Elijah turns TWO

On May 2nd my baby turned two.  I can't believe it's finally here.  I have spent so much of my time telling people that he isn't two yet that I almost can't believe it that now I have to tell them he is two.  Since he is such a big boy, they all think he is older than he really is.  Which is good and bad.  Actually, mostly bad because they expect him to act older than he is.  Poor kid.  I think he had a great birthday.  This morning I made him pancakes with extra syrup since I know he likes that.  We went to the tiangis and I bought him freshly squeezed orange juice and a tlacoyo (it is like a stuffed tortilla, but not really), which he loves.  I made his favorite dinner, fettuccine alfredo and watermelon.  This kid knows how to down a watermelon.  I buy these little ones and he almost ate half of one, no joke.  I know his day mostly revolved around food but I thought those things would make him happy.  I took him to the store to get some missing ingredients for his cake and I bought him a sprinkled covered donut, which he thought was pretty neat, and a helium filled balloon.  He had fun with that thing all day long.  He kept hitting the balloon with his pool noodle as well as the wrapping paper.  I am not sure if he thought it was like his little piñata.  They do piñatas a lot here.  Then when Eva came home from school, she sang the piñata song as he hit the balloon and he thought that was pretty funny.  For his birthday his nana helped bring me his birthday present.  We gave him one of those car ramp things from Fisher Price.  He thought that was awesome.  It was so funny to see him open his presents.  He kept saying woah.  That had to of meant he loved everything.  He wouldn't really blow out his candles.  He was pretty scared of them, but what he did do was pretend to blow them out after Eva blew them out for him.  He ate his little cake that I made for our little family party, but I think his favorite part was really the vanilla ice cream.

This is for you Elijah...

Today you are two and I am so thankful for your sweet little spirit.  You make me laugh.  I love to kiss you even though you don't always like to kiss me back.  Actually I think you do but I think you get a kick out of playing hard to get.  I LOVE when you come up to me and give me a big hug.  I can't get enough of those.  You can be gentle when you want to be.  Sometimes when you try to show affection you actually hurt people but we all know you have good intentions.  People seem to really like you because of your easy going personality.However, you are also one strong kid.  You can push Eva all around the room in the toy stroller or drag her around a kid plastic chair taking rough corners.  That's why you are strong.

You still don't communicate too much but I am starting to realize that a lot of the gibberish you say are in fact sentences, but I have to be listening really hard to understand you.  These are the times when you tend to get the most frustrated.  You are getting better at repeating a lot of words but there are still some that you can't say.  For some reason you have a really hard time saying the word leche.  You will say ugo instead, which you are saying jugo.  Yeah, can't figure that one out.

You love playing outside.  A couple months back you developed this fear of the black birds that hang out in the backyard, and I don't blame you.  Those things are kind of scary to me too.  I think they might of scared you one day, maybe they got too close.  But it seems like the fear has gone away and you like to play out there every morning.  Most of the time you play in the sand/water table that we have out back which means that you come in sloppy wet with dirt all over.  Or you get a hold of the hose and "water" the lawn.  I don't mind as much anymore about the clean up because I know that being outside makes you happy.

While you love your momma, you have a hard time getting along with you sister.  Well, it's really more like hot and cold.  You either love her and are running around all over the house laughing or you are pulling her hair and making her cry.  Sometimes I feel more like the referee in a boxing match than your mom.

Your sleep habits are also off and on. We still haven't figured out why you wake up in the middle of the night.  But when you do you will wake up and sometimes stay up for over two hours.  You aren't crying but are as happy as can be these times and are usually cracking up in your bed.  These nights I never know if I want to laugh or cry because you keep me up.  Eventually you will go back to bed, but of course you aren't in the best of moods the next morning.  You seem to be trying to phase out your naps because if I let you sleep too long during your nap, that usually is one of the reasons why you will wake up in the middle of the night.

By this age with Eva, I would have been real close to taking away the bottle and potty training and while I don't see you close to potty training yet, your baba will be gone real soon.  These things are always harder for mom than for you guys.

You eat fairly well.  We like to refer to you as our fruit bat because you love fruit, but meat, not so much.  I don't know if it is that you don't like the texture or taste, but I have a hard time trying to get you to eat meat.  I guess there could be worst things.  Elijah, I love you so much.  Thank you for being my sweet Elisheto.  Love, mama.