Oliver Update: 2 and a Half Years

At two and a half, Oliver can still be challenging - he's still a toddler - but he generally seems happier.  He's not teething, at least not for the time-being (four molars to go yet) and he's adjusted to having a little brother and being home with a nanny during the week.  If anything is distressing to him, it is that he doesn't understand weekdays and weekends and it must seem random to him that one day he wakes up and mommy and daddy go to work and Ashley comes and then he suddenly doesn't get to see Ashley and vice versa. 

Oliver loves his little brother, Soren.  Yup, I'm purposefully getting that in writing just in case he someday takes after his first-born parents and complains that his little brother is annoying, dorky, an embarrassment, or any combination thereof.  But at this innocent stage in his life, he likes to give Soren hugs and kisses and is respectful of his limitations as a playmate.  Okay, sometimes he snatches toys from Soren's chubby little hands and yells, "That's mine!" (even when it's not) but most of the time he'll bring Soren toys to play with.  Oliver is very attentive of Soren's needs and points out, just in case I hadn't myself noticed, that Soren has woken up, is crying, has spit up, needs his pacifier or is doing tummy time.  The funniest is when he projects his own feelings on Soren tells me what his non-verbal brother is thinking, such as that he misses Daddy or wants to play outside. 

Telling me what Soren is up to is just one part of Oliver's general routine of narrating everything he's doing or what's going on around him.  He chatters up a storm!  To put it in perspective, Chris says Oliver talks as much as his mom.  But don't all toddlers talk incessantly?

The only reason he doesn't talk more is that we think he can't yet talk as fast as he can think.  His pronunciation can still make it difficult sometimes for those who don't spend much time around him to understand him.  There have been times when I've looked at the nanny hoping that she had a translation. 

But you can hear those wheels of language development turning.  He's figured out verb conjugations, but hasn't quite gotten a hang of all of the exceptions to the rules, like saying, "The bird flied away." instead of "The bird flew away."  And he's trying to use logic to figure out new words. He and Chris went over to the park and watched some kids playing hockey.  When Chris asked Oliver what they were doing, he replied, "They're hockeying."  Or he'll say, "That dog is 'woofing' at me."

Oliver surprises us every day with the words he knows.  Some of them we just wonder where he learned, like when he announced to us that he wanted to go to a car wash.  We finally asked the nanny and sure enough, she had gotten her car washed the week before.  Or he'll pick up random phrases from books, but if we don't make the connection to the story, it's impossible to figure out what he's talking about.  His latest phrase is, "I need sumpin." (Translation, "I need something.")  We'd ask him repeatedly what he needed and offered up suggestions.  Then Chris was reading him an often-requested book about a boy getting a new baby brother and when he got to the part about the mom explaining that babies cry when they need something and then she rocked the baby and he settled down, it dawned on us that maybe that was Oliver's way of saying that he need to be hugged or cuddled too. 

Oliver is developing socially too.  We can tell there's a core group of people he always thinking about: his family, the little girl who lives next door, Ashley and her husband Matt, his friends Elsa and Noelle, and Noelle's mom, Dawn.  It used to be that he wanted to play with the girl next door because he just wanted to play with her toys, but he's matured to enjoying her companionship when they're running around outside together. 

While Oliver has a small group of family and friends he feels comfortable around, he's still socially cautious.  I've written before how he's not likely to immediately climb onto a play structure at the park if there are tons of kids on it.  He tends to hang back at first, as if he's figuring out how to read the scene and where he fits in with the group. 

Assessments were conducted on all the kids in Oliver's ECFE class and when the teacher noted that he didn't really play beside others or with others, but rather watched other children and played by himself, my first reaction was to need reassurance that these weren't signs that he's going to be a loner.  Not the slightest, she said.  He was happy and laughed a lot during the class and enjoys being around other children.

And I see this when he's with that group of kids and their parents he feels comfortable with.  It was adorable to watch him play with his friend Flora at the park.  They happily and quietly played in the sand and conducted their own conversation without any meddling from us parents.  Then the playground bully stole Flora's bucket and dumped sand on her head.  While Flora and the other girl tussled over the bucket, Oliver quietly picked up his bucket and shovel and moved away from the bully's orbit and continued to play.  So, yes, he's social in his own way, but clearly not confrontational. 



Oliver continues to have a variety of interests.  He still loves play dough, painting, drawing, watching YouTube videos of any sort of vehicles or music videos of such classics as "The Wheels on the Bus," books, riding his tricycle, playing in the sand with his buckets and shovels, playing in his rice box, kicking and throwing balls, and playing with his "choo choos," cars, trucks and puzzles.   

He still loves to draw, but his scribbles are actually starting to look like identifiable objects.  Not surprisingly, he likes to draw cars.  And even though he has tons of books, he seems to have them all memorized. You can stop reading a book and he can tell you the rest of the plot line.

Since we're going back to Philadelphia to see family for Easter, we sent Oliver in for a haircut.  Three's a charm, because other than some tears when he realized we were going to make him sit in that really high up chair, he sat mostly still and quietly for a haircut.  And each time he emerges from the hairdresser, he looks more and more grown up.  My little boy is getting older before my eyes.