Gettin' DOWN with Shakira

Last night, Shakira performed on “America’s Got Talent” and while I don’t normally watch the show, I couldn’t tear myself away from that performance. Shakira looked amazing, the song was catchy (She Wolf, just in time for Halloween!), and OMG the girl can shake it on the dance floor. As soon as Adam heard music, he ran over to the TV from where he had been playing with his “choo choo,” planted himself in front of the screen, announced “She’s DANCING!,” then promptly began IMITATING Shakira. Oh how I wish someone else had been there with me to witness it! (Aaron was playing softball.) She bent forward, he bent forward; she bent back, he attempted to bend back (2-year-olds don’t typically do a whole lot of back-bending, ya know? I think he was surprised to realize that he could bend back without tipping over); she put her hips in motion, he shook his; she dropped down to the floor and put her leg over her head, he watched like “Huh?”; she did some crazy belly dance contortion move; he finally gave up and walked away. Adam has no idea how sexual Shakira’s moves are, so I was trying really, really hard not to bust out laughing when he was imitating her. I’m fairly confident that he could’ve won some prize if I had videotaped his “performance” for Funniest Home Videos.

Adam is a funny little dude, and from what I’ve been told, he’s very verbal for having just turned two. Sometimes Aaron and I look at each other like, “Where did that come from?” when he puts two or three sentences together.

When he’s crabby, he can be very contrary. His favorite word right now is either. “I don’t want to drink my milk, either.” “I don’t want to wear my jacket, either.” “I don’t want to sit in that shopping cart, either.”

His favorite nursery rhymes are The Muffin Man, A Tisket, A Tasket, and Farmer in the Dell. I love it when he sings. I especially love it when he sings this stanza:

The wife takes the chai
The wife takes the chai
Hi-ho the dairy-o, the wife takes the chai (tea?)

Or when he belts out A Tisket, A Tasket and sings “I wrote a letter to my love, and on the way I dropped it.” (You wrote a letter to your love? Wow. And here I didn’t even think you were potty-trained yet!)

And another favorite is Old Macdonald, who has either a cow or a moose on his farm and that’s it. If I try to suggest another animal “How about a chicken? A horse? A pig?” he adamantly responds, “NO! A cow! NO! It’s a moose!”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know ANY farmers who raise moose.

He likes to be given tasks, and if I forget to give him the honor of throwing something away, he whines. Sometimes I have to “create” garbage (pronounced as "guy-bidge" by Adam) so he can take a trip to the trash can. He also wants to sweep whenever I get out the broom, which is both sweet and somewhat annoying all at once. Oh, and the DISHES. He must help me whenever I do the dishes, standing on a chair next to me, getting about a gallon of water on the floor, announcing “MOVE!” or “’scuse me!” as he tries to wash his sippy cup (again) or his fork or bowl or whatever he’s “helping” me wash. I now realize that doing the dishes will be a loooong process, and plan accordingly.

If there’s dirt, he will find it. And get covered in it. And eat it. And get it stuck in places dirt wasn’t meant to be.

He still loves playing with balls and can now (sometimes) hit a T-ball off the T. His other favorites include his tool bench, tackle box, just about any type of animal, books about animals, puzzles, bubbles, his bubble lawnmower, his doctor’s kit, trains, trucks, and motorcycles (he has a scooter that he proudly calls his motorcycle, and whenever he hears a motorcycle, he stops what he’s doing, gasps, says “Motorcycle?” and wildly searches for it). He also loves marching bands, watching nursery rhymes on Cable’s On Demand Channel 1 (Baby Boost), “driving” those little Fred Flintstone foot-pedal cars (he’s too little to reach the pedals on Big Wheels, but he can zoom around all he wants when he’s relying on his feet to push him from A to B), riding the carousel, the park (pronounced "pike"), going for long, slow walks, going for runs in the jogging stroller, eating cheese crackers or hummus with pita chips or meatballs or pizza or ice cream or string cheese (he’s finally over his milk protein allergy! Hooray!), and those darn Nuks! We’re going to have to wean him from pacifiers soon, and it’s not going to be pretty.

After constantly talking about going potty, and announcing when he was going to poop, and asking us if we had to go poop, we bought Adam a potty chair, just to get him used to the idea. I quickly realized that he’s nowhere near ready. When I was in the shower, I came out to find his potty chair covered in about half a roll of toilet paper and a small bottle of lotion, my face powder, a little yellow candle from his bedroom, a Mickey Mouse figurine, a rubber duck, and a pair of Adam’s shorts.

He is still absolutely terrified of the vacuum.I mean TERRIFIED. He has been known to hide behind the couch when I pull it out. I wonder when he'll get over this fear?

He is now 25 months old and weighs 24 lbs., which puts him in the tenth percentile. Adam’s cousin Max is the same age and weighs 37 lbs., which puts him in the 90th percentile. I think of them as Small and Tall. His cousin Morgan, who is also the same age, is taller than him, too. If it’s true that you double your child’s height at age two to discover their adult height, Adam will be about 5-feet 6-inches tall. I don’t know how accurate those “predictions” are, though.

When I pick him up from daycare, and he races toward me, his little floppy sun hat bouncing on his head, his arms outstretched for a hug, it really is the highlight of my entire day.