My Big Boy

I am not sure when it happened, but my baby has turned in to a little boy. He turns two next week, so I guess it is not surprising, but in my head he is still a baby. Until I look at that first picture and all I see looking back at me is a big boy.

He has been talking up a storm lately, and each day I think he says at least 4-5 new words. At the children's museum yesterday, he told me "Animals in wheelbarrow". Where did that come from? The other day in the car, he asked to look at the "big atlas". And tonight at dinner he pointed to his rib and declared it his "funny bone".

We have also entered a stage of more opinions and more meltdowns. Everything is done with his whole heart, and felt deeply when it doesn't go his way. We have tears when we have to take off our pajamas, when we can't brush the dogs hair with our toothbrush and of course when it is time to go to bed.

For the last 3 days he has been on a nap strike, refusing to go down and running and playing all day. He still didn't go to sleep until 9pm, so I guess he just has a lot of energy. Today, with Chris' help, we finally got him down for a nap again. Thank goodness- I am not quite ready to give that up.

I also got my first taste of life with a little boy on Wednesday. We were out playing in the backyard, and I was taking pictures. Evan was off playing with some rocks.

We have poison ivy in our yard, and Chris explained to Evan that he shouldn't touch it because he could get hurt. He showed him the 3 leaves and told him "no". Well, one second I was trying to get some awesome sun flare pictures, and the next I look over to see Evan touching the poison ivy.

He looked at me and said "one, two, free- mommy. No touch". Ugh, son- that means you DON'T TOUCH IT! I grabbed him up, and brought him to the porch. I ran inside and got dish soap and rubbing alcohol, and scrubbed his hands in the sink.

He had been clutching a rock, so I let him give it a "bath" in the sink, which slightly diminished his screaming. Turns out it was a piece of petrified dog poop. It was the icing on the poison ivy cake.

Chris was done with school early, so we picked him up and bought some special poison ivy wash and spent the afternoon scrubbing Evan down and rinsing him with cold water. As you can imagine, he hated it, and we tried to tell him he wasn't in trouble, but this is what we had to do if he touched poison ivy.

He seemed to understand, because then he started saying "sorry Mommy, sorry Daddy" over and over. It was so sweet and it really did make me feel bad that we had to scrub him down.

48 hours later, we are rash free- which should mean we are in the clear. I am sure this is just one of the many adventures that Evan will lead me on. Big boys are full of mischief!