Nolan at 2

Sitting in a firetruck

I've been meaning to write an update on Nolan since he turned two. He has been developing so much lately that I want to capture him as a toddler before he becomes a little boy. Well....now that he's just shy of 27 months, he really has developed a lot even since turning 2 three months ago. But, better late than never, I suppose!

Easter

Nolan continues to be a super social little guy! He loves playing with his friends and going to nursery. He would ALWAYS rather play with someone than do anything on his own. While having a social kid makes a lot of transitions easier, it also makes life hard in some respects. Its so hard for me to get anything done at home because he follows me around asking things like: "What a doin', Mom??" "Will you play with me?" "Come play in bedroom!". I know this will only become harder when I have a second little one around... One thing that has changed though is that he has gained a little bit of shyness around new people. It takes him just a little bit to warm up to someone new and he'll even tell me: "I be shy". At first I thought he was just doing it for attention and thats why he was telling me, but I actually just think he is aware of his feelings and able to verbalize them.

Nolan's Birthday Party

Which leads me to feelings. Nolan has been learning/talking about feelings a lot lately. He has a book that talks about feelings and he watches a show Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood where they focus a lot on feelings. He is always asking. "Are you happy? Are you sad?" etc. and will tell me what he is feeling. So I've started using feelings a lot with him to. I taught him about frustration and when I get upset with him about things he'll ask me "Are you fus-tated, mom?" ..which is almost enough to make me start laughing and forget he was being naughty. :)

Doing his chore of putting away the clean silverware

As you can probably tell from the above quotes, his language as boomed over the past 6 months. Even at barely 2 he was already saying 3-4 word sentences and speaking very clearly. Its so nice to be able to communicate with him! Although I will say it gets a little old sometimes with all of the whys and why nots being thown around. :) He is also learning some of his letters and numbers. He can count to at 12 without any help and sometimes even higher. He is great at memorizing books. We go to the library once every 1-2 weeks and by the end of the week he can usually "read" some of the shorter ones to us.

Other milestones: Nolan is officially weaned of his binky. We talked to him a lot about turning 2 and becoming a big boy. Then we talked about all the things big boys get to do: have a birthday party, sleep in a big boy bed, use the toilet, stop using a binky, etc. and we are slowly making our way through that list this year.
The day after he turned two, we cut the nipple off his binky and let him find it. He showed it to me and asked me to "fix it". I told him we couldn't fix it and it needs to go in the trash. He threw it out himself never asked about all the others that we took away. For at least a week he would ask me about the binky and we'd talk about how it broke and we threw it away. After that first week he only brought it up once every few days and he hasn't talked about it in over a month now. So glad to be free of that!
About a month ago, we took the side off of his crib and installed a crib safety rail for him. Honestly its been a a really good transition. He loves that he can get on his bed to play during the day and he has only ever come out of his room when he was supposed to be sleeping once. When I heard him open the door, I just said his name in a warning tone and I heard him slam the door shut and run back to his bed. And that was that. Some days he'll get up in the morning and come into our room to wake us up, but a lot of the time he still just calls for us to come get him. I look forward to the day he will get out of bed and play with his toys for an hour before waking us up! (A girl can dream!)

"Errybody sleepin mom!"

Our next step will be potty training! a few months ago, Nolan was begging us to "have a turn" on the toilet. I definitely wasn't ready to potty train him - I was in my first trimester and SO SICK and we hadn't been planning to potty train until after the baby is born. I decided I needed to wrap my mind around the idea if he was ready. Once I began to feel a little better, we went and picked out a little potty for him and we've been talking about using it a lot. we haven't officially started though because I realized that while he thinks he wants to use it, he just wasn't ready. He's not interested in dressing himself and therefore has never even tried to pull down or pull up his own pants, he went through a pretty contrary phrase of hating to have his diaper or clothes changed, and I wasn't sure if he knew the difference between urine/stool and has words for them. So we've been just talking about it. and letting him sit on the toilet (clothed) when he feels like it. At this point, it'll be at least 2 more months before we attempt potty training because we're talking a month long trip to Utah in a couple weeks.

Puzzle time! He can put all the pieces in himself - I just have to show him where they go

Anyway, this is getting super long, but I just wanted to take down a little snap shot of what life looks like with Nolan right now. He is such a sweet boy and we love him so much. He can be crazy and rambuctious at times. He loves to wrestle with dad, do role playing games (pretend to be dinosaurs/lions/monkeys/kangaroos/etc.), throw things (everything!), do puzzles, go swimming, and so much more! I'm going to miss having so much one-on-one time together, but I know he will love having a sibling to play with!

Love this floaty! It lets Nolan swim on his own!