Nathan turned two on the 12th, and the best way to describe him these days is that he's REALLY good at being two! Thank goodness for digital cameras, because we'd have wasted an awful lot of film trying to get a good picture out of him. He had NO INTEREST in smiling for ANY picture the night of his birthday. Not even to pose with his presents, which he loved. I guess I'm past freaking out about not getting a cheesy grin. But there will be a lot of explaining written on the page these pictures go on in the scrapbook. Sorry that this looks like he's being booked for some crime.
He didn't mind showing off some dance moves while daddy was snapping pictures
All that blanket and STILL no smile!
With all his 2-year old ness just oozing out of him, Nathan is our handsome, shmandsome boy! He loves trucks and planes and trains, but keeps a balance by playing with dolls and letting his sisters paint his nails. "Liz did it" he told his dad when he came into our room with hands and feet painted up the other day. HA!
Here are just a few ways Nathan is a champ at being two:
*Nathan demands hugs and kisses whenever anyone is leaving or when he's going to bed. Sometimes those hugs are accompanied by an emotional, "come back!" if he's not quite ready for whoever is going out the door to leave him.
*One night about 11pm, everyone was in bed, Kurt was on duty and I was very asleep. I was pulled from that deepest part of sleep to this sound that I couldn’t place, but it was loud and not normal. It took a second, but I knew it had to be Nathan when I realized what it was. I came down the stairs to find him on a chair next to the rack where we hang our keys to find him playing with the key to the van. He’d pushed the panic button and had set off the alarm. The horn going off was what had woken me up. He had been in his bed asleep when I went to bed.
*He loves his daddy and somehow knows which fire truck is dad's. All fire trucks are great, but none are greater than daddy's. I don't know how he knows the difference, but he does.
*Nathan has recently started holding up a finger and mimicking the Craig Swapp commercials. "One Call, That's All" he'll say.
*While he started with "no" as his go-to word, he's moved on to "yes" and "cuz" for every answer to every question. He'll also give a sing-song "ooohhh" when it seems that we tell him something he didn't know before. He's got a pretty amazing, "okie dokie!" as well.*He knows pretty much all of the girls' no-no words. We hear "stupid" and "dangit" sometimes coming out of this sweet little mouth.
*He is an orange thief. And a banana monger. Oh, and an apple biter.
*He is starting to count and we can get him to 14 on his own, and 23 with a little help.
*He loves to take his vitamin and can very nearly empty the dishwasher by himself. We find things in interesting places sometimes!
*He can't say the letter "f" if it's at the beginning of a word. Instead, he puts an "m" sound there. So "fire fighters" are "mire mighters" and his name is "Nasan Jofef Meeman".
*He loves peanut butter lollypops, which is just a big spoonful of peanut butter. "budder pop pop" is how he asks for those.
*He is starting to talk on the phone, but doesn't understand that nodding and waving aren't the best ways to communicate while having a conversation.
*He has a love/hate relationship with the vacuum. It attacked him once and he hasn't ever completely recovered. As an infant he used to follow me around, crying, while I vacuumed. Now I can sometimes corral him on a couch, and he watches me work around him.
*He is still above the 95th percentile for height and weight at 37.4# and 38-inches.
* He loves to watch the trash guys come every Monday morning.*He knows how to make, and has made, his own toast (not because we let him!). He's also pulled the hunk of cheese out of the refridge and put it back again, but not before taking bites out of all the edges.
*He found the net for the fish tank one day and went "fishing". When he came walking into the room saying "mish! mish!", we felt the uh-oh. He'd caught a fish! Thankfully, said fish was put gently back into the tank and the net found a new, higher hiding place. Same goes for the fish food.
*He is still yelling, "go go Katie!" at the TV sometimes. We taught him that during the Olympics when the women were swimming.
*He loves his sisters. All four of them.
*The best day he had in church was one high council Sunday. Two "grandpas" were speaking, and he sat as quietly as he ever has. Nathan is a grandpa lover! His own, or honorary ones ~ he is no respector of grandpas.
*He has started saying prayers with our family. He throws his hands up and puts a lot of energy into his amens. "AMEN!"
*We now have special locks on the front and back doors. One morning I got out of the shower to hear the doorbell ringing. I threw on my robe, thinking I'd find Nathan down ringing the door. He'd disappeared from my bathroom just a couple of minutes before. Instead, I found the door wide open and PEOPLE standing there, with a certain little boy in their arms. They'd found him around the corner in the middle of the street (just to clarify, we live on a dead end. While he wasn't necessarily in danger of being hit by a car, the idea of him being that far from the house is obviously not something we want to repeat. Thus the locks.) So there I was in a robe and hair still dripping, quickly saying thank you to these unknown neighbors. He'd undone the lock, the deadbolt AND the lock on the screen to get out the door. Again, thus the new locks up high. Even high enough that he can't get to them by standing on a chair. Which is what happened about a week after we started putting a stick high up in the sliding door.
*His favorite songs are "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" and "Book of Mormon Stories". These are the opening and closing songs for FHE these days. There is no point in trying to sing anything else.
*He really does have, and has always had, a great internal rhythm. He's been moving to a beat since he was very very small, er, young. He was never small.
*Nathan has proved my theory that one of the biggest differences between girls and boys is that boys cannot or do not keep their feet on the floor. Climbing or bouncing ~ that is their preferred way of getting places.
All-in-all, Nathan is a wonderful addition to our family. Obviously it wouldn't be the same without him. While I don't subscribe to any family being incomplete without a boy, ours has surely been enhanced by his being with us. He is a special person and we're grateful we get to help him grow and teach him the best ways to find joy in his life.
Happy Birthday, Nathan!
