My Monkey Turns 2!

Two years ago today, this little dude showed up in our life:

And what a joy he has been!   Two years later, he keeps me busy.  I don’t post a lot of personal family stuff on here, but since today is special I figured I’d let you in on the awesomeness of my little birthday boy.

• He LOVES to play outside, so whenever you mention the words “bye bye” or “outside” he runs to bring you his shoes and drops them at your feet, then runs to the closet where we keep his jacket.  Even if it’s like 100 degrees outside.  If we don’t mention those words, well he’ll let us know when he’s ready to play outside.  He’ll bring you his shoes.  If you don’t get the clue, he’ll bring you YOUR shoes.  And if you still don’t get the clue/ are ignoring his obvious clues, he’ll bring you another pair of your shoes, just in case he brought you the wrong ones.  One time he brought me two pairs of his shoes, a pair of my flip-flops, my tennis shoes, and my dress shoes before I finally gave in.
• He loves to collect leaves and sticks.  Sometimes he hands them to me proudly, and before our outdoor adventures are over, I have a little bouquet.
• Every time he comes across a sewer man-hole cover he plops down.  It’s like it’s his own little seat or something.  And if it just rained recently, well then, he's in heaven.  He won't sit on it, but he'll splash around in the water resting on the cover for a while.  Who knew rusty water could be so much fun?!
• He loves figuring out how things work.  If you give him a new toy he has to figure out how it works before he starts to play with it.  We call him our little engineer.
• He won’t let me fall asleep while we’re watching his fave show, Word World together.  If I start to fall asleep he’ll put his weight on me and make a loud noise and the first thing I see when I startle awake is a huge grin and wide eyes right up in my face.
• Oh, and speaking of TV, I think he’s addicted.  We’ve had to hide the remote because he would turn on the TV himself and plop himself in front of the TV and watch whatever happened to be on.  We now keep the remote high on a bookshelf.  When he wants to watch TV he goes over to the bookshelf, and signs “please”.  I’m afraid to teach him the sign language for TV, so we’ll just stick with this polite phrase for now because who knows what will happen if he knows how to ask for TV any time he wants….
• He has a ridiculous number of books, but it’s the same two he wants to read EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
• He loves to color so much that after I showed him the sign for it twice, he had it down.  It's the fastest sign he's ever mastered. 
• He sleeps in a nest of receiving blankets.  He cuddles with one, and the rest just form a little cocoon that he nestles into.  Anytime I can’t find his socks, I just look through the nest. I’m bound to find a few pairs in there.
• The Hubster and I have been teaching him to clean up his toys before bed.  He does this fairly well some nights.  Most nights though, he realizes he’d rather just go to bed than clean, so after picking up one or two things he’ll just toddle off to his bedroom and wait for us to put him in bed. 
• When he waves bye-bye he waves backwards, like he’s waving at himself.  I guess that’s the way he sees it, so it makes sense.  And then after the wave, it’s accompanied by him proudly blowing a kiss.

Happy birthday my little buddy! 

Mommy loves you so much and is so proud of you!