Ben's 2!!

He's been acting like a 2 year old for so long, we thought his birthday would never get here! Nate helped him decide that he wanted a Mater birthday, so here we go.

Mater cake (yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting)

Mater games (Have Fun Fishin', Mater and Pin the Teeth on Mater)

I added Mater and McQueen to his birthday banner from last year. Waste not!

We had a total of 7 kids and 5 adults come to celebrate. It was a long, fun party!

At 2 years old, Ben is 27 lbs 3 oz and 35.25" tall. He eats almost anything and especially loves vegetables (for now). He always wants to feed himself, using a fork and/or spoon, except for the second half of supper, when he sits on Rodgers' lap and makes Rodgers feed him. He can count to 20, but sometimes gets stuck repeating 18. He knows the alphabet, but doesn't yet recognize letters. He is trying to learn colors. He talks constantly and about everything, using long sentences. Ben plays pretend and uses his imagination a lot; he really loves acting out scenes from his favorite books and movies, with his brother of course. He loves to look at books, be read to, build with Legos, and play with balls, especially dribble a soccer ball. Ben surprised us this month by starting to learn memory verses with Nate. He also drew straight lines on a doodle toy today and told me he was drawing Scoop, Muck, Dizzy, Roley, Bob, and Wendy.

Best of all, he is potty trained! Well, he's fully trained for #1 during waking hours at least. He still sleeps in a diaper and goes #2 in said diaper, which is all fine with me.

His favorite person in the world is his brother. He misses Nate while he is at school and is constantly telling me that he needs to go to school, too. However, once we get into the routine, he really does love one-on-one time with dear old Mom.

terrible twos, take two

Ben has several meltdowns each day. He goes from sweetness to tantrum in 0 seconds. Usually, it is so hilarious that we are stifling laughter. It goes something like this:

I tell Ben it's time to go pee. Sometimes he remembers to go on his own, but if he waits more than an hour, he tends to have accidents, so I remind him. He hates it and starts crying and yelling. I bring him to the hall bathroom. It's not that he doesn't want to pee or that he doesn't need to or doesn't like it. He just doesn't like that I have told him he needs to.

He yells, "NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!" pointing down the hall to the master bathroom, as if he's mad that I took him to the wrong bathroom.
I say, "Ok, let's go pee in Mama's bathroom."
"NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!" pointing to the hall bathroom.
"Ok, let's go pee in the hall bathroom."
"NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!"
"Ok..."
"NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!
"NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!
"NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!
"NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!
"NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!
"NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!"

Back and forth. Now he's just arguing with himself. Finally he runs into the master bathroom. We have both a sitting toilet and a squatting one in there, thus the back and forth – "NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there! NOOOO!!! I wanna go pee there!" – resumes, at full volume. He settles on the sitting toilet. However, now he has to decide, arguing with no one but himself and still crying and yelling, whether he will stand on the stool to pee or sit on the seat. When he's worn himself out, he pees, brings his pants to me to help him get dressed again, and walks away like nothing ever happened.

Sometimes I decide for him which bathroom and toilet he should use, but the tantrum still lasts the same amount of time. Last night, he didn't want to say his prayer until he'd said his Bible verse, but he didn't want to say his verse because he wanted to go to bed, but he didn't want to go to bed until he said his prayer... It's like he just needs to get it out of his system because I had the nerve to tell him to do something. It's hard not to laugh at him and say, "Ben, you are so two."