Toddler W’s 2 and a half year update 

W turned 2 1/2 a few weeks ago so thought I’d write a quick update even though it is late….

Development

His vocabulary continues to grow every day, he can hold down a good conversation and is very chatty!

He now loves reciting the alphabet (shame he says Z the American way after watching Bob the train videos over and over again on YouTube!) and loves singing ! (Baa baa black sheep/incey wincey/ twinkle twinkle)

He’s picked up a few more Welsh words – some colours and animals.

He has a good memory – I told him we were going on a train last week, he said ‘through the tunnel to see the fish?’ because that’s what we did last time we got a train back in August!

He’s getting more imaginative with his play, which we encourage… we can be sat on the sofa pretending to be on a boat trying to spot all the sea creatures! His toy cars cross deserts and go through tunnels all around our living room!

He’s good at connecting things – he’ll describe things as paw patrol characters because of the colours eg he’ll call a pink car ‘Skye car’ as Skye is pink!

He’s become inquisitive ‘what’s this mamma?’ ‘Where’s this from?’

Behaviour, routine, eating etc

His routine is pretty much the same as it has been for ages – up at 7am, lunchtime nap, bed at 7pm-ish. A few days lately he has dropped his nap but he gets over-tired so we try and make sure he does nap!

He’s generally a good sleeper but occasionally wakes up in the middle of the night, goes back to sleep pretty quickly.

His behaviour is still pretty good but obviously he has the odd tantrum! Last week he didn’t like getting dressed and that became a daily battle. (This week I turned it into a competition – who can get dressed the quickest first!) Access to the iPad (YouTube) is another recent battle so we try and limit his access to every few days.

He’s still pretty good at eating but we seem to eat the same things every week – pasta, pizza, noodles so I’ve tried a few new things e.g. Meatballs (which paw patrol handily eat!), home-made oven chips, snowman mash (mash with carrot and peas face!), shepherds pie…. of these he’ll try a little bit of which is fine with me…. oh and non-spicy quesidillas, chilli and rice which he didn’t seem to like at all but I’ll keep trying him with!

Being a big brother

He’s been the best big brother ever over the last few months! I’ve really tried to involve him in everything so when S is crying I tell him he’s pretending to be a dinosaur, when S is babbling I tell him he’s chatting to W and W always asks ‘what’s he saying now?!’.

First thing every day and when he comes home from the childminder (still goes there 3 days a week) he’ll head straight for S to give him a cwtch and say ‘awww how cute’ (or his new one – ‘how kind’ – random!!)

On the days I have both of them I find W helps me keep S entertained, and he’s good with chores like putting his nappies in the bin etc!

When he first saw one of S’s dirty nappies he said it looked muddy… so now whenever S does a poo, W says he’s ‘done a muddy!!’

Potty training

So the big news since the last update… W is now potty trained! By waiting til he seemed ready (and with help from the childminder) he did really well and took to it quite quickly.

A couple of months on and he even goes for a pee pee on the potty by himself now.

We did have some issues with his ‘number two’s’ during potty training – he’d always been a bit irregular but it got worse and he’d be in pain and only going once a week – I think the potty training confused him a bit. So we improved his diet – swapping toast for weetabix, switching from white to brown bread, giving him one or two Ella’s kitchen fruit smoothies every day, fig rolls as a treat and trying to get him to eat more veg. And now he goes every few days on the ‘big toilet’!

Randomly he’ll keep saying ‘I’m cold’ in the run-up to having a poo!

That’s all I can think of for now – he’s a energetic, fun-loving, chatty, headstrong, clever little pup and I love him to bits! Since the last update you might also want to read about we his lovely week in Bluestone and a day jumping in puddles and finding Gruffalos!