two

My baby is two years old today. Two? It seems completely impossible for Luke to be two already. I don't even feel like I'm an adult yet and I have a two year old toddler? Amazing.

Luke is a very active kid. Ever since he was able to walk, it turned into more of a constant sprint. He's even taken to running around our kitchen table for fun. He'll literally run around the table all by himself, not chasing anything or anyone , for about ten minutes. Luke loves anything sports and transportation related, especially Nascar. I think its the best of both worlds to him. When we put Nascar on for him, it's like the world around him has ceased to exist. If we need to get his attention, we have to pause it or turn it off for him to even remotely process what we're telling him. He's also slightly obsessed with Cars the movie. He would probably watch that movie all day every day if we let him. And I don't. Promise.

Luke has also become much more understandable with all of his chattiness. For the longest time we had absolutely no clue what he was saying when he would babble on to us, but we're now able to pick up key words in his speech so that we have some idea of what he's trying to communicate to us. He's able to understand a remarkable amount of what we say to him and he's getting so much better being able to accurately use his words. It cracks me up when he falls and automatically says, "Boom! I okay!" or when loudly shouts, "I stuck!" when he can't get himself out of some sticky situation or another.

Since Luke arrived on this planet, he has been a champion sleeper (unlike his sister, but I digress) and a craptastic eater. I can remember having to put him in a head lock to get him to eat the required amount prescribed by the doctor his entire first year when he was getting bottles and then that just transitioned into Luke being an extremely picky and fussy eater. We think he might have finally grown past that, or at least we've found the key to a much improved eating regimen. Ketchup. Seriously the boy will eat anything when there is ketchup involved. I've even caught him dipping his string cheese in ketchup and eating it. Luke's even gone so far as to dip his fork into the ketchup sans food and lick it off. Nice kid. The sad part is that in my head, I'm actually thinking Finally! He eats! And its not being force fed to him! Glorious!


Luke still loves to visit Treeland and has even started asking to go on a few occasions. I find it very funny that as much as he loves to go there, as soon as he gets around any plant or tree, he completely freaks out. Somewhere over the past month or so, Luke has developed this extreme fear of bees. And it doesn't even matter if there is actually a bee in the vicinity of the plant or not; if there is a plant, in his mind there is a bee on it.In fact, flies, mosquitos, and gnats are all referred to as bees as well. I guess anything that is in bug form that flies he wants nothing to do with. I can't say I blame him; I'm no fan of flying insects myself.

Luke is quite the growing boy too. When he was born, Luke weighed in at 8 lbs. 11 oz. and measured 21.5 in. long. Big kid. Now at two years, he's 30 lbs. 8 oz. and 38.5 in. tall. That puts his current stats at 79th percentile for his weight and over the 100th percentile for his height. It almost seems too much too fast. I'm glad that he's healthy and growing; don't get me wrong. It just seems like its flying by. I can't wait to see how big he gets and how he keeps things interesting in this next year!

Luke didn't get sick at all during his first year of life. No joke. We never visited his pediatrician with the exception of his well-baby visits. Boy, did we make up for that this year; more specifically, in the last three months. Since I've been back at work this year, Luke has had a nagging cold, or what we thought was a cold. Keith and I thought he should just tough it out; it was probably just some thing he picked up from being around so many other kids at daycare. Turns out Luke has been diagnosed with allergy-induced asthma. You may now give me my award for Most Horrible Parent of the Year. He'd been struggling to breathe all along and we'd brushed it off as nothing major. I can guarantee I won't make that mistake again. Luke is now on daily preventative breathing treatments and when he gets sick or has difficulty breathing again, he has a different medication for his breathing treatments then. Its really sad to see him with the little mask on, but he doesn't mind it anymore because we let him watch Chuggington (aka Choo Choo) while its going.

Luke is an amazing kid. I know that I'm extremely partial, but I am so lucky and blessed to call him mine.