Rusty is a pretty typical two year old. He has learned new skills and tries them out regularly.
One of these skills is knowing that standing on stuff makes you taller. He moves stools, chairs, books, and boxes all around to reach things off of counter tops and dressers. Occasionally when his first choice doesn’t make him tall enough, he comes up with a plan B. The funniest plan B is pillows. He hasn’t figured out yet that no matter how tippy-toed he gets, that pillow is not going to make him tall enough to reach the light switch!
He still loves to color but, thankfully, he pretty much sticks to paper now. Whew.
He loves to crawl in and out of the play pens. In and out, in and out. If Tommy happens to be in one, that just makes it more fun. This skill led to learning to crawl out of his crib. A few times of doing that, though, and we made the change … Rusty is in a toddler bed now.
He’s been doing pretty well. He understands to stay in his room, even if he doesn’t understand to stay in his bed. He has yet to fall asleep anywhere else though. Bedtime has been the hardest adjustment since Tommy is usually already in the room sleeping. More than once we’ve found Rusty doing his best to wake Tommy up. The most creative way was tossing all the stuffed animals he could find into the crib on top of the sleeping Tommy. It’s been a week. It’s getting better.
Rusty was also an expert at standing up in his high chair. This skill (and the fact that Tommy’s high chair was horrible at trapping food and smashing it into his bum every time he ate resulting in way too much laundry for me) led to Rusty being moved to a booster seat. He loves it. He sits next to Billy and thinks it is so much fun. That transition was easy.
Disciplining Rusty is tricky. He’s two and doesn’t understand reasoning, however, when you tell him not to do something, he immediately says, “Why?” He’s done this for a while, but because he’s stretching his independent arms, I’m hearing a lot more whys.
Rusty wants to go outside. He grabs his shoes and asks several times a day. He gets a very sad face when told no, especially if the big boys have their shoes on and are going somewhere. Just last night the big boys went with Kevin to a movie night at the school. Rusty didn’t get to go. Rusty’s face was very sad as he watched them drive away and he said, “why?” Thankfully, he’s easily distracted!