Oh our sweet, rambunctious, wild, happy, energetic little Natey-Nate. He has started to become such the character. His personality just shines through in everything he does. He is a brave, stubborn, shy, funny little toddler who’s growing up into a young boy right before our eyes! Some days it’s hard to believe that on his next birthday he’ll be turning three years old! I swear some times when I look at him I can still see the teeny, tiny baby we brought home from the hospital and then there’s day like yesterday when he goes pee on the potty and I’m left thinking to myself “where the heck did my infant go?!” He’s becoming more and more independent each and every day; and as much as I love watching that occur, there are moments that I long for the days when he needed me for literally everything. He’s able to get his own snacks now (as long as they’re within reach), he can keep himself entertained for hours playing with his cars or Paw Patrol toys, we’ve started potty training the past couple of days so pretty soon he won’t even need help with that! It’s incredible to look back on the past two and a half years and see just how much he’s grown up in such a short time frame. Here’s a little snippet of the boy he’s turning into…

Lover of Paw Patrol and I mean LOVER! He knows all their names, he calls actual police cars and fire trucks Chase and Marshall, when he’s playing with his Paw Patrol toys; he actually mimics the show itself by lining up each dog and having Ryder stand in front of them then he calls out which ones are needed. It’s adorable!

Still hates getting his hair washed. He absolutely loves having baths and would spend hours in the tub if we let him but he does not enjoy getting his hair washed. He still screams and thrashes around while we’re trying to wash out the shampoo.

Nate is such a good sharer for being two years old. He’s always giving toys to us or his little friends when they come over. I’ve never once seen him take something that another kid was playing with. He always waits his turn and if someone wants what he has, he always gives it up without much protest.

He hates seeing people cry. Whether it’s another child in real life or someone on T.V., Nate does not like to see that happen. Typically, it ends with him starting to cry as well because he’s so upset by it. He is definitely a gentle soul at heart.

Finally he’s becoming a less picky eater! Hurray! I mean, rarely will he eat 100% of what we feed him but he is getting much better and has actually started to try new things first before deciding he doesn’t like something. This is a huge win for us because I swear he was living off of cheese strings and yogurt at one point!

Nate is on his way (very slowly) to becoming potty trained. I still don’t think he’s 100% ready at this point but we’re slowly introducing the idea of going to the bathroom on the potty. He’s peed in the potty twice in the past two days so at this point we’re mostly just aiming to get him to go once or twice a day in it. He still won’t tell us when he’s has to go and he can’t be trusted to run around the house naked so we’re just taking it day by day and whenever it happens, it’ll happen. But so far, I’m impressed with him!

He has been so sweet with my growing belly and loves to give his baby brother hugs and kisses. He’s always running up to me and lifting my shirt up over my stomach and planting a big kiss onto my belly button. He also will pat my tummy and say “hi baby” or if prompted “hi baby bradder” (brother). It just melts my heart every time.

Nate is still obsessed with trucks, trains, cars and planes. I don’t know what it is about little boys and modes of transportation but I swear every little boy I know goes crazy for them! He loves pointing out cars on the high way when we’re driving somewhere. “There’s a car! There’s another car! And another one! And another one! And another one!” and so on and so on and so on! He could spent an hour pointing out each and every car or truck that we drive by and if a train passes us on the tracks, you’ll definitely know ALL about it!

He’s starting to talk and verbalize more now. I know he’s still behind in his vocabulary but he’s certainly come a long way in the last few months. There are days when he just babbles and speaks incoherently all day long and then he’ll have days where he copies almost everything Kurt or I are saying. He still refuses to call himself by his name and instead refers to himself in pictures and in person as “baby” but he knows so much more than he lets on. He can point to specific colours, he knows all the farm animals and the noises they makes, he’s starting to call people by their names. So we’re making progress and sure enough we’ll get there.

We started him up in gymnastics back in January and it’s so awesome to see the progress he’s made. We didn’t realize this until gymnastics started, but he had no clue how to jump! Lol his feet would never actually leave the ground. We’ve been practicing with him and he’s improved tremendously. He’s also one of the younger kids in the class so seeing him walk across the balance beam and pull himself up on the bars is really cool to watch. Plus it helps him burn off some of that wild, crazy, energy he’s got!

Ugh! My heart hurts just thinking about how much I love this little boy of ours! He has to be my favourite person in the whole, entire, world and to think he’s ours still boggles my mind some days!

I hope he never gets too old or “too cool” to take pictures with me!

^^^Whelp! He’s growing up so fast! That ‘big boy’ bed has now been moved up into his ‘Big Boy’ bedroom. I kinda, sorta, really miss being roomies with him even though he’s only upstairs, some nights it feels like he’s miles away.

^^^ By far one of my favourite pictures ever! Daddy, Nate, and Stella caught taking a nap together when I came home from work the other week! Makes my heart burst!!