Happy Birthday Colt! This week you turned 2 years old! 

Colt Developments: Colt, your dad and I are absolutely obsessed with you, this stage and this age. You are so easy these days and so, so much fun. You have us laughing every day with the funny things you do and we are constantly amazed at your cleverness. I think this year is going to be the most fun yet as we just love seeing more of your personality, hearing more of your thoughts and generally getting to know you and experience you as a person more fully.

We just arrived home from an almost-month-long trip to the US on Monday (perfectly timed so as not to have to buy you your own seat one final time!), and while your dad and I had a fabulous trip, I think you loved it more than anyone. I’ll post more details about the trip soon but your dad and I felt like we watched you come alive in a new way while we were in the states. Although our time in the US may have made your Portuguese take a slight hit, your English vocabulary grew every day as did your confidence speaking. Most of your sentences aren’t quite grammatically correct (especially if it’s more than 2-3 words in a row) but you’re very good at stringing words together to convey your thoughts and ideas.

You are opinionated about everything going on and love to direct everyone in the room as to what they should be doing or where they should be sitting or standing. If someone isn’t where they “should” be, you will either point, pat a spot on the floor or take their hand and move them.

Your favorite song to sing is “Twinkle Twinkle” and we hear you sing it to yourself almost every night in your crib. Your favorite song to request others to sing is “Are you sleeping?” or “Frere Jacques” (you switch between which of the two you want to hear very quickly).

You’ve gotten very into “by-self” lately and love doing things by yourself and announcing that you have done it by yourself as well.

You’re a seasoned traveler and have taken over 40 flights in your 2 little years of life!

Health: Praise the Lord you continue to be perfectly healthy. Even with all of our recent traveling you never even caught a sniffle. You had your first real haircut in South Carolina and it was so much fun. You ate animal crackers the whole time so therefore you were very good at sitting still. It wasn’t a ton of hair but just the same it seemed to transform you from a baby into a little boy even more. You’re still around 27-28 lbs, wearing 2T clothes and size 4 diapers. The one thing I’m waiting on are those 2 year molars. I’d love to get them in before the new baby comes so that it’s out of the way!

Feeding: Still a picky little eater and very resistant to trying anything new but we are working with you on it, slowly but surely. Your favorite foods are yogurt, bananas, cheese, crackers, bread, pasta, rice, apple sauce, dried apricots, raisins, nuts, and those smoothie type squeeze pouches. Everything else basically has to be snuck in but thankfully we’re still able to trick you a little.

Sleeping: Best sleeper ever. Even though all of our travels and time changes you never gave us a hard time on sleeping. In South Carolina you would do 11-12 hours at night and then take 3 hour naps during the day. In Vail you were only napping about an hour and a half during the day but then at night you would sleep for 13+ hours. This is something I am incredibly thankful for and do not take for granted.

Schedule: Your schedule is basically the same as last month:

8:00 Morning wake up and drink milk
9:00 Breakfast
10:00-12:00 Play time
12:15 Lunch
1:00-3:00 Nap then wake up and drink milk
4:00-6:00 More play time
6:15 Dinner
7:30 Clean up toys, brush teeth, get ready for bed
8:00 Lights Out!

Mama: My precious treasure, Colt. What a blessing it is to be your mom. You are truly a joy and bring love, laughter and light into our hearts and our home every day. I am cherishing these days with you and feel so torn about the fact that soon you will not be our one and only. On the one hand I am so excited to meet our new addition and can’t wait to see you as a big brother – I know you’ll be amazing. Plus I do believe that getting a sibling is a gift to you as well. But on the other hand my heart hurts at the thought that I won’t be able to focus as fully on you. I know that it’s for the best but little love, I am so happy pouring my whole heart into you each day. I love feeling like I haven’t missed a single thing with you. And I fear that the exhaustion or just the need to divide my time and attention between two will mean that I’ll miss something. Miss moments, smiles, giggles. You just can’t imagine how much I love each little thing with you. But I have faith in God’s plan for our family so we continue on in excited anticipation of what is to come, but I’m still treasuring these next few weeks all the more and squeezing you a little tighter each day. And no matter what, you’ll always be the one who made me mom. I love you Colt.