Devon: March

Devon, Devon, Devon.

Sigh.

Where do I begin?

Let's start with this .... the terrible two's are in full swing at our house. Even though Devon is still his sweet, little self most of the time, it would appear that periodically throughout the day a demon takes over his mind and body and he has crying tantrums, dangerously climbs on furniture, says "no" to everything, gets up from sleeping 5-6 times at night and sits on the floor by the stairs yelling,"Annie, get up here now!" and refusing to ingest anything except milk and candy. Thankfully, he is not like this all the time.

In fact most of the time he's well behaved and when we go to my parents' house or on an outing he does really well, but I think he just gets tired of keeping all the energy bottled up in his tiny, polite little body all day that it all comes out when we get home. It is a lesson in patience that I work on everyday.

The upside to his latest "personality shift" ;) is his language skills have improved dramatically from last month. Total strangers comment on how well he speaks and can carry on conversations with him. When he is open to listening, it is possible to reason with him. Like, when I had to explain that I had to put a gate on his bedroom door so he wouldn't climb on top of the dresser at night and turn the TV on and off and scare me half to death because Mama thinks someone is in the house ;)

I hate to gender generalize, but Devon loves all things that a typical boy would love. Tools, rocks, hanging out in the garage, building stuff, swords, spraying the water hose, digging in the dirt, guns, robots, super heroes, space, astronauts, rocket boots, transformers, spitting, burping and farting.

To his two-year-old credit, when he does burp/fart he says,"I burped/farted. Excuse me." At least he's polite about it ;) He will turn anything into a gun or sword. My hair dryer, a butter knife, a plastic pipe, a screwdriver, you name it and he will fight you with it. And watch out because he seems to have some natural ability with fighting. He has drawn blood more that once.

I love this picture. It's me, Audrey in the pouch and Devon out for a mid day walk. Devon was pointing at the moon with his stick sword.

I am continually amazed at the imagination of this little guy.

He can walk by a pile of gravel and say,"I want to go look at that pyramid." and then proceeds to tell me everything he knows about Egypt.

I read him a book about space and told him about Neil Armstrong landing on the moon and planting an American flag. 15 minutes later we were taking a walk through our neighborhood and the gas company had marked the ground for some work that was going to be done in the next few days. He walked over to this flag and said,"This is a flag from the moon."

Joe was showing Devon how to dig for sand rubies and they collected them in a little cup. I had a little cup of beads that I left on the table that Devon dumped onto the floor and I had to literally dig each one out of the carpet. Devon called them "mama's sand rubies."

When Joe lets him get on the computer Devon asks to see happy faces. Like, pages of smiley faces. How sweet is that?

He loves to "show you a good trick" and have you show him one in return. Balancing a spoon on your nose, handstands, curling your tongue and fish faces are very good tricks. His cool trick is to take a plastic/paper sword and spin it in the air. And when I say "spins it" he throws it in the air and it spins like a propeller on a plane. It's so fast! It's a pretty good trick.

He loves to make cookies on a weekly basis and I even taught him how to make home made noodles. He was more interested in swinging the handle around like a sword than the noodles, but he did like it for a few minutes. I like how he stopped putting the noodles on the rack and just globed on dough.

Devon loves to watch Monster's Inc (he calls it Monster's name fink), Bolt, Transformers, Tangled, Yo Gaba Gaba and The Incredibles. He frequently asks to be referred to as: Incrediboy, Mr. Incredible, Prince Charming, and when he's carrying a sucker like a magic wand ... Fairy Godmother. He asks to watch the History channel so he can watch shows on Egypt and "mommies".

Devon loves to eat nectarines, Pokey, marshmallows, apples, cheese, suckers, broccoli, noodles, pizza, fish and watermelon. His new favorite condiment is steak sauce. Move over ketchup!

If you ask him what he thinks about smoking he will give you various answers:
"It's grossy."
"It's disgusting."
"It gives you cancers."
"It's only for the fireplace."
"It could burn you. Blah!" (sticking out his tongue)

That last one he came up with on his own.

Devon is starting to be helpful around the house and will often tell me that he needs to pick up his toys before bed. He will empty the silverware from the dishwasher to the drawer and picks up food that he spills on the floor. He is very good at calming Audrey and they are genuinely interested in playing together. Except in this picture where she swatted at his sample of peanut butter pretzels and he was devastated that they spilled onto his shorts. He is quite a tender kid.

Devon constantly says,"I love you so much" and gives out hugs, kisses and monkey kisses. A monkey kiss is an Eskimo kiss, but he calls it a monkey kiss. He loves to snuggle up with his blanket, papash (pacifier) and his sock monkey when he goes to sleep and insists that mama and daddy lay down with him each night.