Justice's 2nd Birthday - WHAT?!?

Dear Justice,

This morning as we sat down to breakfast, I recalled that two years ago at about that same time, your daddy and I were getting in the car to head to the hospital to welcome you into the world. My how time flies.

You opened your first present this morning - a soccer ball. You proceeded to eat breakfast while holding fast to it and repeating over and over again, "My soc cer ball." After breakfast you kicked it around the house saying, "kick it, kick it, kick it." Yes, you love giving directions, even to yourself.

Last night and this morning I tried to teach you how to hold up two fingers and say, "I'm this many." The best I get is one finger or you hold up your entire hand and say, "Peace Mommy." We'll work on that.

Speaking of numbers, you now how to count to 10 but refuse to start with the number one. You tend to begin with 2 and if left to your own devices will only count to three repeatedly - "two, fwee, two, fwee, two, fwee." You have recently gone beyond "fwee" without prompting but every once in a while you revert back to your 23 month old ways - HA!

You have begun singing on your own in the past couple of months. When we ask you what you'd like to sing, your response tends to be "Baa Baa." You will let us sing with you most of the time but sometimes you NEED to sing a solo. At those times, Baa Baa Black Sheep and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star tend to merge into the same song. You also enjoy a good rendition of the ABC song but again, if it is necessary for you to sing a solo, you tend to only make it to P and that's with a whole lot of liberty taken on the first half of the alphabet anyway.

With Easter just being last week, I find it necessary to include the fact that you dyed easter eggs this year for the first time. You didn't quite get their fragility but loved dunking them in the colored water. When all of the eggs were dyed you simply wanted to keep going. You also loved the egg hunts. You participated in about 4 or 5. Some with the real eggs we dyed and a few with plastic eggs. When you discovered, however, that there was candy in the plastic ones, the easter egg hunts came to a quick stop and turned into a picnic. That happened last year too - if I recall. All the other kids were quickly collecting their spoils and you were happy enough just to sit down and enjoy the animal crackers.

I have loved watching you grow up. You astound me daily with your ability to speak in full sentences and communicate your wants. Mostly those come out as whines but whatever. You're learning. You have been such a fun part of life. I used to think that college was the best time of my life, then I thought it was marriage but not anymore. I may talk to adults now about having to go potty and tell stupid jokes that I learned from Elmo's World but YOU are the best time of my life now - even when you make me angry or frustrated because you continue to ask the same question about 100 times even though the answer continues to be the same. Daddy is still probably driving the car even though you just asked a second ago, "Wha's he doin?" and will ask the same question in just a second. Perhaps this is your version of why. I'm okay with that but I'm wondering if we could work on spacing them out a bit more. Maybe you could ask every other second from now on? I'd appreciate that.

Little boy who's not so little anymore, you are my joy. I love you more than I thought it possible to love a human. Hopefully someday there will be more little Mikles that you will get to share this life with but for right now, you are my delight and I completely enjoy it being just the three of us.

Love you baby boy,
Mommy