Two and a Half

In the last week or so I've noticed that Linus has jumped ahead again in his development, which corresponds with his turning two-and-a-half in less than a week.  It is hard to put into words the ways in which he is different, but I do perceive a difference.  The best way I can describe it is to say that he is all about narratives.  He creates them, describes them, and participates in them.  Witnessing them is amazing and magical.

I've been trying to write quotes down whenever I can, but there have been a number of days where I really just needed to video tape him from morning until night.  Here are some cute things he has said:

Linus - Kitties like restaurants.

Me - They do?  Why?

Linus - Because food is good there.

On a recent morning I awoke to find Linus standing next to me at the side of the bed. He put a pretend kitty next to me.  He said it was a white one.  Then he went into the kitchen to give Matthew a black one.  He said his own kitty was blue.  He looked after all three kitties through our breakfast, he had me put a seatbelt on them in the car, they held onto him and he held onto me while we crossed a street, they joined us in the hardware store, and they went grocery shopping with us.  For the trip home he had me buckle them in again and he unbuckled them when we arrived.  After that I heard no more about them.

After a successful trip to the potty he exclaimed, "I'm so proud of me!" and gave me a big hug.

I walked in the door from going solo on an errand. He ran to the door and said, "Welcome to you!"

He said a number of funny things about the bats in the house.  He told Matthew, "They mostly don't eat babies."  At one point he told me he was clapping because he wanted more bats to come up.  He was so into the bats and would say, "Let's see more bats!"

He was playing with his cars and asked, "What street is the grocery store on?"  I said, "Leetsdale."  He said, "Okay, Leetsdale," and went back to playing.

Matthew opened the window over the stove for me. Linus said, "That was very polite of you to help mama, Matthew."

After our drilling into him to listen to when his body needs to go to the bathroom, he applies that to a number of things.  For instance, "My body says feed me more applesauce."

He grabbed the box of tissues from the living room and as he headed off to his room he told me, "I'm taking the tissues to my animals to sneeze in."

He was driving his cars around outside and he said they had a membership and were going to the museum.  They were going to see  a dog statue and a cricket.

His latest thing is that any time he gets hurt in the slightest way, he wants a bandage.  He tells me, "The blood is moving through my body and coming right here," and he points to the sore spot.  I put a bandage on it and about two minutes later he takes the bandage off and says it is all better.

He said the coffee table was a tea table because I had a mug of tea on it.  He also said the bean bag I made for him was a rice bag.  (I stuffed it with rice.)

At breakfast one morning he grabbed the newspaper, opened it up and said, "I looked to see what's in the world."

He loves to pretend cook and has been trying some new pretend recipes.  He pretended to hand me basil and said, "Here's some basil.  It's good on muffins."  He has also made dill muffins.

Just a few days ago I witnessed him play fighting for the first time.  Two of his cars were fighting. I asked if perhaps they could talk it over instead of crashing into each other.  The only response I got was him making the cars crash into each other more.  I think this comes from his seeing two gorillas at the zoo not getting along.

Pictures:  eating a strawberry at the berry farm, squishing cubes of tofu through the garlic press (I let him do that because it looked like fun), and him passed out in the camping chair in the backyard.