old playground) as well as hangs from his arms on the monkey bars (I think he's been watching RJ at gymnastics!) and insists on the big kid swings. I've also found him scaling the outside of our staircase, making it nearly to the landing. I think he's part monkey! It's clearly time to get him into a gymnastics class!
Cognitive Development
Logan's cognitive development is right on track and focused mostly on verbal skills, as he is now talking in 2-4 word sentences regularly. He has a great memory and has already memorized "Where the Wild Things Are", and can sing the Alphabet song, Twinkle, Twinkle, Brown Bear, and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Even though Christmas is long over, he started singing "Santa Claus is coming to Town" in the car the other day. He generally knows where the toys belong in the house, but still only rarely puts them away without significant cajoling.
He mastered the shape sorter, though he doesn't yet know the shape names, nor can he reliably tell you what color things are. He can count to 3 and he can count backwards from 10 (thanks to our Space Theme and pretty regular Shuttle launching throughout the house) by himself. I'm sure he'll learn to count forward soon. He loves to engage in pretend play, and will use objects in non-traditional ways to fulfill his ideas in his head. However, that only works when it's his idea, and unfortunately NOT when you try to convince him that what you're giving him can used just like something that RJ is currently using (that said, we're also working on sharing with both kids).
Language Arts
Logan chatters quite a bit now. He tells us what he wants and lets us know when he's unhappy (usually with a loud, resonant, "NO" or "MINES" (yeah, he says "mines" instead of "mine"). We can understand most of what he says, although it's still hard to distinguish some words - one of our current issues is telling "Daddy" from "RJ" because Daddy sounds like you would expect Daddy to, but RJ sounds like "Dahr - Day", but he sort of swallows the r, so it's hard to tell sometimes. He finally says his own name (Doh-dan) to refer to himself sometimes, although he sometimes refers to himself as "my" or "mines". He has a great vocabulary for everyday objects and toys and can usually get his point across using sentences. (E.g., "RJ hit me" (although he's used that one when RJ was nowhere near him too...)). He is also getting good enough in his expressive language that he can hold a short conversation with RJ, although a lot of their play involves Logan imitating what RJ is doing and mimicking his words. Still, not a bad way to interact peacefully.
Emotional/Behavioral/Personality
Somewhere around 22 or 23 months, Logan flipped a switch and became a quintessential two year old. He wants to do everything by himself, and gets frustrated when he can't quite do it. He also gets frustrated when the other people in his life don't do what he wants. And he tantrums and yells "no". He occasionally hits when a toy is taken from him or some similar event, but has quickly learned to say "sowwy" and give hugs instead. All of this is normal for a 2 year old, but we obviously try to encourage his persistence with tasks all the while trying to avoid his frustration responses. He absolutely adores being around people, mostly other children. In some ways he idolizes RJ, who can do all the cool things a four-year-old can, and in other ways you can totally see him rolling his eyes at RJ's drama queen episodes. That said, Logan is a lot more easy going than RJ and even though he gets upset when things don't go his way, he calms down a LOT quicker than RJ does (even at 4 years old, so we're not comparing RJ-at-2 to Logan now). One thing that Logan does have in common with RJ at 2 is that they both learned emotion words around this age and used them appropriately.
Logan is a really empathetic kid, who gives RJ (and other people) hugs when they're upset. When the babies we know are crying, he loves to bring them toys to cheer them up too. It's so cute to watch! I used to think that Logan didn't feel fear nor anger, since he was just such a happy-go-lucky baby and young toddler, but these emotions are clearly starting to develop; anger more so in the form of frustration, and fear mostly in response to things that startle him (because he still has no fear for his own safety when hurling his body around the playground or running down the middle of our street). He is also starting to get bashful. He's really easy to drop off at our co-op houses or at Erika's house which are familiar to him, but he does seem to be initially shy with new people. And he likes to cover his face for pictures, which is typically as children develop the emotion, embarrassment. Mostly though, he's just a happy, mischievous, little boy who likes to tackle his big brother to the ground with overzealous hugs and tickles and get into EVERYTHING.
