Adventures in Mommyhood: Brother

You've caught glimpses of him in recent posting, but I thought it was time to give Declan a post of his very own!

This kid....is two. :) We love him dearly, but he and God are working together to test and stretch our patience. To. It's. Limits. Despite the fact that he's two (which we have to remind ourselves of when we find ourselves asking "why would you do that?!") he is still a wonderful and darling child! We can go from pulling our hair out to complete wonderment at how smart and funny he is. He is REALLY picking up phrases and words, when we don't even know it too. He's a serious parrot. Here's a list of his current "sayings".

"Oh my gosh!"
"Awe, c'mon Abs! What's wrong?" (Something we said A LOT in the beginning when she would be crying and we were soooooooooooo exhausted!)
"Did you hear that? Do you hear it?!"
"No! I go in time out....NOW!" (I think he means to say he doesn't want to go in time out.)
"Never! Never! Never!"
"Where'd it go?" (You can substitute "it" for Thomas, Abby, car, fire truck, any of his cousins or friends, etc.)
"Oh, Der it is!!!!"

One of our favorite things he says, and we know we'll be devastated when he grows out of it: "I eeyou." That would be "I love you." Heart melter.

He also LOVES to sing. We sing with him every night. He'll sing praise songs and then ask for Backyardigans or Super Why. He'll even sing just while he's playing. And he makes up songs too....well he strings words together like mommy, daddy, Abby, Declan and says them in a sing song voice. It's really very sweet.

I love my kid, and it's still makes me sad sometimes that it's not just the two of us anymore (during the day that is) so tonight we took a trip to Target, just the two of us. It was nice just having Dec there and letting him run around....until he broke the glass jar of salsa.....but having time with just him was really nice. Hopefully we can have more "dates" in the future!

Picture time!

This is his "special train". We were given the advice to get a special toy that he could play with while I was feeding Abby, so he didn't feel left out and kept busy. That didn't last long. Apparently cartoons are a good (or rather NOT good) way to keep busy, too.....anyway, this toy was from his Godmama Bri. He loves his Special Train!

Oh yeah, he's cool.

You'll see a lot of sleeping pictures. He's just so darn funny when he sleeps! I let him go to nap with a book, and this is how he fell asleep.

I love this....."I wonder where my sticker went....."

"Oh! Der it is!!!"

Towel around the waist....like a big boy! :)

Again, funny sleeper.

So.....I started trusting Declan a little bit. Too much it seemed. I had fallen asleep on the couch with Abby, (for just a few minutes....I was just "resting my eyes".....) and when I woke up, Dec wasn't in the room with us anymore. After a quick check around the house, I found him in the closet. He had gotten into his "big trains" (box of tracks and THOUSANDS of train engines.) He had laid out tracks and was getting the engines out when I found him. Sneaky little devil.

We pile some stuff on the box to keep it "hidden"....guess we didn't "hide" it well.

He's asking me "help me get some more out!"

Cars. His second favorite movie.....currently.

This kid loves trains. And he loves making "trains" out of anything! Like his books:

Sometimes, he has a hard time going down for nap. When I can, I'll lay down with him for a bit, but a lot of the time, I have to feed Abby. Here, he had been calling for me and he fell asleep with his head practically against the gate. Kinda creeped me out, seeing his head peeking out from under the curtain....

I don't remember if I moved him, or if he did this himself. Check out his right hand. That's standard these days.

He did move between the last picture and this one, he curled up actually. But somehow came back to this. Funny thing, I came across this post tonight and realized how true it still is.