Dear Etrain

I have a 2 year old. How did that happen? Happy birthday my sweet boy.

A photo posted by Alex North (@alexnorth) on Dec 14, 2016 at 7:38pm PST

• -- You love trucks. And cars, trains, planes, tractors, etc. When I go get you up from your nap, you could still be sleeping, but the first thing that will come out of your mouth is usually about a truck. You're also learning more about each one. You can point out a jeep (with very decent accuracy), a bulldozer, dump truck, trash truck, and more. I'd say 85% of your toys are car, truck, tractor related in some way. If not a toy truck, then a book or puzzle with trucks. 
• -- You are great with counting to 10 and reciting your ABC's. Visually you know them all. But in the last month or two we've started singing the ABC song. You love it when I sing it to you before bedtime. My favorite is that you'll sing it back to me. You skip a few letters here and there, but its just absolutely adorable to listen to you sing. 

• -- We have a great time at My Gym. I've loved watching you develop. Now when it's circle time, you cheer out "cirtle (your "ka" sound it a "t") time" and run over and sit down. You do all the stretches and clapping on your own. I used to have to help you do all of it. Now you take charge and it's so cute. Oh, and you love bubbles...

• -- I love your confidence. I think I've mentioned how shy I was growing up. I mean painfully shy. I had a VERY hard time making friends, and being an only child sometimes made it worse because I just wanted someone to play with. You are not showing any signs of being shy at all and it just makes my heart burst with happiness.  You walk up to kids (and adults) and will just join in. You're still not at the age where you care too much about playing with others, but if some kid on the playground has a truck, you're not at ll shy about going up and trying to trade toys or play with them. 
• -- I think you're still pretty cautious, which I like. I don't want you to be afraid to try new things, but I like that you don't dive in like other kids your age do. You take it slow and make it happen on your terms. As a mom who has to race after you or catch you if you fall, it's great to know when I say be careful, you listen and slow it down. 
• -- Lately you've been into shortening everyone's names. Dada is Da. Nana is Na or Nan. And you had started calling me Ma, which I didn't love. After a couple weeks of that, you've switched to Mommy and I love it. Keep that one up kid. 
• -- "Help" is a new one lately too. You want help with everything. I like that you ask for help, but don't love that you want help ALL the time. You've got to learn to do things yourself munchkin. Most of the time you do just fine when I make you do things on your own, but every now and then I get a special meltdown from you. Oh boy. 
• -- Your meltdowns are the real deal though. About 3 weeks before your birthday you just switched. All of a sudden your tantrums are much more dramatic and unfortunately much more frequent. I'm learning lots of new deep breathing techniques. The change in you may also be related to our move. We finally moved out of the apartment and into our new house. Ordinarily that would be great, but they have still been working on the house. With the change in home, combined with a bunch of strange workers always in our house, I guess I can't blame you for acting a little different. Not sure that's the only reason, but I'm sure it can't help. I've had several meltdowns myself about these workers still being here and not being done. And FYI, they're still here...but will hopefully be done soon. 
• -- Tantrums aside, you are also a super cuddly, sweet boy. You give good hugs, and even better kisses. My favorite though is before and after nap. You're a little sleepy and you rest your head on my shoulder while I hold and rock you. It's probably my favorite time with you. But then again, I love cuddles too, so you can sucker me into that anytime. 

So, as I mentioned, this past month has been a little tough on all of us. We moved Nov. 19 basically into a construction zone. Most of my photos are from house related things instead of fun family outings. But we did take some trips to the park and had plenty of time playing and being silly. We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home, but we barely had a working kitchen so we ordered food instead of cooking at home. The next day was Dada's birthday so you and I took him out for pizza since it's one of his favorite things to eat on his birthday.

#hbd to the best dad ever. We wouldn't have all that we have without you...especially all the laughs. Love you forever, husband.

A photo posted by Alex North (@alexnorth) on Nov 25, 2016 at 9:25pm PST

Have I mentioned how much harder our monthly photo shoots are now? Silly boy.

I love you always Monkey.

Love,
Mama

P.S. Last year I put your monthly photos together to see how you grew over the year. It was so cool, I wanted to do that again this year...