Dear William,
This has been a fun month with you and your comedic personality shines brighter and brighter every day. You love to laugh and make others laugh-even though you look pretty serious and like to give people the stink eye.
You love, love to be tickled, tackled, chased and just generally rough house. After you are tickled, you like to announce it ‘Mama tittle (tickle) me’ or ‘Daddy Silly. Daddy tickle’. You love to fall off the couch and then laugh, have pillows thrown at you, or walk around with blankets or baskets on your head. If I say, ‘I’m gonna get you’; you run away like a crazy drunk laughing your head off. When you do something that makes Daddy or I laugh, you say ‘show sister’ and you love to make her laugh. After you fall down (off the couch, or while dancing or while being chased) you look up at me and say ‘I’m oh-tay’ between gasps of giggles. It is pretty hard for Daddy and I not to have a smile plastered across our face when we’re home with you as you’re always making us laugh.
You’ve always had a special bond with your daddy, but this month you truly became his shadow. You want to be wherever he is. If he is downstairs, you’ll stand and bang at the door and say ‘See MY daddy’. When I pick you up from school, you run to the door and say ‘See MY Daddy’. While Daddy is outside plowing the snow on the driveway, you stand at the window and just watch him. If he goes out of sight, you run to find me and say ‘Where MY Daddy go?’ You love to just snuggle with him while watching TV. You’ll regularly tell me ‘I’m watching Footbol with MY Daddy’. The capitalized MY is not a mistake, you always call out that he is yours and and emphasize the ‘MY’ when you’re talking about him. After putting the Christmas decorations away, daddy has put together several different elaborate train setups for you and you are in heaven. You love to play with them (particularly the pieces that make noise) and will create trains that are 10+ cars long and lay down and just push them back and forth. Upon finishing breakfast, you regularly tell me, ‘I go play trains’. Occasionally, you’ll ask Daddy or I to play with you, but yell at us when we touch anything so it really is more that you just want us sitting next to you while you play, but not really doing anything. You’ve also grown quite the affinity to ChooChoo Bob. You mainly watch this for a minute or two before you go to bed (when Daddy puts you to bed. Mom makes you read books) or when Mom and sister are out, you’ll watch one of the DVDs. You regularly request to watch it and will even go and get a remote and hand it to us, sit yourself up on the couch and demand, Bob. 
As evidenced above, the vocabulary and sentences improve every month! One of your favorite things to do is tattle-tale on Lexi. ‘Lexi bite me’ ‘Lexi hit my head’ ‘Lexi push me’ and you’ll come running to me with some crocodile tears. Nine out of 10 times, you are fibbing and Lexi hasn’t done anything to you. We’re going to need to keep our eye on you, you little fibber!
You can also repeat the number sequence of 1-13 and so so regularly. You’ve also gotten pretty good at identifying colors. If I ask you what color this is, you get it right about half the time, but if I say, show me where the Blue one is, you get it right. You’re also starting to use colors to describe things. The other day, you kept asking for the ‘red’ one. I thought you were referring to a red bowl, but you were referring to what was in the red pan.
Other favorite things about you right now:
- The way you say ‘Yeah’ has this little inflection that the pitch of your voice raise as you finish the word and it is just so sweet to hear.
- If you can’t see something, it is hiding behind a tree. I’ll ask, ‘Where’s your socks?’ or ‘Where is Doon?’ and you’ll say ‘Hiding…hiding behind tree’. I think this comes from the song ‘Mr. Golden Sun’ but it is still pretty funny.
- I think your hair is curlier now than it was before we cut it. There have been a couple of moments where you’ve gotten really sweaty and it curls up into little ringlets.
- You love to have clean hands and wash them. When you’re done eating, you announce, ‘Wash hands’ and get down and run to the bathroom. Even during the middle of a meal, your hands will get dirty and you’ll request to have them cleaned half way through
- At the beginning of the month, you went to your first movie, Moana. I brought Grandma with us as I wasn’t sure how you were going to do sitting in a movie theater for that long, or didn’t want to have to take you with if Lexi had to go potty. You were a rock star bud. You had your little cup of popcorn and your water and treats and munched away and just watched the movie the whole way through. You loved calling things out like ‘Monster’ or ‘Scary’ or ‘Silly’ throughout. It was so cute to look over at you in the big chair and you cuddled up next to Grandma. So sweet!
- You also had a pretty nasty cold this month which made sleeping fairly challenging for you, lots of runny noses, eye goop, overall congestion, coughing and sneezing. It lasted for about two-and-half weeks, but I think we’re finally on the tail end of it for you. Hoping the rest of the winter is pretty healthy!
- Favorite toys: trains, Mickey Mouse camp fire truck (which you call the ice cream truck), pretend ice cream cones, Tonka Truck, balls, vacuum cleaners, your drills/tools
- Favorite books/TV shows: Trains, Trucks, Little Blue Truck, Monsters, ChooChoo Bob, Mickey Mouse clubhouse and Roadstar Racers, Curious George, Tigger and Pooh
- Favorite foods: pretty much everything but you ask to eat cereal every morning
That’s it buddy! Next month you’re two!!AHH!!
Love,
Mama
Peanut Smiles 