The Life and Times of a 2 year old toddler

The 2-year-old toddler is a running, curious creature.  Imagine the one thing that you don’t want him to do, go into or pick up and that’s exactly what they’ll do.  It’s like the Star Wars Jedi training orb, but instead of shooting lasers they’ll misplace dad’s car keys, cell phone or the remote control.

Sleeping

Our 2-year-old goes to sleep at 6:30 p.m.; plays in his crib, reads some books, throws them on the floor and eventually goes to sleep around 7:00.   The madness that is a toddler’s typical day will begin the next morning when he wakes up around 6:30.

Sometimes he’ll take a nap around 1:00 in the afternoon for an hour.  Unfortunately the 2-year-old toddler is on the verge of dropping the nap entirely.  They’ll nap one day, skip the next and soon your hour of sanity in a sea of crazy will disappear.

Eating

Toddler Mojo loves to eat.   Berries, bananas, crackers, ravioli, chicken, raisins, cheese, watermelon, he’ll eat most anything.  In addition to the three main meals he’ll have a snack at 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.

He loves to eat, but sometimes he’s in a mood and needs to have the food presented with a song.  It’s musical toddler theatre, but it can help them eat.  If the song doesn’t help him eat then we’ll put a cracker or chip on the plate.  If that won’t help him eat the main course then they’re not hungry.  Sometimes kids just aren’t hungry and they’ll eat when they want to.

Eating with a fork or spoon is still very challenging and rarely happens.  We always have a fork on the plate and encourage him to use it though.

Playing

The toddler is a funny person.  Our little guy loves anything with trains, bubbles, cars, dogs and running.  He’s got a tricycle but hasn’t shown any interested in riding things yet.  The closest he’s come to riding something is one of those Little People vehicles that he can sit on and move it with your feet.

He also loves playing with Matchbox cars, plastic farm animals and reading.  His current favorite books are Clifford the Big Red Dog and Dr. Seuss.    

 

Speaking

The other day we met a child who was younger that Toddler Mojo and speaking like a mynah bird.  It was amazing.  He could repeat most anything that was said to him.  By the time we left he knew my name, Toddler Mojo’s name, a couple other words and he hugged us good bye.

Toddler Mojo isn’t that chatty yet.  He still says ‘turtle’ very well and often calls anything around him a turtle.  Out of the blue he’ll say words like ‘backpack’ or ‘tho’ for Thomas the Train, but his verbal communication is still forming.

The life and times is a series where we’ll track what our child is doing at points in their life.    As a parent you hear that they grow up fast and that is very true.  What should parents expect from a child at a certain age?  Granted all children are different, but this is what ours is doing at 2-years-old.