William at 28 Months

 As of this morning, William now weighs 27.2 lbs, has a head circumference of 19 1/2" and is 36.5" tall.

William is still super picky these days, despite recently going through a major growth spurt. He pretty much refuses to eat any vegetables unless they are on pizza. I get excited about pizza night because I know that he will eat more veggies that night than the rest of the week combined. Sad I know. Some nights I can get him to eat a handful (one of his hands that is) of frozen peas or corn, but that is about it. After I was so excited about what a good veggie eater he was when he was a baby, as a toddler hes completely off of them :( He LOVES noodles, bread and fruit though and I am not ashamed to occasionally use those items as bargaining chips to get him to eat his protein and veggies. I do try not to use food bribery as a tool too often though. I suppose I am hoping that he just grows out of it at some point. I was super picky (and still am somewhat) as a kid so I am getting what I deserve. The universe has spoken.

He still puts all kinds of random things in his mouth and I am forever asking him, "whats in your mouth? Spit it out!" Nine times out of ten when I see him eating something not at meal time, its nearly always some forbidden object. I had to laugh the other day though when I saw him eating something and made the usual request to see what was in his mouth. He responded, in a somewhat offended tone, "its egg!" And then I remembered that I had left a plate of eggs out for him earlier and he must have eaten the last bite a few hours later. I found his tone amusing however, as though he NEVER eats unusual things and how dare I ask him? He is too funny.

His new favorite thing to do is strip off all of his clothes and run around naked. Most times we catch him before the diaper comes off as well, but not always. Between that and him starting to tell us that he has pooped, I believe those things are signs of a beginning of potty readiness. So maybe in the next 6 months or so we will make some progress on that front. Who knows! In the mean time I have bought some locking safety pins to pin his zipper down so that he can't remove his pajamas in the night.

He knows the whole upper case alphabet now and most of the lower case letters. When he sees an upper case and lower case letter together, he will point them out like, "Big M! Oooh (little) m!" He can identify shapes including star, heart, triangle, circle and square. He knows and can identify most colors as well. Finally he can count to 10 as well as identify numbers up to 10. After 10 he says things like "one and one (11), or one and two (12)." We are just starting to teach him numbers past 10 and though he struggles with pronunciation, hes doing pretty well. I should say that he is the driving force behind most of this learning. I had no idea kids would even be interested in learning any of this stuff at 2. I was planning on starting to really teach him this stuff closer to 3, but he is super interested and has actually picked most of it up from kids shows, and we have just helped to fill in the blanks. Its so fascinating to me how every kid is so different in what they personally find interesting and what they are interested in learning.

Speaking of pronunciation, he has really been working on perfecting the way he says his words. Some are really clear already, but the ones that aren't (helicopter for example, he used to call it "doctor" but now he says "heli-doctor") he has been steadily improving. And he is still constantly adding to his vocabulary. I swear he learns 3-4 new words each day and is SO much easier to understand now. Every day that goes by he is getting closer and closer to being a kid, language-wise, than a baby or toddler. It certainly helps his frustration level to be able to talk. He is pretty much back to being his happy little self, with FAR fewer meltdowns these days. Praise the lord!

We have had to watch our language around him recently. We had the following scene happen yesterday: 
me: "Crap!"
Will: "Crap!"
me: "Shhh, don't say that!"
Will: "Shh, crap!"
me: palm to the forehead

End scene

One of his favorite activities is to look at old pictures of himself and his friends and cousins playing, as well as watching videos of the same. He could easily sit on my lap for hours watching video after video. He has watched the same videos so many times that he remembers them and requests them by name. An especial favorite of his is a video of him riding the carousel at the zoo. At least several times a week we requests to "watch horse video?" Its kind of adorable.





Although he met Santa for the first time the other day and did great, and we talk about Christmas all the time, he really doesn't understand what it is all about yet (though he LOVES Christmas lights and constantly asks to "see more lights?"), and doesn't know enough to be excited for it, but Michael and I are excited to celebrate with our two wonderful kiddos. This might be the first year that Will might actually be more excited about what is in the boxes, rather than the boxes themselves!