35 Months

Dear Matthew,

Your last month as a 2 year old is upon us. I don't know why people call it the terrible twos - you have been nothing but a joy. Well, ok, you've had your moments, but they are so easily forgotten and really, thankfully there haven't been *that* many.

Your little tractor (your favorite toy) finally broke down. It literally fell apart. I couldn't bring myself to throw it away, so I guess we are keeping its remains. I hope someday when we come across it we can remember you at 2 a little more vividly than we would without it. You have a new tractor now. Ok, here's a secret... it's not really a tractor. It's a John Deere 4-wheeler. But you don't know that... yet. It's your tractor and you mow the living room daily with it. But it's just not the same as the beloved old tractor.

You've been playing with your blocks a lot lately which Mommy loves to see. You build houses and garages mostly. Tunnels and bridges are high on your list too. And you've been quite the little artist lately:

You do this thing that you came up with on your own as far as I can tell - you pretend to be a robot that isn't working right, and only goes backwards, and we have to pull your levers, change your batteries and do all kinds of things, making the appropriate noises, until you are "fixed". You make the CUTEST noise as a robot. Kind of a zuz zuz zuz sound and you bounce around going backwards everywhere until you are fixed. It is just so darn cute. :)

You and Daddy went to the zoo and right after this picture was taken you threw one of your last sippy cups in with the orangutans. You still talk about this every once in a while. You wonder if the baby orangutan is drinking out of your sippy cup. :)

You have started saying "I love you" quite often and it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it. I can't believe how quickly time has gone by.

You are becoming your own person now... not just my baby. I don't know everything about you. I know most of it, and more than anyone else, but not all. You surprise me sometimes with just how much you know, how sweet your heart really is, how much you understand of what goes on around you. And how deeply you feel. Especially this.

You are a lesson in love for me... and sometimes I am not a very good student. I know I say things that hurt you, I'm impatient with you, I'm often very selfish. You want so little, just love and attention and gentleness. I'm trying, and I do love you (so very, very much), but I guess you are learning that even Mommy isn't perfect and needs to be forgiven sometimes.

It's much harder work than I imagined it would be, this parenting thing... but the rewards are huge. I would not change a thing about you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Love,

Mama

Tot School

Matthew is 34 months old

It seems like we did a lot of Tot School this week. I mentioned in an earlier post that we are trying to pare down our summer activities, and one of the happy results has been more time to spend on Tot School, which both M and I love.

We spent a lot of time reading the July issue of his High-Five magazine (put out by Highlights for preschool children) and playing with these fun dominoes that came with it:

M made "lilypads" on the pond, which we normally call our living room floor, and jumped from one to another like a frog. At least that is what he said he was doing. :)

We went away last weekend and spent some time in our camper. Here he is making his little whiteboard (we keep it there) into a matching game. It has the alphabet printed around it and he is using magnetic letters to match them. He came up with this on his own. I was so proud!
We did our little clip game. (Sorry for the huge up close picture, not sure what I was thinking with that one.) It seems activities that take me 2 minutes to put together, like this one, are his favorites. He wants to do this all the time. The ones that I spend hours on are the ones he's never interested in. {sigh} There's a lesson in there somewhere for me...
We did a new feltboard poem - 5 Little Seashells- which I downloaded from The Mailbox. He is really into the feltboard lately, which makes me very happy.
We matched color shades using paint samples I pilfered from Walmart. ;)
He practiced fine motor skills putting paper clips onto matching strips of cardstock:

He worked on these cards I printed up and laminated from here. They are transportation same/different cards. One picture is a little different and you are supposed to circle it. He did this no problem. I wasn't sure if he would "get it", but I needn't have worried. By the way, we use Crayola's Window Markers for anything we write on that's been laminated. They work so much better than dry erase markers. And when you wipe them clean they look like new again.
He did some transportation Melissa and Doug puzzles. They are wooden 12 piece puzzles and he does them completely on his own.

We sang songs from our songbook, and made music with our instruments. This is a very noisy, pretty un-musical-sounding, activity when you actually do it, but it sure is fun!
I put together another quick ABC matching game one afternoon. We took the foam letters out of our ABC puzzle and matched them up with some ABC flashcards (I'm not a big fan of flashcards, but these were a gift and M loves them). That's it for this week. I'm trying to pull together some new activities for this coming week. Hope you all had a great week too!

For more Tot School ideas go to 1+1+1=1!

Have a beautiful day! :)