already.

It has been two years already. Two years.

Hayes turned two years old today and I still have a hard time believing. My mind flips back and forth between "Has it been two years already?" and "Has it been only two years?". It seems like just yesterday that we held him for the first time. But I can hardly remember life without him.

Most of me is settling on 'already' because life has seemed to fly by more quickly every day. How could it be two years already? Already he is running, jumping, talking. Already he knows so much. He is still a very persistent child and can throw a tantrum with the best of them. He is also smart, loving, and enthusiastic. He loves Addie and Claire like there is no tomorrow. His favorite things are (in no particular order) rocks, trucks, diggers, books, trains and letters.



Letters. He loves them. He has known all his letters for about a month now... upper and lowercase... and will stand in front of the playground rules sign pointing out all the different letters for what seems like an eternity. He is even trying to write letters now. He can write an "H", "T" and "O" without any trouble and every once in a while he'll make an "L" or "M" and is quite proud of himself. Obviously I'm impressed. I'm just always so amazed at what kids can learn when they are interested. And boy is he interested in letters.



His sleeping is much, much improved but he's still up way earlier than we'd prefer. We are up between 5:30 and 6:15 everyday. On the bright side, most nights he is sleeping through the night now. Finally. We hit a rough patch right after he weaned where he was up at least twice, but he has settled down again and we are all much less grumpy.



Speaking of weaned... well, he is weaned! It has been almost a month now since we stopped nursing. I thought it was going to be a really rough process since he was such a persistent and frequent nurser, but much to my surprise it went very, very smoothly. Once we got down to nursing 4 times a day (yes... we had to work hard to get down to 4 times a day) he hardly even protested. He went from 4 times a day to nothing at all in a week. I am still astounded.



At two he is still the pickiest eater I've ever known. He surpasses my sister by a mile and I always thought her childhood eating habits were crazy. The healthy things he will eat are yogurt, oatmeal, (some) crackers, pretzels, cereal, and fruit. Sometimes you can get black beans or scrambled eggs into him. Unhealthy are pizza, french fries, ice cream, cupcakes, suckers, m&m's, brownies, and popsicles (the sugary ones). I'm so ready for him to just eat what we are having for goodness sake!



I'm so thankful to my friend Katie that watched Adeline as I took Hayes out this morning for this little photo shoot. What an amazing thing to get to spend a little bit of time alone with the birthday boy and capture him at exactly two years old.



p.s. Trains are scary when they are really, really close up. Too loud, he tells me.