22 Months

Dear Zachary,

Sometimes in life, even with the best of intentions, things do not always go as planned. While you may not understand that now, you will certainly learn it as you get older. I can almost hear your adult self chuckling at my words now. Yes, someday you will understand. The reason I am bringing this to your attention is because this letter is well overdue. I sort of missed the 21 month mark and as it got later and later I just decided to roll it into the 22 month letter. Well, now this one is a week overdue as well and it is time for me to play a little catch up. This one might be a little long.

One of the reasons I am so late with this letter is that you had a brand new baby cousin born last week. Baby Brayden was born just two days before you turned 22 months old and we spent most of the week visiting with him and his family. You got to hold him for the first time when he was just three days old and it was a sight I will never forget. It made me really want to give you a little brother or sister to play with soon. Fortunately, you will have lots of cousins to keep you company though. With the addition of Brayden, you have four cousins now and will have two more by next January. Our family is certainly expanding quickly!

Over the last couple of months you have become even more independent. You like to do what you want to do and often refuse to do what Mommy and Daddy want you to do. You tell Mommy and Daddy when you want a snack or a drink and if we pick out the wrong thing you let us know. You prefer to stand on the kitchen counter so that you can reach into the snack cabinet and choose your own most of the time. When I don’t let you do this you throw a tantrum – unless I can manage to get the perfect snack into your hands before the tantrum commences. While it is extremely frustrating at times, I also enjoy the fact that you have started making decisions on your own.

Just as with the snacking, mealtime is hit or miss. Some days it seems that we have placed the perfect meal in front of you and other days it seems like we are forcing you to eat pig slop or something. The trouble is, it is often the exact same meal that produces two entirely different responses from you. I’m pretty sure you would be happy if we let you eat chocolate chip cookie dough for every meal, along with a big cup of chocolate milk, but that just isn’t practical or healthy. Instead, I just try to make sure that there is at least one thing on your plate each meal that I know you will eat and hope that you will at least try the rest. Even if you eat nothing else, I can pretty much guarantee that yogurt and cottage cheese will disappear in an instant. You have also started cutting your second set of molars, which just might have something to do with the eating issues. The two bottom ones have started coming in, but the top ones are nowhere to be seen yet.

When you are behaving at the table, you are allowed a “big boy cup” without a lid. So far you have done quite well with it. The first time I gave you a real cup with some water in it you poured it down the front of you, but you haven’t done so since. I have been very pleasantly surprised at just how well you handle it. I’m just waiting for you to toss a full cup across the room like you do your sippy cups.

Last month, on March 21st, you had your very first surgery. We finally decided to put tubes in your ears so that you could quit having so many ear infections. The procedure was really fast and you were great throughout the whole process, but Mommy had a little bit of a rough time with the whole thing. It ended up not being nearly as bad as I had imagined, but the thought of my little boy lying in a hospital bed was really scary to me. Since the surgery, your ears have done really well. You haven’t had any more ear infections since then so I think it was a very good decision.

At some point during the last couple of months, you figured out what a “booboo” is. You got a pretty bad scrape on your leg and now every time you fall or bump into something you say either “Ow!” or “bobo!” and you need Mommy to kiss it to make it all better. It is amazing how powerful Mommy’s lips can be. As soon as I kiss the spot that is hurting, it magically goes away. This all worked really well until you started asking me to kiss your tongue. I wasn’t quite sure how to tell you that Mommy’s magical kisses don’t work on tongues so instead I just kissed the air next to your tongue and that seemed to work just as well.

The weather around here has been a little bonkers lately and it seems to be driving you about as nuts as it is me. We’ll have a beautiful sunny day where it feels like summer and then the next day it will get cold and rainy again. It wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that you really want to go play outside. You absolutely love playing on the jungle gyms at the park, at your cousins’ house, and at day care. You climb like a pro (while scaring Mommy to death) and love going down the slides. I have a hard time just letting you go and not hovering over you like a safety net, but you really can do it all on your own now.

Probably the biggest accomplishment you have had recently is learning to use the potty. You have now actually gone peepee in the potty three times. Up until this week, you would sit on the potty when you felt like it but most of the time you just didn’t feel like it. I’m not sure that you are quite ready for full-on potty training yet, but when I woke you up one morning and saw that you had an almost dry diaper on I decided to try putting you on the potty. Luckily I hit you on a good day and you went cheerily to the bathroom to sit on the potty. A few minutes later, you had gone in the potty and we were doing a celebratory song and dance in the bathroom. The next day you did the same. This morning, when I went in to get you up, you practically jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. There were no results but you tried really hard so we danced anyway. People have warned me about trying to potty train too early, but it seems to me that we’re on the right track. I’ve never been more happy to look at a little puddle of pee.

Zachary, you are just
growing up so darn fast. My days get so busy sometimes that I feel like I’m missing out on so much with you. You have gone from a tiny little baby to an almost 2-year-old in what seems like seconds. You are thinking for yourself, talking in short phrases, and you have such a great sense of humor. I really don’t know how I got so lucky. I’ve been trying really hard lately to just slow down and soak it all in. I just don’t want to forget a single moment. I love you so much.

Love always,
Mama