Dear Carter,

Today, you are two.   Every day, you are a blessing in our lives.  I hope you always know that.

I think you’re favorite thing in this world is now your brother.  You repeat after him, follow him, play with the same toys he plays with and you tend to play follow the leader constantly.  Brayden loves super heroes, Gumby, Mario and Angry Birds.  And guess what?  Those are your four favorite things as well.  We skipped right past the toddler toys, the toddler movies and the toddler games.  You are the makings of your brother—you jumped right into four-year-old stuff.

I remember at this time last year, we were trying to figure out if you had any allergies.  You were tested and were positive for dairy and eggs.  We even had to carry around an epipen.  We then went through a scare that maybe you had Celiac Disease, so for about two weeks we gave you no dairy, no eggs and nothing with gluten.  It was an expensive, terrible nightmare.  Luckily you tested negative for Celiac, and you grew out of your allergies.  Now you can eat anything and you don’t get any reaction.

Getting you to actually eat something though, is a challenge in itself.  You have a go-to list of foods, and you pretty much refuse to eat anything not on the list.  The list consists of frozen pancakes and waffles, grapes, mac and cheese, hot dogs, buttered noodles, cereal with milk, bananas, pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pickles, yogurt drinks, chicken nuggets and French fries.   Occasionally you also allow string cheese, cucumbers and a couple other fruits on the allowed list, but rarely.  You pretty much refuse to eat any kind of meat and any kind of vegetable (other than the chicken nuggets and the cucumber).  One thing that you do much better than your brother though, is drink your milk.  You are a champ at that.

Oh, and you are a junkaholic.  So anything that falls under that category is automatically on your allowed list.

You are a lightweight, that’s for sure.  We haven’t taken you to the doctors yet for your year checkup, but I am almost certain that you haven’t gained more than two pounds the entire year.  You still wear size three diapers during the day. . . you’ve been in those since you were nine months old.  I don’t mind—they are cheaper.  But I wish you would put a little fat on those bones.  You are a rail—and I’m afraid the doctor is going to get on our case.

You talk so incredibly well that it truly amazes me.  And you understand a lot of concepts.  The other day, you said your longest sentence: I cant do it, Brayden!.  I thought five words was pretty good.  And today you pointed upstairs, where all the lights were off and said, It’s dark. Scared.   I didn’t actually like that you linked those two together, but it amazed me that you understood that concept.  You can count to twenty, though you mess up some of the higher numbers.  But you have excellent one to one correspondence, so you can actually point to objects and count how many of them there are.  You also love singing, and can sing full songs. . . some of your favorites are Baa, Baa Black Sheep, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Deep and Wide &  Jesus Loves Me.  You also follow verbal directions incredibly well. . . I can tell you to go upstairs and get yourself a pair of socks and you do it.  I can tell you to go get a diaper and a wipe and then lay down, and you do it.  I can tell you to take one more bite of your food before I let you down, and you do it.  I love that you understand so much.

You are still an amazing sleeper.  You’ve been sleeping through the night since you were three months old—and you still do.  You are greatly attached to your blanket and your pacifier, but you don’t ever need us to come in during the middle of the night to give you your paci.  You just sleep right through the night.  Every.single.night.  When you don’t, I can assume that you have an ear infection and I take you in to the doctors the next day.  You love your blankie so much—and you have a special corner that you play with.  Whenever you pick up your blankie, you find a corner and then say corner? No . . . turn to another corner. . . this corner? Yes!.  Then you stick your finger in the little spot where I messed up with the sewing and you fall into bed in a head, laying on your blankie like a pillow.  Still with your finger tucked into corner.   I have tried giving you a pillow, but you refuse to use it.   We just moved you to a toddler bed yesterday, and amazingly, you are obedient and stay in bed when we tell you not to get out.  I just put you down for a nap about twenty minutes ago, and you fell right asleep.

You love reading still, which is awesome.  You have a few favorite books.  You love any super hero book, iSpy board books, Bear Love Opposites and the Froggy book series.  You used to just sit and pull books from a book shelf, looking at them one page at a time.  You rarely do that anymore, and I really miss it.  That always made me smile.

You love playing outside and running.  We are trying to teach you to be more gentle. . . and working on not hitting or throwing.  You are learning to be obedient, though you don’t like it.  You don’t like Sesame Street.  You love to play dress up.  You love wooden puzzles, so we have a whole collection of them.  Sometimes you sit for a long while and play with them by yourself.  Usually though, you don’t love playing by yourself.  You love coloring, but only with markers.  You yell and scream when I only let you have crayons.  You love dribbling a soccer ball and really you are very good at it. . . but other than that, you aren’t obsessed with sports like your brother was.  You love hide and seek and I believe it’s your favorite game.  You tend to hide in the same place all the time and pop out before someone finds you, but it makes you giggle every single round.  And you know when it’s your turn to find us that you cover your eyes, count to ten and then say, ready or not! Here I come!   Lately, you wear a super hero cape around for hours at a time.

I love you so much, little man.  Looking forward to seeing what this new year brings!  Happy birthday!

Love,

Mommy