Nathan is 28 Months Old!

At 28 months old, Nathan weighs 34.6 lb.  He is wearing all of his size 3T clothes and we've started in his size 4T stuff.  He wears size 9 shoes and I'm still squishing him into a size 4 diaper :).  He's still my 'little' boy, but he is also quickly turning into a 'big' boy.  

Nathan is still quite the character.  I can easily be so pleased by his maturity on the days where he is in a great mood.  On his great mood days he is giggly and happy and easy to get along with.  Those are the days where he plays with Matthew and Kayla, following their lead, without a single complaint.  And then there are the days where he is in "a" mood.  On those days, all he does is push his siblings' buttons.  Those are the days when he tries to wrestle Matthew all day long.  Those are the days where he stands right in front of the television so that Matthew and Kayla cannot see their show.  Those are the days that he tries to refuse to eat at meal time.  Those are the days when he hits kids when he doesn't get his way.  Those are long days.  Luckily, the great mood days outnumber the other days.  And he is a two-year-old, so I guess he's allowed to be a pain.

{He was in a great mood this day - Matthew and him were best buds!}

Nathan is pretty smart for his age, I think, at least :).  You can tell that he has older siblings because he is being introduced to things quicker.  He knows his birthday is October 18 and that Matthew and Kayla's is March 18.  He likes to say, "Happy Birthday!" to me every day.  When I reply with, "Happy Birthday, Nathan!" he says back, "It's not my birthday.  My birthday March 18."  All in fun, because he knows he's giving you the wrong birthday.  He can count up to twelve, but won't do it if you ask him to.  If you ask him what "his letter" is (what his name starts with), he says, "A-Y-L-A" (spelling Kayla's name).  If you say, "No, that's Kayla's name, what's your letter?" he says, "A".  Goof.

He LOVES puzzles.  Nathan could do puzzles all day long.  He can pretty much figure out any puzzle up to 24 pieces.  Unbelievable, considering when he turned two he just learned how to do 4-piece puzzles.  He loves doing our Thomas and Disney Fairies floor puzzles, as well as his Discovery Toys learner puzzles he received from Jon and I for his birthday, and he loves doing the Winnie-the-Pooh puzzle at my parents' house.

Nathan will eat anything.  He isn't phased by spicy foods, and so he easily eats Butter Chicken which is nice for us as we love it.  He loves helping me prepare dinner, especially if I'm chopping raw vegetables, because then he always sweetly asks me if he can have, "just one?" and holds up his pointer finger pointing at me while squinting his eyes.  If I let him, I have to carefully watch him because he won't stop at one; he will keep eating the veggies until there are none left.  A few weeks ago he even ate all of my diced (raw) onion, without even flinching.

Nathan loves eating bananas and drinking apple juice.  Multiple times a day he asks me for a banana and/or apple juice.

He has no desire to potty train.  Matthew, Kayla, and I tried for one evening last month and ended up with three accidents without him even realizing what had happened.  The goal is to try over Spring Break.  Sigh.  So not looking forward to that!

Nathan does quite well at watching television shows or movies.  His favourite cartoon is Paw Patrol (and Marshall is his favourite!), but he also enjoys Wild Kratts.

{Building a 'train' with Matthew and Kayla.  He requests to do this weekly.}

He loves being outside.  Of the three oldest kids, he spends the most time outside, and is the only one to ever request to go outside.  He doesn't need anyone out there to keep him busy, he'll just head over to the sandbox or play with any water that's accumulated in a bucket left outside.

Considering he only gets to ride his balance bike once or twice a month during the winter, he still does really well on it.  I've started to introduce the tricycle to him to help teach him pedaling so that it won't be a new concept for him when he learns to ride a big kid bike (without training wheels).  My goal is to teach him at the end of summer/in the fall.  We'll see how the summer goes on both the balance bike and tricycles.