The long answer is that I'm not sure if this "adjustment period" is an unattractive helping of afterbirth or part of being in the throws of the terrible two's. Everything about his current personality seems to have a Dr. Jekyll side and a Mr. Hyde side. On the one hand he is a total daddy's boy which really helps in the Mommy Guilt department. He most often wants not a lot to do with me when Kelby's around. But on the other hand, when it comes time for Daddy to leave or do chores or eat or use the little boy's room, there's a tiny explosion of whaling and grinding of teeth--which is left up to me, child to chest or not.
But it's all pretty worth it because he seriously does love Zelie. I don't even think that he registers that she is specifically the reason why he is no longer the center of our universe. He asks "'ere baby sitter go?" just about every other minute even when she's in plain sight. There was a short time, when she first arrived that Max referred to her as "it" (Mommy hold it. Get it down.) but she has finally become a "her" somehow. He likes to think he's in charge and dictate just who gets to hold her and when. I'm telling myself that he's already preparing to be the protective older brother I always wished I had had.
Along with his love for his baby sister, Max is developing in so many ways. His language is constantly evolving and little by little he's losing his cute versions of words. For example, he used to call his blanket a geek. But now he's quite capable of saying blanket. ::tear:: He still runs around with a blanket around his shoulders and depending on the mood is either "Faffer" or "Matman" or, if he's in a vanilla-chocolate swirl type of mood, "Faffer Matman!" He can sing "Tinkle Tar" in it's entirety. Proud mom.
Max is most definitely a parrot. Sometimes he walks around the house (as faffer) singing "Hooooly God. Hoooooly God." At those moments, I inwardly smile and pull a Mary as I quietly ponder them in my heart. Well, as you can imagine, the Mary in me outwardly shuttered when, much to my horror, one day I overheard Max singing in his most reverent of tones, "Hoooooly crap. Hoooooly crap." YIKES! There's a phrase I forgot to quit using!
And he's giant. I'm not exactly sure on specifics. He was 34 pounds at his 2 year for whatever that's worth. (ah yes. The 2nd birthday. Please don't remind me of my shame in failing to blog about it. I'm well aware.) But seriously, he's huge. I've gotten accustomed to changing these itty bitty newborn diapers and whenever he needs to be changed, I feel like I'm changing a middle schooler. HEAVE to get him on the floor. HEAVE to lift his legs and hiney. If I weren't such a pansy, this might be enough to get me to try to potty train him again. Oh right. There's no record of that here either. Well considering it's failure, it's best that there's no record. Let's just say he would sit on that obnoxious Elmo potty for an hour with Bob the Builder on my phone, get a nice round red mark on his tush from the tiny chair, and at the end of it all produced nothing in the urinary or bowelry departamento. But I swear he'll be trained before kindergarten.
And although I don't have a ton of time to think about it, I do miss the Max and me time. This summer we went to toddler time at the YMCA as often as we could. I'd hike his giant 2-year-old self up over my belly at his frequent requests to "holdja" because no matter how hard I tried he just wasn't a big fan of the water. We did make some major strides this summer and I tell myself that we didn't go just so I could get a tan (because tan fat is better than pale fat). He went from only playing in the you-couldn't-get-wet-if-you-tried part of the pool to going down a couple of slides a few times. It's all about baby steps.
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode totally focused on Max. I'm off to be a modern mom now.
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