Evan at 32 months

Our baby boy is 32 months old today. Last week, I shared about how he is occasionally a stinker and always hilarious. Today, I expound more on the awesomeness of my sweet, smart boy.

(Tiny housekeeping note: I found a draft of a post I'd written about Evan's second birthday. Even though it was quite long and seemed virtually finished, I didn't publish it. It was written in mid-July 2011 when Lauren was not quite a month old, so I'll chalk it up to newborn mama delirium. I added some photos and video and dated it 7/13/2011. You can find it in our archives here.)

As I sit down to write this, Evan is taking his midday nap. God bless that sweet boy. He has taken that nap every single day for me since his sister's birth. He does protest it mildly. Indeed part of nap routine is me telling him, as I clean up after lunch, that it's almost time for his nap. Sometimes he'll run from me. Other times, like today, he'll say something like, "No, I don't wanna nap. I play basketball!" and then shoot a few hoops. But I scoop him up, change his diaper, grab his sleeping friends and sit down with him in the rocker--all without much protest. And then he'll snuggle up to me while I sing him a couple songs. I put him in his crib, snuggle him under his blanket and then say, "I love you. Have a good nap, Evan." Occasionally, he will yell from behind the closed door for a few minutes, something like, "Pwease, Mom! I wanna get down!" Or he'll sing "Jingle Bells" very loudly. But almost always, by the five-minute mark, he is quietly sleeping. I consider this a sweet gift every day.

Evan is also learning to be a sweet big brother. Like the rest of us, he can't be around Lauren for very long without planting a kiss on her lovely cheeks or giving her a hug. Sometimes the hug is more of a tackle squeeze, but he's doing better every day about being gentler with her.

Evan is very concerned when Lauren's upset. Last week, I had to take her to the doctor. She was got upset when the nurse took her underarm temperature. Lauren was on the baby scale at the time and Evan was practically crawling up me, saying, "Oh no, what happen Waurnen? Waurnen okay?" When we got to the exam room to wait for the doctor, I sat Evan up on the table next to a now-happy Lauren and he noticed she still had a tear in her eyelashes. He pointed at it and said, "Oh no, Waurnen crying? Waurnen okay?" I wiped the tear away, and his face broke into a sweet smile. Just a few days later, Lauren was upset in the car and Evan started singing a song, most of which was gibberish to me, except for one line he kept repeating: "It's okay Waurnen!" This kind of stuff my mama heart can hardly take, it's so sweet.

Evan is also charming us with his talking lately. He's still harder to understand than Tobin was at this age, but he's speaking more clearly and confidently every day. I love how he'll come up to me with his little brow furrowed as if he's about to make a very important statement. This morning I was nursing Lauren in the rocker in the boys' room with a clear view down the hall of them shooting hoops. Ev came up to me and said very deliberately and proudly, "Watch, Mom. I can shoot!" And then he sunk a sweet jump shot. Then he came back in and said, "Watch, Mom. I can jump!" And then he jumped around the room for a minute or two.

Evan is also counting well. He frequently counts our nine front steps as we ascend: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 2, 3, 5!" But he's especially loving learning his letters lately.

Recently, I sat down with him and our refrigerator magnet letters to see which ones he could identify. I picked up the H and said "H, hat!" He looked at me, shook his head dismissively, and said, "No 'H, hat,' Mama. 'H, Hippo!'" He proceeded to identify many more letters than I thought he could, and he had a word association for each one. After most identifications, he would congratulate himself by saying, "Grapes!" (Presumably, "Great!") More and more, he's identifying letters in random places--like pointing out the X's and O's on a playground tic-tac-toe game. Last night, he took a pastry cutter out of a kitchen drawer, turned it sideways and declared, "D, Daddy!" And I was blown away the other day, when he wrote a T. He proudly proclaimed, "I draw T, Tobin. T, Turtle!" I immediately sent him in the other room to show it off to Matt and Tobin. "Grapes!" all around!

And Evan continues to love music. There's just an extra special sparkle in his eye when he hears it. And like his brother did around this age, Evan's singin' with the "gui-tar." Although more and more, Evan is correctly calling the instrument his "uke."