Two blog posts in three days! I just may be getting caught up. I can’t believe our Maxwell is two years old! This is such a fun age, we hear new words all the time and interacting with Max is a delight (well, most of the time, he is two, after all). He is officially 36 inches tall (top of the growth chart as usual) and weighs 29 pounds. He says three word phrases now–“Max do it,” “Bye-bye yellow bus,” “Mama up steps” and many others. Max knows his colors and shapes and can count to ten. He sings the ABC’s, which has to be one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. Somehow the “W” part morphs into “Grandma” and sometimes “Grandma’s house.” Gone is the boy who would happily chow down on broccoli and spinach, we have to sneak those in now and sometimes he’ll still reach into his mouth, grab out the offending vegetable, and hand it back to us.
We’ve found it helpful to warn Max of impending transitions by telling him one minute ahead of time that he has “one more minute” (sometimes also preceded by a five minute warning). Now if we say we’re going to do just about anything, he’ll ask, “One more minute?” When the minute is up and we say “Time to change your diaper” (or whatever the case may be) he’ll inevitably say, “One more minute?” We remind him that we had one more minute and now it’s time, which is usually followed by, “More one more minute?” Can’t blame a kid for trying. 
Maxwell remembers so much it’s almost scary sometimes. A minor fall will merit pointing to the spot days later and saying “Uh-oh” and then making a fake cry, followed by “Careful.” We are very lucky that he remains a good nighttime sleeper, clocking 12 hours or more most nights, and does a great job of falling asleep by himself. While he’ll occasionally surprise us with a long nap of two hours, average nap time remains on the shorter side, at an hour to an hour and a half. He always sleeps with Chester bear and his blankie. When he wakes up in the morning we sit in the chair in his room and snuggle for a few minutes before starting the day. I love those quiet moments together.
If you look at most of our day-to-day pictures of Max, the odds are good he’s holding a ball in at least one hand. He loves to carry them around everywhere, even taking them in the bathtub with him. At night we put them on the shelf when he goes to sleep, and the first thing he says when I go in in the morning is, “Ball? Ball?”
We are so blessed to have a happy, healthy two year old. Maxwell, we love you so much!
Max’s second birthday fell on a Saturday this year, so we had his birthday party on his actual birthday. We held it at the gym where we do parent-tot gymnastics. It was a great way to go…we had a small group of kids about his age, and they got to run around the gym and do all sorts of fun things before we went upstairs for food, presents and of course cake. Whenever we would talk to Max about his party, the first thing he would say was, “Cake?” Definitely a must have!
I have a lot of pictures from the party (no surprise there!). I narrowed it down for this post but it’s still picture-heavy!
After all that playing, time for some food!
Blowing out the candles:
Maxwell got lots of wonderful presents: puzzles, a drum, books, balls, new jammies….so many fun things!
After the party, a few of the guests made a spontaneous trip to the nearby beach park. We made a quick stop by on our way home, the weather was too beautiful to miss a beach sunset!
Throwing rocks in the water was a big hit:
What a wonderful day!
