Russell

Russell now, 2 1/2 yrs









Russell, October of last year

Russell is so fun these days. He makes me a little nuts—he wouldn’t be a toddler if he didn’t. But overall he is a joy. I love that he is starting to communicate so much better and I can actually understand a lot of what he says. Today I offered him a can of tuna an he looked at me like I was nuts and said, “That’s Rosco’s food!” I put the tuna juice in Rosco’s food sometimes, so I guess he thought it was crazy that I would offer the tuna to him. (Anna and I are the tuna-eaters in the family.)

I finally have a fellow tomato-eater in the family thanks to Russell. Yeah! We have a special bond because of it. He loves them so much, he’ll eat the grape or cherry tomatoes like candy. Mmmm.

Here are some random things about Russell:

He calls elbows “elmos.” It’s just cute.

He’s on again off again being potty trained. He does great in his “undies” about 80% of the time. We’ve only ventured outside the house without a diaper a couple of times and he’s done pretty well.

If he’s in a diaper and you ask him if he’s poopy and he doesn’t want to stop, he’ll just say, “No, I tooted.” If you insist that he’s poopy, he gets agitated and yells, “NO! I tooted!!”

He has a great two-year old sense of humor. The other day we were looking for clean undies in a laundry basket. He kept grabbing an item of clothing and shouting, “Here it is!” I’d give him a funny look and say, “That’s a sock!” He’d just die laughing and grab something else.

When he doesn’t want to do what you say he pretends he can’t understand you. You’d think I was speaking a foreign language. He was outside with no shoes the other day and I kept telling him to come inside and get his shoes on. He’d just look at me with a frown and say, “What?” So, silly me, I’d repeat myself and he’d say, “What? Shoes?” He has it down so well that he’ll continue pretending he doesn’t understand what I’m saying while beginning to walk backwards toward his tricycle.

He loves playing with his sisters! He’s finally getting old enough that they’ll let him play with them. If they take the time to teach him how to play nicely he does rather well. Tonight since Evie was sick, he and Anna had a great time chasing each other around the house and wrestling. They had so much fun that Anna insisted that he should sleep with her in her bed tonight. I let him lie in there with her for a little while before putting him in his own bed.

Every nap time and bed time we have to do “the ritual.” It’s Twinkle Twinkle Little Star followed by Popcorn Popping and then say a prayer. If I try to cheat and speed up the songs a bit, he frowns and waves his hands saying, “Too fast!”

He’s pretty good with his baby sister. He loves her when she first wakes up. He’ll try to make her laugh or play peek-a-boo with her. Other times he’s not so friendly and tries to sit on her or push her over. She’s getting to be pretty tough, though. I can already tell she’s going to completely adore her big brother no matter what he does to her.

He still loves his blanky. It’s my old pink blanket from when I was a baby. He LOVES it. I can get him to help me put it in the washer, but I have a hard time getting it into the dryer without him taking off with it. There have been a few times when he’s just had a slightly damp blanky because he’s just not willing to wait and I’m not willing to listen to him cry while it’s in the dryer.

He’s a great helper in the kitchen. He loves to help me bake. He really wants to help me cook on the stovetop too, so I’m constantly tell him, “too hot.” We’ve started a tradition of baking muffins each Monday for breakfast. It’s Muffin Monday! The kids help and most days it a good time. Now anytime I’m getting ready to bake anything Russell says, “Muffins!” and pulls up a chair to help. He does pretty well—I just have to make sure I put away each ingredient when I’m done with it or I’m liable to end up with more salt or baking powder than I bargained for.

Evie and Anna have become quite adept at distracting him when they don’t want him to play with them. They’ll say “Go find Mommy,” or “Want to watch Elmo?” I think he’s picking up on their trickiness, though, because now whenever I catch him about to do something naughty (i.e. pick a green tomato, put on mommy’s lip gloss, pull a chair to the sink to play in the water) he’ll tell me, “Mommy, go,” and will point to the door. Sometimes he’ll say, “Mommy, go get Evie and Anna.” The other day he even said, “Mommy, go the computer!” Tricky tricky!