Grady Turns TWO!

Posted on Dec. 2, 2008 at 12:33 PM - Post Comment

This is a tad late, but I still wanted to document the momentous occasion...

This has been an amazing year - more exciting than last year in a lot of ways.  Grady has just learned so much so fast and become such an amazing little person.  He has quite the personality!  He is extremely outgoing, never nervous to enter a new situation or confront a crowd (even if it is a crowd of older kids).  He always just heads into things with two feet and a big smile.  He is also so friendly - giving hugs, "wops" (kisses), and "I love yous" to all his friends and family with much frequency.  "Thank you", "please", and "I'm sorry" also come quite naturally to him, and he uses them without prompting regularly.  He is still quite active and energetic, though it does seem that he has mellowed a bit in that regard.

Grady's speech is AMAZING.  He speaks in sentences of 6 or 7 words and can totally carry on a conversation with you about lots of things.  I would say his vocabulary is over 1,000 words.   He can sing his ABCs perfectly now and can count to 13 with no trouble.  He also sings a lot of other songs and seems to have a great memory for lyrics.  Sometimes we will hear a song once, and I hear him trying to sing it later.  Just today he was singing "Jingle Bells" after I sang it to him once.  He especially likes "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "Twinkle Twinkle", and "Happy Birthday".  

Grady also makes us laugh constantly and seems to have a great sense of humor already.  The other day when Papa G. asked him how his best friend Drew was doing he said "pretty good", which just cracked us up.  When Nana and Papa were leaving at the airport, Grady said "I love you - thanks for coming" on his own.  He just comes up with this stuff, which amazes me.

Another big thing right now is helping.  Grady loves to help with anything and everything and will ask "help Mama?" incessantly until given a job to do.  If you just give him some jobs to do, he is happy happy happy.  He helps with laundry, making lunch, baking cookies, etc.

Right now he loves books.  He is into trains too, but his very favorite thing would have to be trucks!  He will play quietly with trucks by himself forever if you just sit back and let him.

He has all his teeth, including his 2 year molars, and weighs just under 26 pounds (25th%).  He is 34" (70th%).  He sleeps about 7PM-6:30AM at night and hangs out happily in his crib for about another hour after that.  He naps about 1.5 hours per day too.  He is still a somewhat picky eater, but it is getting better.  He loves every single fruit he has ever tried and likes ham, chicken, and garden burgers.  Cheese and yogurt are also favorites, but other meats and most veggies are tough to get him to eat, unless they are pureed.  We also just discovered that he really likes pizza now!

One other big milestone is that Grady successfully used his potty for the first time a few nights ago!  He isn't super interested all the time yet, but he was that night.  He sure was proud!

I feel so lucky to be Grady's mom - he is such a sweet, happy little boy.  His bright spirit just seems to touch everyone who meets him.  While it is a little hard to see him getting big so fast, I am so very excited to see what the next year brings and to go on many more adventures with him.

Grady's actual birthday (Thanksgiving) was quite nice.  We woke up in the morning and opened gifts right after breakfast.  The weather was also beautiful - very warm and sunny.

Here are a few pictures:

His Happy Birthday Thomas the Train and railcar







This is a big pop-up tent that looks like Thomas.  It sort of has a tunnel, and it can be for indoor or outdoor.  It's in the playroom right now.





Singing pizza Elmo -


A very large Megablocks truck from Gaga and Grandpa.  It has buttons that make all different truck noises too. 



His new playhouse/tent thing:



Helping with the turkey:





We let him spread the extra stuffing down into the pan - he really wanted to help!




The turkey cupcakes I made him since it was his birthday:

Our little family:



Eating a cupcake (with cranberry sauce all over his face):





Being cute in the guest bedroom the next morning - he was helping to make the bed:

Videos will be coming soon - promise!