Life with a 2 1/2-year-old isn’t all fun and games, I’ll tell you that. Soren is into hard-core 2-year-old territory lately. His favorite thing is saying “I want.” But it’s never just once. It’s “I want I want I want I want I want iwantiwantiwantiwantiwant!” Sometimes he wants something good, like carrots or grapes. In that case, you just wish he’d ask a little more nicely: May I have some grapes, please? Or: Could I have grapes? Or even: Grapes please mommy? Sometimes he wants something he will not get, such as permission to insert sticks into an outdoor electrical outlet (he can remove outlet protectors and open the plastic thing that covers the outdoor outlet). In that case, when permission is denied, the wailing and rending of garments commences.
His least favorite thing is sitting still. This becomes my least favorite thing when we’re sitting at the table having dinner and he’d rather engage in activities including but not limited to: (1) getting up and touching me with his dirty food hands; (2) getting up and touching the dining room curtains, which are delicate and may have sustained some cat damage over the years and thus are not well suited to being washed, with his dirty food hands; (3) getting up and running around the house and touching upholstered furniture with his dirty food hands; (4) getting up and saying “I want I want I want bitamins” while standing in front of the open refrigerator for minutes on end before pulling out one or more bottles of Vitamin Water Zero;1 (5) getting up and giving his food to the dogs even if doing so requires shoving flat food items under the back door so they are accessible to dogs who are outside; (6) and so on.
He’s also developed a new way of saying “please,” which he busts out when he suspects he’s not going to get what he wants he wants hewantshewantshewants. It’s not just a normal please. It’s more like pleee-aze, if you can say that and make it one syllable.
The good news is that with all the wanting and wailing and pleee-aze-ing, there’s still some stuff that’s cute and funny and smart. Let’s talk about that for a minute.
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Soren is still playing with the bead necklaces he got from Pridefest. Yesterday, he looped two necklaces together to make a leash, which he put on Coltrane so he could take him for “a walk.” Coltrane ended up wearing several necklaces and sitting around being all, “WTF.”
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He really likes the song The Itsy Bitsy Spider. He likes to randomly say “Spider!” Then I’m all, “Where?!” (we get some big, terrifying spiders in our house). Then he’s all, “The itsy bitsy spider went up the water ‘pout.”
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We have Fiestaware dishes, and each place setting is a different color. I pulled out two bowls for breakfast yesterday and Soren requested the turquoise one. He’s always been good at colors, but I was pretty impressed that he can identify turquoise (in addition to “kinda beige,” which is used to describe his white sock that has a bit of a dingy dirt stain on it).
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Soren used to believe all things that are powered are powered by batteries. When a light would turn on, he’d credit batteries. When we’d hear an overhead announcement at the grocery store, he’d say, “Batteries.” When something didn’t work, he’d blame batteries.
Now he understands there is something he refers to as “tricity.” While in our little backyard pool the other day, he pointed to the power lines in the alley and the street light, and said, “Tricity.” He gets that electricity powers stuff like batteries do and is starting to figure out the difference.
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He can totally read. Just kidding. Of course he can’t read. But there are a few stories he knows well enough to seem like he’s reading. When we get to the part in Are You My Mother? where baby bird encounters a hen, without fail he’ll say, “No said the hen!” at the right time. We have a little book about lambs Ben got at a garage sale. The first page says “Newborn lambs are wobbly.” Soren likes to have this book in bed, and once in a while I’ll hear him going, “[unintelligible] wobbly!” I don’t know how learning to read actually happens, but I suspect that looking at the same stories over and over and over (another toddler favorite) helps, because as you learn the stories you eventually learn the words, too.
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Note
1. I’m conflicted re: the toddler beverage experience. Thus far, Soren’s beverage intake has been pretty much limited to milk (I hate milk and am a little weirded out by the concept of drinking it but, not being vegan, kind of got over it) and water. He had fruit juice at a birthday party once and I’ve given him a tiny bit of Vitamin Water Zero twice that I can recall. I think it would be nice to give him something other than milk or water, but I don’t know what. I don’t want to give him anything sugary or artificial, so that leaves . . . ?