The All Brick House: double your pleasure, double your fun...

And by "double" I mean years, not kids. This is not an announcement.

Jed is now 2!!! Ahhhhh! I can't believe it. He is twice as much fun now than he was a year ago, which is surprising because when he turned 1 he was pretty fun.

Jed loves his Charlie Brown doll and the Peanuts books from Kohls, so we threw him a small birthday party with a loose Peanuts theme. He was very excited about his party leading up to it and kept talking about getting presents. He was especially excited about the balloons that we had blown up and put in our bedroom, so much so that he figured out how to open our bedroom door to get them. This was most unfortunate - now he can get into our room whenever he wants. I found a great child-proofing gadget, called the "Door Monkey". It is working perfectly so far - impossible for Jed to unlatch, but easy for us. A little on the expensive side, but SO worth it.

Jed took a short nap on his birthday, so he was already tired by the time the party started. We had the Dixons, the St. Clairs (minus Jeff who was catching up on work after being sick with a stomach bug), and the Turners over. 7 adults and 7 kids. Jed was overwhelmed by everything that was going on and wouldn't eat anything for dinner. He did open one present, but then refused to open any more...the other kids desperately wanted him to open more presents but he had no intentions of doing so. Then we sang to him and I gave him one of the cupcakes that I had slaved over and which he wouldn't touch. But everyone else had fun, so it wasn't a total loss. :) Jed is still enjoying the balloons 2 weeks later.

Jed as a 2-year-old:

He. Loves. Puzzles. More than anything. He has several 24-piece jigsaw puzzles that he does entirely on his own, and will ask to do puzzles over and over and over again. I can't even describe how much the kid loves puzzles. When my dad and Debbie came over for dinner this week, they brought him a few presents. 3 puzzles and 1 cowboy hat - when he opened the huge box with the hat in it, he was VERY disappointed that it wasn't a 4th puzzle! He dropped it on the ground and said despairingly, "Nooooo! Unner (another) puzzle!" I think the box was so big that he got his hopes up that it was the coolest, awesomest puzzle ever.
He TALKS. All the time, in full sentences. He is extremely creative in his responses to my questions, and surprises me every day with new and unexpected answers. He loves to say silly things on purpose to get us to laugh. His autonomy is becoming more clear as time passes, and he is not afraid to express his opinions - especially when they differ from ours.
He learned a lot of his letters several months ago, but stopped caring in the last couple months and is only interested occasionally. He also used to count to 20 consistently but now is at about a 70% success rate on that - he gets the most confused with the first 4 or 5 numbers (I think because we started saying "3...2...1...blast off!" so he puts them in the wrong order) but is usually fine after that. But with the alphabet, I can't convince him that it doesn't go "A, B, C, D, F, G, H, 9, 10, 11, 12."
He is generally too busy these days to eat much. But he's perfectly average in his weight, albeit on the shorter end, so I guess he's getting the nutrition he needs. Sometimes it feels like he must be running on fumes!
He loves to play pretend, especially with food. "Mama want chicken soup?" he will ask me. When I respond in the affirmative, he says "Okay, I cook it-a you." He makes the most horrifying concoctions of food, like the tuna, eggs, orange juice, and raisins from a couple weeks ago. He followed this up by peering into the pot and commenting, "Hmmm. Now, need some flax." And when he offered me a banana and I asked if I could have peanut butter on it, he said, "Nope, just tuna fish."

Here are some recent pictures: