By two years old your toddler…

…should be able to:

– take off an article of clothing – CHECK – he can fully undress himself (with a bit of help)

-“feed” a doll – CHECK – I can’t count how many Cheerios he’s tried to feed to his Little People horse

– build a tower of 4 cubes – CHECK – months ago he was building towers of 8 or 9 cubes

– identify 2 items in a picture by pointing (by 23.5 months) – CHECK – for a long time now, maybe before 18 months he can find a cat, dog, moon, mouse, balloon, apple, flower, cow, turtle, etc in his books, even if it is a different book (and thus a different illustration)

…will probably be able to:

– build a tower of 6 cubes – CHECK – (see above)

– throw a ball overhand – CHECK – and he’s pretty accurate too!

– speak and be understood half the time – UM… not sure if I’d go with “half the time”, but he speaks NON STOP and we can understand a lot of what he’s saying.  I don’t know if YOU’d understand it, but we often can.

– identify 1 item in a picture by naming – CHECK – all those things I listed before he can identify by naming

– identify 4 items in a picture by pointing – CHECK – (see above)

 …may possibly be able to:

– jump up – CHECK – he started about a week or so ago, it’s too cute!

– put on an article of clothing (by 23.5 months) – CHECK – he can put on his hat, and can put his socks onto his hands.  I honestly haven’t checked if he can put on a shirt or pants…maybe I’ll try that tonight

 …may even be able to:

– draw a vertical line in imitation – no idea.  But after his teachers gave the kids 3 colored circles and a rectangle, and explained about traffic lights, Jakob was the only one to put the 3 colors on it, in the right spots (centered vertically), and in order.  Each teacher thought the other had helped him, because his looks like the “demo” traffic light.  🙂  [insert proud artsy mama glow here]

– build a tower of 8 cubes – CHECK (see above)

– carry on a conversation of 2 or 3 sentences – nope

 

I don’t know what to say about Jakob at 2 years old without gushing.  He’s nearly perfect.  We’ve never had to punish him or give him a “time out”.  He is the best big brother EVER (so far).  He is adorable, sweet, kind, loving, playful and funny as all get-out.  The kid will do anything to get a laugh, even if he’s the only one who finds it funny.  Am I biased as his mom if I say he’s a pretty good-looking boy?  Ok, so he needs to learn to share a little more, and I’d rather if he obeyed “stop” better so I could stop being afraid he’d go running off into the street or a parking lot.  He’s still not 100% on the stairs.  He still prefers Daddy to Mommy (gotta love his raised hand and quizzical eyebrow when looking around and asking “Dada, wheyou?  Wheyou?”  But who cares? 

Jakob is an awesome kid.  He’s so cool that I can’t wait to become his friend.  He makes everything better, and we love him to pieces.  Happy birthday Jakob.