Who's two? This dude!

Roman, today is your second birthday. You just fell asleep for your afternoon nap holding my hand, like you always do, and I'm sleepy today, like most days, because you spend most of the night surfing around the king-sized bed finding me and grasping my hand and pressing your nose into my cheek before sighing and falling back asleep, reassured once more that for the millionth time your mom will be back to teetering on the 1/8" space you leave for her on the bed each night.

You've started full-on slapping people when you don't get what you want. You might have inherited a teensy* bit of OCD, because you'll say, "wash," when you see a bottle of hand sanitizer or a sink, and wait to be squishing that clean stuff all around your hands. And on our walk this morning, you were picking up leaves off the sidewalk, examining them - "Green! [your favorite color] Oooooh!" - then throwing them onto the grass. You love to play toy trains, tuka-tuka-tuka-ing with them all in a row, and you insist on someone building the tracks for you, handing us the pieces you want to use.

You have a belly laugh like no other, and when you want to get my attention you grab my face in your hands, turn my head to face you, and giggle, "mama!" and give me a kiss.

You love Mickey and Santa and your new favorite phrase is, "What does Santa say?" You laugh heartily when someone replies, "Ho, ho, ho!"

If you see Guttie or Weewee (your names for Ani and Reni, respectively) running, you flash a smile and laugh and follow them as quickly as you can. You can jump with both feet off the ground, and have new light-up tennis shoes that you activate by stomping your feet and saying, "Stomp! Stomp! Stomp!"

You have this gloriously wavy mop of light blonde hair, which waves in the wind and sometimes sticks up straight if we haven't brushed it properly the night before. People are always commenting on your hair. And your green-hazel eyes. A little girl at the pool this weekend, visiting from Colombia and speaking only in Spanish, slunk quietly beside you, gently held your hand, and stroked your hair with this look of awe on her face.

You love airplanes. And trucks ("nuk-uh!" you call them, and yell this loud and often, whenever you see any type of a truck.) And school buses (oh, the look on your face when you got up close and personal with the big yellow school bus yesterday when waiting to pick up Anika). And cars. You really, really, really love cars. You ask to go on a walk multiple times per day, and when you walk you point to each car we walk past, naming its color and reaching out to touch the wheels and handles and gas caps. You still get red and green mixed up, and sometimes black and white confused, but so far you've learned most of your colors thanks to the myriad of cars and SUVs in our neighborhood.

You love the playground, and playing monkey on the playground. Here you are a few days ago at the neighborhood park:

You are so so so SO loved.

This girl has always adored you. And you her.

This guy adores you, even though you aren't always nice to each other, and even though you both get jealous of each other (mainly due to attention from mom, or dad, or Anika).

And I will always always always love you, my little monkey. We are all so proud of you and enjoy every day watching you grow.

Happy second birthday, big guy.