About Mr. Trouble on Feet

I know that age two is supposed to be terrible, but the honest truth is that I have really enjoyed ages 2, 3 and 4 with all of my kids.  I think it’s such fun time of growth and development.  Age two is just adorable in so very many ways, age three is witty, and four year olds I find remarkable.  I wanted to take a bit of time to write down some things about Mr. Trouble on Feet that I want to remember about the past few weeks.

• He loves to “bop.”  Bop is his own special word for jump, and he jumps everywhere he can.  He’s a bouncing machine!  He loves bouncing on my bed.  Because it’s been pretty chilly the past few days, I hauled up the little trampoline for the family room, and the first thing he asks to do every time he wakes up in the morning or from nap is to do down and bop.  What I love about bopping two year olds is how their legs work!  I’m not sure what they do differently, but somehow they are able to keep more of their legs straight while jumping and still jump high and fast.
• He loves everything about Sesame Street, and sometimes he laughs so hard while watching it that I think he’s crying.
• Mr. Trouble on Feet is really enjoying music class, and the grandmas there get such a charge out of him.  He is not afraid of any of them, and loves to deliver instruments to them and bop next to them.  This year Mr. Trouble on Feet does everything at music class except sing, although sometimes he tries to sing without words.  He does all the actions.  He finds all sorts of ways to play instruments.  Last Friday he spent all of the time we were using the one bell jingles smashing as many bells as he could into the pockets of his pants and then bopping as fast as he could until the bells fell out.  Creative.
• Probably because they are a lot like signing, and he loves to sign, Mr. Trouble on Feet really, really loves all the fingerplays we do at music class.  He asks me to say them over and over and over at home while he does all the actions.  It can entertain him for fast quantities of time.
• Last Sunday we were gathered around the table at lunchtime, and all the big kids were telling us what they learned at Sunday School and what they remembered from the sermon at church.  Suddenly Mr. TOF signed his whole Bible verse.  I was astounded.  It’s amazing what goes in their heads and sticks!  Toddlers are truly sponges.  I don’t always get to know about his knowledge because he doesn’t have that much verbal communication yet, and so sometimes I’m so surprised!  I loved that he made the connection between listening to the big kids talk about Sunday School and knowing what he learned in his class.  So fun!
• Mr. Trouble on Two Feet loves to cook crazy food in the play kitchen and deliver it to me on a tray.  It’s a good thing pretend food doesn’t have a lot of calories, because I eat a lot of it in a day.
• He also has been playing and playing with our wooden train track and trains.  YaYa builds tracks for him and he plays so carefully for long periods of time.  It’s fun to watch.
• He’s trying out new words all the time.  Hooray!  Some of his recent words are “crack” (an egg), “home,”  “walk,”  “oink” (like a pig) “bok” (like a chicken) “hee haw”  (like a donkey).
• Mr. Trouble on Feet has the routine around here down.  He knows where we go and when we go and what’s going to happen when we get there.  He knows which music class has a snack and which music class we leave and then drive to the bread store to get bread for peanut butter sandwiches.  He loves peanut butter bread.
• Reading out loud to Mr. TOF is getting easier and easier, and in the last few weeks he has started to sit down for multiple stories.
• He’s still my cautious boy, staying away from hot things and dangerous situations.  He sometimes still backs up and goes down stairs backwards.  He doesn’t like the sound of rushing water.
• He positively loves having pockets in his pants.  He sticks a pretend cell phone in them and then whips it out to call the big kidlets at school.  We talk a lot about how they ride the bus to school and he wants them to come home.