Vocabulary expands, dirt and other outdoor delicacies abound, and fingernails endeavor to grow at an alarming speed. Add to this an insatiable curiosity for, oh, everything, and a smidgen of I-have-an-opinion-too-now and it's toddler time.
Ty's mimicking has really taken off lately. He started saying "mah!" after hearing me declare "aw, man!" when I spilled some of his food. He got a big kick out of it (as did I) and will often repeat me when I say it for real. It's uncanny how he seems able to distinguish when we're saying something so he'll repeat it and when we're genuinely saying it.
He thoroughly enjoys placing items in—and removing them from—the dirty laundry basket. Today I asked him to put a couple of items there and he had so much fun doing that, he decided to pick up a few other things from the floor and deposit them there as well. My house shoes are still hanging out on top of the pile of dirty/not actually dirty clothes :)
While I dreaded the transition, the past month marked the end of the two-nap-a-day era in Ty's life. He's missed his morning nap plenty of times before now if we were away from home and handled it fine, but I just...I needed him to take a nap in the morning if we were hanging out at home. That was the only way I could get anything done! Plus, have you tried to fill an entire day's worth of time for a young toddler? It's hard. He's too young to really do much of anything organized (but thanks anyway, Pinterest), and one can only walk about the house and back yard so many times. We both get frustrated. We need an intermission.
I had always planned to initiate quiet time when nap time was no longer necessary, but I had no idea how to communicate the concept to a baby. So, I just told him like it was. "Ok buddy, it's quiet time. You have to sit in your bed with books and toys, but you don't have to go to sleep. It's just quiet time." On day one he cried for 15 minutes and then fell asleep. Lame. On day two, he cried the entire time. But I think (it's hard to remember exactly...) by the third try, he was ok with it. He whimpered a bit when the time came, but otherwise handled it fine. And now he's a pro. He seems eager to have quiet time and is actually "quiet" for much of it, which isn't a requirement. And I have the time to do a chore or two, read the bible, or...lie on the couch (it happens.)
His funniest new thing this week is, hands down, singing "hoorah, hoorah!" from the the song, The Ants Go Marching. The first time he did it was in the bathtub. He looked at me and started repeating a very specific sound, so I knew he thought he was saying something but couldn't tell what it was (welcome to my life). Then it hit me. Todd had been singing "the Todds go marching two by two, hoorah, hoorah!" as they walked up the stairs before bath time (side note, Ty's name is actually Todd, so the lyrics make sense). Ty was singing the "hoorah, hoorah!" part of the song! To be sure, I started singing it and yep. That was it :) It's become my new favorite song, just to hear Ty chime in before, during, or after the hoorahs :)
(NOTE: This isn't Ty's first attempt at singing. In the evenings we watch the Dick Van Dyke show and Ty has long been mimicking the last two notes of the wordless theme song. It's very distinct :) )
And now for some pictures from this morning. I had a boy, a moose, and a bear in my bedroom :)
