Cohen: 2 years, 2 months

Maybe it's just in comparison to the baby in the house, but Cohen seems to have grown up so fast lately. He's transitioned to using  names like Mommy, Daddy, Gramma, Nika, Ryan (still RyRy sometimes), etc. instead of Mama, Dada, etc. He knows all of his colors and can sing the ABCs along with a few other songs. He shows more interest in coloring and drawing shapes and also has a new interest in puzzles.

There are some toys he plays with, like setting up blocks, farm animals, and railroad trains, but he's much more likely to want to run around, race, wrestle, shoot hoops, push his lawnmower or rolling noisy toy around or play Duck Duck Goose. 

Cohen has become the instigator of many of the incidents between him and Ryan and we can no longer assume he is the innocent party. He can be sweet and want to help with things like setting the table. He has long mastered using baby utensils and now uses a regular adult spoon to eat his "geen yogurt" or "pink yogurt" in the morning (He'll eat a whole container of Key Lime or Strawberry flavor and still ask for whatever anyone else is having.) He's usually pretty hungry in the morning because he can be picky on the main dish for supper, although we have no trouble getting him to eat his vegetables. He still uses a kid-size fork but has also moved on to drinking out of a cup instead of a sippy when at the table. We also put the highchair away and he can climb up into his own booster seat. It's nice that he is also able to sit on his knees and not require a highchair when we go places like church or other people's houses to eat. He's experimented going on the little potty with a few successes, but we're not pushing potty training yet.

Cohen is very curious, asking what you're doing or what something is for. We can also see some reasoning skills, like when Avonlea sat at the table with us, he told us "Ah-ben-wee not old enough to eat suppah."  My mom has been working with him on using "I" instead of "me" and if we catch him saying it wrong, we just say "How do you say that?" and he corrects himself. He likes to read books sitting on our laps in bed and likes to sing lullabies before going to sleep. He has a funny giggle that we love to see come out and if he is scowling at us, we can usually get him to smile to break it.  Once in a while he'll throw a tantrum about the strangest things, but I know we haven't entered full-blown terrible twos yet.  Right now we just enjoy seeing him discover new things, grow his vocabulary and show his hammy little personality!