From The Onofrio Nest: My Little Bubba Turns 2

This darling boy turned two on February 26. I know I say this almost every post, but seriously, where is the time going? Two years sounds like such a short time for an adult. I would like to think that I have grown as an individual in the last two years, but compared to the way a small child learns and grows in two years I've basically just sat on my butt since Tommy was born. Even in just the past year he has learned so many exciting things!

At two years old Tommy:

-Runs everywhere! He went almost straight from learning to walk to learning to run and hasn't slowed down for a second since. He also climbs EVERYTHING and is getting to be very agile. I am not exaggerating when I say chasing this boy every day is physically exhausting. Tommy always wants to make his own tracks and I can hardly keep up!

-Loves animals. He especially loves dogs and sometimes he will follow someone with a dog around the park for so long that I feel really awkward like he and I are a couple of stalkers/unwelcome house guests .

-Loves dinosaurs. He puts his hands up like claws and roars pretending to be one. It is seriously so stinking cute! Grammie made him a darling monster/dinosaur hoody for his birthday and I could not get him to hold still long enough for a photo-he was too busy running around pretending to be a dinosaur!

-Loves trucks and vehicles. There is a school bus that stops in front of our house during the week and when he hears it Tommy always runs up to take a look at it out the window. He also excitedly points vehicles/diggers out driving around town.

-Loves reading. He has an impressively long attention span for listening to books that most two year olds would probably get bored with due to the length of text per page.

-Likes Curious George and Eddy and the Bear (a random British cartoon we were gifted a DVD of). I don't let him watch a whole lot of TV, and he won't sit through a whole Disney movie, but he would gladly watch episode after episode of these two shows given the chance.

-Knows dozens of words and is starting to put them together into word parings. At his 2 year old well child check-up the pediatrician asked me how many words he knew. I realized that he knows more than I can easily list and says new words nearly every day. The first words we can remember hearing him pair: "Ball. Put." while motioning to his plate. He wanted another meatball at dinner a couple months ago!

-Wants to be exactly like his big brother. If Miles does something, Tommy immediately mimics whatever the behavior is. As you can imagine this has its benefits and its draw backs depending on what Miles is doing...

-Is curious as can be and loves to get into his share of mischief as a result. I was letting Miles play on my phone while I made dinner a couple of weeks ago and he caught Tommy doing this:

As you can imagine there was a giant pile of tissues and an empty box by the time I came downstairs.

-Is usually very sweet but is developing a little two year old's temper that he usually expresses with a pteradactyl-like shriek. He has known how to say the word "No" for a lot longer than "Yes" (which he adorably says as "Yeah")

Here are the birthday festivities:

Donuts on his birthday since he had to wait for the weekend for the party.

Waiting for his birthday dinner

The party guests: Aunt Cami, Uncle Sean, Grandpa, Grandma (Aunt Amy, Cousins Eli and Micah were there too)

Super cute big brother. He did struggle a little with having all the attention on Tommy, but after a little talk from Dad was a really good big brother and let Tommy be front and center for the evening.