Two.

Dear Timothy,

At two, you are perhaps the quirkiest kid I've ever encountered. You are fierce in your affections, extreme in your reactions, meticulous in all your endeavors. Almost every day, we catch ourselves saying, "What a funny kid!"

You love to be helpful. I have never seen a two-year-old help more successfully. You are my sous chef in the kitchen, pulling a chair up to the counter so you can stir, peel, or add ingredients. Unloading the dishwasher might be your next favorite task. You carefully sort and stack the bowls, nest the spoons, hand me things to put away. Your daddy says he has this coming to him. He was (and still is) very helpful and extremely thorough. Maybe you'll be an engineer. It doesn't stretch the imagination.

You are very mechanical, and you love to put together train tracks and build lego towers. But you enjoy just as much knocking them down. You are quite diligent about it. There is never one stone left on another. One minute, you are so committed to order, the next you are kidzilla. I asked your daddy the other day what it was in the soul of the boy that says, "Destroy!" He told me it's the other side of the "Build!" coin. Yin and Yang, I guess. Dr. Jekkyl and Mr. Tim.

Speaking of, you are getting to be quite the rascal. I see that mischievous grin shoot across that little chubby face of yours, and I know I'm in for it. Most of the time, you seem to break the rules simply for the thrill of it. You have started to hit your older sister, but it rarely seems to be motivated by anger. The look on your face is pure mischief, a satisfaction in doing the very thing we've told you not to do.  As I said, we're in for it.

Despite your occasional brutality, you are most often sweet to your sisters, especially the little one.  We were almost certain that you would disapprove of her presence in our family, but you adored her from the time we brought her home.  There are moments in the day, most notably after naptime, that you assert that you are the baby and it is you that should be held, but most often you giggle and say, "Juh!"("Genevieve!")

 
Did I mention that you really don't talk?  It's kind of strange, really.  You make lots of noises, and I know you are trying to say words, but all you get are really the first sounds.  Your pediatrician isn't too concerned; he seems to think that if your older sister talked less you would probably talk more.  He said to expect an explosion of language in the next three months or so.  It's really almost hard for me to imagine a world in which you talk.  You communicate pretty darn well by pointing, grunting, and/or taking my hand and using it to accomplish whatever it is you wanted (on your birthday you were moving my arm toward the iPhone in an effort to make me grab it for you).  I told your daddy the other day that your muteness is part of your cuteness.  He just rolled his eyes.

 

You are such a delight, Tim-Tim.  It has been such fun to discover your personality, to get to know you over the past year.  I love all of the little quirks that make you unique.  You drive me crazy with your constant busyness, your penchant for taking things apart, your tendency to scream when you don't get your way.  But I love you just the same and I always will.

Happy Birthday, little man.

Mama