2 Years

River recently celebrated his second birthday, which is just crazy, in my opinion. There's no way it's already been two years since this happened:

And it was just one year ago that he transformed from a shaggy-haired baby to a little boy when we gave him his first haircut shortly after his first birthday.

These days River likes to do what Sunshine does, so we find him here a lot:

He thinks he's one of the big kids and likes to tag along at park days.

playing in the rain- everyone was soaking wet and having a blast

wanting to join in on whatever game the big boys were playing

River loves his baby brother and is always giving him hugs and kisses. He started out just wanting to hold Ocean for a second or two at a time, but now will sit and hold him for longer than that.

We're transitioning him from his crib to a twin size bed, but it's proving rougher than we anticipated. Sunshine went from her crib to what we later called her "Harry Potter room", and it was fairly easy. This time around we haven't yet moved the crib into Sunshine's room for Ocean, so River kept wanting to sleep in that rather than his bed. He was excited about the idea of the bed, but not so much the reality of it. He's coming around though and is staying in his bed and sleeping better.

excited about the big boy bed in his room, right after we set it up

Back in July I mentioned that River was in speech therapy. He continues to progress, but we're not sure if it's because he's maturing or if the therapy is working, or a combination of the two. Probably the latter. He is saying more words, though they're not clearly enunciated. He randomly busts out with words, but he only says them once- if we try to get him to repeat it, he refuses. He does not perform for us or anyone. He does have a few 2-3 word phrases that he uses infrequently. One of these days he'll skip straight to talking in full sentences. In the meantime, we're continuing to teach him new signs and he knows a lot more than Sunshine ever did. Being able to figure out what he needs is actually a downside at this point. He knows we know what he wants/needs, so there's very little incentive for him to communicate verbally. We're now working on changing that thought process and habit.

River isn't as fond of stuffed animals as Sunshine is, but she's rubbing off on him and he does have a couple stuffed animals he likes. A little stuffed dog is his favorite, mostly because he also really likes dogs. "Dog" and "woof" are two of his most often used words.

snuggling the giant dog (bigger than him!) at Costco. no, we did not take it home with us :)

I made gluten free carrot cake cupcakes for River's birthday cake. As I frosted them I realized I totally slacked off- Sunshine got a super-cool Nemo cake for her 2nd birthday. But she didn't have a 2 month old younger sibling draining mommy's brain cells. We had lots of cousins around for Sunshine's 2nd birthday, but it was just us for River's. I do enjoy making the more elaborate cakes, so I just need to plan ahead to make it happen next year. The planning will be key: September and October are when I work on Halloween costumes, so having a plan in place before then will make it a lot easier for me to quickly and efficiently make a fancy cake in the middle of sewing costumes.

River might be a lefty- if you look at the picture of him eating ice cream and the one of him writing at the school table you'll see that he's holding the spoon and the pencil in his left hand. That's a normal occurrence, though he does occasionally use his right hand for those tasks.

River is a sweet, happy little boy that we're blessed to have in our family!