It should be a national holiday

Today Noah had a doughnut for breakfast. Because it is his second birthday! By the time I get home to post this, he will also have had a party at his daycare (cake provided by me, and they took our camera to take pictures in our absence *sniffle*) and this coming weekend he will have a family party. [edit: the pictures are horrible. see below.]

Noah is starting to like this “biffda” thing, what with the playgroup party on the weekend, including cookies with sprinkles on them, the Thomas the Tank Engine book, playdough, Mr. Potato Head, the Melissa & Doug pizza set, and various other loot. 

His present from us was supposed to be his train set, but he’s had that for months. So we got him a drum – handcrafted, third world labour supporting, genuine, drum. He likes it a lot. He’s actually pretty good at finding the beat.

He also likes horses (had his first pony ride at montessori yesterday, which I missed, obviously *sniffle*), his friends, and his teachers. He likes the blocks, the drawing, and lunch.

He does NOT, however, like Suk-ooooool, as he says several times a day to any adult who might possibly intervene on this Sukool thing and might make me, his Ommy, stay hooooMUH, which is where he likes to be. With his Ommy and his Daddeeeee. As he says. Several times a day. He likes nurses. He likes beans. He does not like clothing. He does not like raw tomatoes. He does not like people to put their heads on his pillow.

For Noah, at age two, is nothing if not a toddler who knows his own preferences.  And what’s his. Today we were flipping through pictures so he could take some to sukool for the montessori birthday traditional look at pictures and walk around the room thing, and he noticed pictures of his Ommy and Daddeeee holding some strange little mutant thing swaddled in blankets. He pointed to Carl and said “Dada,” and he pointed at me and said “Ommy” and then he frowned.  He pointed to the mutant and I said on cue, “That’s baby Noah.” “NO!” he said. Then he pointed at me, “MINE!” he said. [Pic is Noah at school and the cake (I made the flag as well!)]

God knows what he will say when he comes across the Emily album.

We are heartily engaged in giving choices to provide a full range of personal expression, of course. They go like this:

[Me, no makeup no coffee; Noah, post-doughnut. The funny smile is because he's learning to smile for the camera, which is - cute and a little weird. The shot above in the kitchen he was actually laughing.] “Would you like your spiderman pyjamas, or the blue pyjamas?”
“No!”
“Would you like daddy to change your bum, or mommy to change your bum?”
“No diaper!”
“Would you like me to put milk in the green cup or the blue cup?”
“I’LL do it.” (Noah uses “I” for “I’ll do it” and “I’ll stir” but third person the rest of the time. Dunno why.)

Noah’s locus of rebellion so far is mostly me. If Carl asks him to do something, he does it. If I ask him to, he runs away, slams the door, comes back, shouts, and then stomps off again.  He locked himself in the bathroom yesterday. I said “unlock the door!” and he laughed and said no. I said “Daddy says unlock the door!” and HE DID. 

Now I just need to know if it matters whether Carl is physically home or not when I say these things.

Noah also has a wicked sense of humour. He makes tons of jokes. Like putting bowls on his head and proclaiming them hats, or telling me to put his shoes on his elbow. “Shoe, nelbow!”  He has some running joke with the cat that I don’t quite get but it involves showing the cat a train and then saying something and laughing. 

Ah Noah, you are the best, best, best.

Added later (before posting): the school/cake picture above is bad enough, but in the set there was the one below. This picture is almost enough to make me quit my job, right now.  I’m not even joking about it. I’ll think about it over the weekend.

~~~

Edited to add: the rest of the day I would like to record too. Carl picked Noah up early, around 3:30, and I took off at 4, and we met at Chapters to buy Noah a birthday book (this is a tradition, now; last year was Snuggle Puppy and this year was Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus! We sign them and then my mild desire is that Noah will take that set of really good age-appropriate books that first we and later he chose off with him to share with his kids, some day, the birthday set. Anyways. :)).  Noah was giddy and happy. Then we had dinner at Mr. Greek, and drove home, and Noah and I had our hour of bedtime cuddles and talks and nursing and he slept.