When I get the turkey out of his Sunday school class, the teacher usually tells me what the lesson was this week. This morning, with tears in her eyes, she told me that the lesson was “God loves everyone.”  She said there was one boy who said “God doesn’t love me.” But my boy told him “yes God loves you and he loves me too!” 

Sometimes I think we can’t be messing up too badly.

Coming home from dinner tonight, we were talking with the turkey trying to keep him awake until we made it back to grandmother’s house. This conversational snippet nearly made me cry:

He: I’m a happy boy!

Me: yes you are. What makes you so happy?

He: mommy makes me happy!

After a few seconds of thought, he revised that to “mommy and daddy” but the point is, I was the first and immediate response! Maybe he’s not a total daddy’s boy after all.

sometimes i really am at a loss for where the turkey is picking things up. this morning, i asked how he was doing while he was eating breakfast and his response was “boom shakalaka!”  what the heck?!  that’s definitely not something hubby or i have ever said. he doesn’t watch tv and the only place he’s been around other people lately is church.  it’s such a weird expression, i just wish i knew who uses it.

the other favorite lately is “oh my gosh!”  i’m pretty sure he picked that one up from my niece but it’s so funny when he says it.

in other news, he just so much more conversational in general lately.  he keeps coming up with increasingly complex sentences.  he blows me away with the things that come out of his mouth.

after an unprompted count to thirty during dinner tonight, the turkey counted to ten in spanish. i asked him if he could do french to which he responded “je m’appelle {turkey}.” i started with “un” (one) and he finished the ten-count.  i then asked him about german.  i started and he jumped in at “sieben” (seven).  he then insisted that we keep doing german again and again until he was able to do all ten.  i love my crazy smart and thirsting-for-more-knowledge little guy!

yesterday was our first battle with willful defiance.  while i was getting a cloth to clean the turkey after lunch, he decided to shove the last four chunks of chicken into his mouth and chew them all up.  when i got back to the table, i found him with his mouth completely stuffed full of chicken.  he continued to chew and chew and chew but refused to swallow.  he very skillfully drank half his milk without swallowing any of the chicken.  i stayed very calm, asking him repeatedly to swallow the chicken so he could take a nap.  i then told him that if he hadn’t swallowed his food by the time i got him all cleaned up and out of his chair, he would be getting a spank.  i told him a couple times so that he understood what was at stake.  when i got him down, i delivered on my promise.  i think that’s the second time i’ve ever had to spank him.  he cried, drank more milk, and still refused to swallow any of the food.  the dance continued and by the time the hubby got home fifteen minutes later, the turkey had had four fully warned spanks.  the hubby then took over and ended up delivering another two spanks over the next fifteen minutes before the turkey decided to end the battle of the wills by artfully puking all over his daddy.  holy cats!  please tell me that this was a singular aberration for my wonderfully good boy and not the beginning of some hellish stage of epic defiance.

hard to believe that it’s been two years since i last heard your voice and your laughter.  it’s unreal that life has just gone on without you.  your grandson, who you were so excited to meet, is a toddler now. complete with sleeping fits and tantrums and singing songs and real conversations and just all kinds of amazing. he is ridiculously smart.  you would be so proud and you would have a ton of fun with him. he’s a big brother now. truly, he’s the best big brother on earth. he has a little brother who we named in your honor. the sequel has your hairline, dark hair, and blue eyes.  you would dote on these boys and spoil them rotten; i just know it. the turkey asks to look at pictures and videos of grampy all the time.  it makes my heart smile and ache all at the same time.  i still give him a kiss on the forehead from grampy every night before bed.  i do the same for the sequel because i know you would tell me to and i want him to grow up knowing just how much you would have adored him.

i love you, daddy.  i love you and i miss you every day.

i love how your pride and joy shines through in this photo

the turkey looks just as proud holding his brother as you looked holding him

After staying up nearly all night long (literally, he was up and rolling around during all of the sequel’s feedings), the turkey was still fighting his nap today. i don’t understand what has happened to our perfect little sleeper.  it’s driving me up a wall.  he’s a whole different kiddo when he’s so over-tired. anyhow, after i got onto him a couple times about kicking the wall or hanging on the railing, i saw him scurry out of bed.  amazingly, this has only happened three or four times since moving to the big boy bed.  as i was talking into the monitor to tell him to get back in bed, i heard him messing with the doorknob.  i told hubby to get ready for his imminent appearance and we both looked at the door expectantly.  it did not open.  when the monitor cycled back to his camera, i saw him jumping back into bed.  hubby went back to check on him and found that the little twerp had LOCKED THE DOOR!  good gravy!  so guess who’s getting a new lockless doorknob tomorrow?!

where on earth did the turkey pick up this country twang?  he didn’t have it last week. we went to the hospital for a few days to have a baby and came home to a boy that suddenly speaks with a huge southern drawl. i could understand it if he had been staying with the alabama family for the weekend but he was with my family and they don’t talk like that at all.  it’s really the strangest thing.  not only does he have an exaggerated twang to all his speech now but he seems to end almost everything sentence with “right there.”  as in “that’s a blue car right there.” and “there’s chicken parmasan right there.” i’m totally befuddled by the sudden and dramatic change in vernacular over the last few days.

this is perhaps one of the most heartwarming moments of my life… i followed my hubby and the turkey around the pool this morning taking pictures and videos of his first time using swimmies.  he did so great with them and even did some totally solo swimming which i thought was awesome for his first try.  so after me taking all these pix, the turkey grabbed the camera from me, ran to daddy and gave it to him saying “i want picture with mommy”.

as requested

i can’t believe my precious little baby boy is already two years old.  i feel like it was just yesterday that we were sharing the exciting news with all of our loved ones and now he’s this amazing boy who talks in sentences and is incredibly smart and loves everyone and looks nothing at all like a baby anymore.  since we didn’t know what might happen with the sequel, we kept his party pretty simple.  invited our closest friends over for a casual beach day and he had a great time.  i love this little boy so much!

beach boy!

my beautiful family

the birthday boy(s)

no hesitating on the cake this year!

the turkey had what we thought was going to be his final checkup for his ears today. he had fluid in the ears as an itty bitty so we’ve been having to see the ENT dr for the last eighteen months to monitor his hearing and make sure that he didn’t need tubes or anything. all of his checkups since he was eight months old have been good and his two year checkup was supposed to be when he would officially be cleared from the whole deal.  we went in today with confidence that it was his last trip to this dr (who we really like and we talk to at church all the time but i’d rather not see him professionally anymore).  so it was a devastating blow when his right ear completely failed the tests again and the dr found that his tonsils and adenoids are enlarged and blocking his head up.  *sigh* he gave us a nasal steroid to try for a month but is pretty sure we’ll need to do surgery to remove those pesky body parts.  i am finding this to be very difficult to deal with and i am praying frantically that he is in the 10% that improves without intervention. first, i don’t want to see my poor little guy go through a surgery. but then there’s also the terrible timing.  i’ll have a newborn and i won’t be able to be there with him.  i won’t be able to comfort him as he goes into surgery or when he comes out and if it’s a multi-night ordeal, i won’t be able to stay with him.  i’m already struggling with the fact that i’ll be apart from him for the first time when the sequel decides to arrive.  i’ve never not given him a kiss on the forehead from grampy and eskimo kisses from momma before bed.  i’ve never not tucked him back in and thanked the Lord for him before i go to bed.  i’ve never not been there to sing him awake in the morning.  and now i may have to miss all of that twice in a very short amount of time.  and let’s not even get into the purely logistical nightmare of being a one-car family with hubby and turkey in town at the hospital and me and newborn at home without a vehicle if something happens.   i understand that the whole tonsil/adenoid thing is pretty common – i never had to go through it but i know plenty of kids do – but i could really use all the prayers i can get that my sweet little turkey doesn’t have to go through this.

this morning at breakfast, i taught the turkey his “big name” (first, middle, last).  it was the first time i’ve gone over that with him.  tonight, i had hubby ask him what his “big name” was and he immediately answered. that little smarty pants amazes me.  now he knows his full name and his address (well, building name and unit number anyhow… he mastered that much a couple weeks ago).

he’s also been warming my heart with a plethora of “thank you, mommy”s during his meals.  so flipping sweet i can’t stand it!

we spent the holiday weekend clearing out the bunk room so that we can start making a nursery for the sequel.  part of that was moving the bunk bed into the turkey’s room to start transitioning him to a big boy bed.  he was so excited and proud of it!  we moved it in there on sunday but he didn’t sleep on it until nap on monday.  he napped in there the last three days and slept in his crib at night.  tonight is his first night sleeping in the big bed and he fell asleep faster than he has all week.  so far, so good!  he hasn’t even tried to get out of bed on his own yet.  after his naps, he’s been waiting for us to come in and get him like a good boy even though we let him wait up to twenty minutes and he knows how to get down.  i’m so proud of my big boy!

so proud of his new big boy bed

we were going to try potty training over the long weekend but got hung up by not being able to find training pants his size.  instead, we just let him use the potty whenever he wanted, keeping it casual.  he asked several times a day and even had a couple good p00ps so i think it was a good trial run.   i’m still not 100% sure that he’s really ready for full training but we’re going to give it a serious try this weekend after his training pants come in.  pray for us!

the turkey p00ped in the potty for the first time today.  we haven’t even started potty training yet but every time we come in from the beach/pool and str!p him, he runs into the potty and uses it just because he wants to.  i’m so proud of my little boy!