This past week, our Tommy turned two and a half years old. I’m sneaking an extra update in between my regular monthly family updates to talk about all things Tommy.
I’ll be honest: after two years of writing Tommy updates every single month, I burned out on it. Switching up the routine and writing more general family updates these past six months has been really nice. But I don’t want to flood those updates with tons of random Tommy happenings. And I’ve been itching to write a post with those happenings, so here it is.
Spoiler alert: I love this age so much. The two to five age range is pretty much my favorite. Past five years old, kids are able to do so much more. There’s a lot that I look forward to with that stage as well. I still find it funny how many people pretty aggressively told me how much I would love having a baby (I didn’t) and how much I would miss that age when it was gone (I don’t). The toddler and preschool years are so many times better for me.
Hands down, my and Jake’s favorite part about this past year with Tommy has been watching him take off with his communication skills, especially over the past six months. At 22 months, he was just starting to put together two-word phrases. Eight months later, he uses three- and four-word phrases all the time with more words than I can even keep track of anymore. He adds new words almost every day and can repeat back a lot of words he doesn’t know.
It’s been so much fun to watch Tommy comprehend stories and general conversation and to start carrying on conversations with people. I love that I can ask him about his day when Jake gets home from work or have him share something of interest with one of his grandparents, and he does so accurately. He remembers so much more from one day to the next, too, and will talk about things that happened earlier in the week.
Just a few of Tommy’s favorite things right now include trains, dump trucks, vehicles in general, Peppa Pig, Mickey Mouse (he especially loves the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and calls it “Mickey House”), babies, cats, big cats, dinosaurs, and anything having to do with knights, swords, and armor.
Tommy continues to blow all of us away with his athletic abilities. He taught himself to throw overhand before he was 18 months old. His skills have just continued to build from there. Throwing and kicking balls and jumping on trampolines has all come very naturally to him. Tommy isn’t bashful about his accomplishments either and frequently says, “I win, I win!” when he makes a basket, kicks the ball right to someone, etc. Sometimes he even accompanies the “I win, I win!” with a little victory dance.
I didn’t know how it would go creating a full classes and activities schedule for the fall/early winter with at least one scheduled event almost every weekday. But I think we struck a good balance. Having one scheduled event per day keeps us on a nice schedule without being too busy. I’ve been so happy with Tommy’s swimming lessons, gymnastics, and Kindermusik. He gets so much out of all of these classes. I see those skills carrying over into other aspects of his life. Tommy is so social that I can’t imagine not having some sort of activity out of the house most days, even when it’s not a scheduled class or event.
We have been doing zoo classes as well since Tommy turned two. I’m planning to skip the January/February session. We’ll pick it up again when the weather is nicer, so we can build in more zoo time with those classes.
One of the reasons that I wanted to write this post is to record the way Tommy says some of his favorite words. Just a few highlights include “ar-rawr” for water, “moo” for balloon, “zero” for shield (yes, as in a knight with a sword and shield), and most recently, “so-so” for giraffe. He started calling his Wubbanub giraffe so-so, and now he uses the word for all giraffes. He uses “apple” as a color word. His cousin Brookelynn (who’s almost exactly a year younger than him) uses the more conventional “wawa” for water. Hilariously, Tommy doesn’t seem to quite believe that she’s asking for the same thing as “ar-rawr.”
Tommy refers to all hats and head coverings as armor. He calls anyone wearing any sort of protective covering or costume a knight (such as Batman).
Also, at some point, Tommy started saying The Rawr King instead of The Lion King. We will now forever refer to it as The Rawr King in our house, most likely long past the point that Tommy will ever want us to call it by that name.
One of the biggest struggles we’ve had lately is finding pants that are long enough but will stay up on Tommy’s basically non-existent hips. Tommy’s been growing plenty but hasn’t gained a lot of weight the last year. The growth has all been up, not out ha. So the sizing is tricky. For the most part, 18-month pants fit okay. But it’s not a given and the sizing/fit seems to change week to week sometimes.
In keeping with the skinny trend, we’ve just transitioned Tommy up to size 4 diapers in the past couple of weeks. He’d been wearing size 3 diapers since he was about eight months old, which is still completely crazy to me.
Tommy’s mostly been wearing 2T shirts since the summer. There are still a handful of 18-month items in the rotation. I most likely won’t do a significant clothing change over until this coming summer. Tommy’s been wearing size 6 shoes since the spring. I need to get him bigger winter boots for this season. But he should be good on everything else for at least a few more months.
For the past year or so, Tommy has been a fairly picky eater. I go back and forth at home between encouraging him to try what we’re eating for lunch or dinner and letting him eat what he wants to eat. I don’t want to quit offering him new foods altogether. But I also don’t want to turn every mealtime into a fight. It’s definitely a balancing act. The good news is that he does like a decent rotation of healthy foods. So it’s not too hard to create balanced meals for him, even when it’s not what we’re eating. He is also almost always more willing to try new foods in locations other than our house (i.e., grandparents’ house, a restaurant). So we maximize those opportunities whenever possible.
In my one year back in the waiting pool post, I talked about how I’ve always wanted two kids really close in age. It’s still really hard for me that I don’t. But the silver lining of having just one kid a lot longer than I ever thought I would is that I’ve been so present and involved in this stage of Tommy’s life. If I already had another little one, it’s unlikely that we would do so many classes and activities. And a lot of my time at home would be devoted to feeding a baby. This would mean less one-on-one time with him. It still definitely isn’t what I ever would have planned, but it’s been a really nice upside.
I can’t get enough of this age and am so excited for what the next year will bring.
As always, you can find all of my past Tommy updates and general family updates in the family section of the blog if you want to catch up on or revisit old posts.
