Tell me about your 2 year old.

[harmonielyn]

Heres my situation. DH and I have talked about TTC after DD turns a year old. That would put DD somewhere around 2 years old when the second baby is born, if things go right. I know children develope at their own speed but I have no clue what stage of toddlerhood 2 year olds are at. Our other option is to maybe wait until DD is 2 years old then TTC. I do have a little brother but I dont remember what things he did at 2 years old and what things he didnt do until he was 3-4 years old.

[Nocona]

THIS IS TOTALLY MY OPINION:
Thought I'd preface that

Matthew is advanced with most things for his age. He talks well, comprehends almost anything, his physical abilities are awesome, he's still solely in diaper with only gleams of hope of the end of the tunnel occasionally.

I seriously can't imagine having a newborn right now. Matthew just turned 2 last Monday and is a really good kid, but I just think it would be so hard to deal with him and a baby. We are planning on the kids being 3 years apart and I'm hoping that he'll be more self sufficient then and will easily accept the new baby then.

[kim]

uh......tony's a nightmare much of the time right now. mostly it's about getting his way. if he doesn't get his way he does quite a bit of screaming/tantrum-ing. i'm glad i don't have a newborn. i'm hoping he calms down by the time i have #2 in september.

[chefkath]

Brigit was 3 weeks shy of two years when Ciaran was born, and the age difference has been great fun. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this spread in ages to you!

I had to go back to my journal to find out what Brigit was like at age 2 (it was only 7 months ago - how quickly we forget! ) I posted an update the week of her birthday - here it is. Of course every child is different, but it gives you an idea of the kinds of things a 2-year-old is into.

Update on Brigit, age 2

Brigit is a ton of fun these days! She has such a neat personality - she's so sweet and generous and loving. She's very much a Virgo, too: She's super meticulous and methodical about things, and gives each task her full attention until she's ready to move on to something else. She is also easily frustrated when things don't turn out perfect on the first try (she's very much like me in this respect.) When she gets mad, I usually hold her and let her vent her frustration a bit - then she's ready to try again. She's persistent enough to keep trying until she gets it right.

Favorite Activities: Right now she is really into playing "kitchen" with the Little Tykes Kitchen that Carole got her for an early birthday present. She loves to pretend to fill up glasses of water at the "sink" and then pass them around so everyone can "drink." She also loves to cook her toy veggies in the skillet and then put them on plates for everyone to "eat." She also LOVES puzzles. She has 5 or 6 of the wooden peg-type puzzles that she likes a lot, and she actually can now do an 8-piece "regular" jigsaw puzzle (of Ernie). She inherited it from her cousin and I meant to put it away for a year or two until she was old enough for it - imagine my surprise when she pulled it out and did it all by herself! She is the puzzle queen!

She plays a lot with the baby doll that Ciaran gave to her when he was born. She likes to dress and undress it, mostly - but also plays "Mommy" with it - feeding it, changing its diapers, etc.

She loves drawing and painting, and is really into figuring out what colors go together to make other colors (ie red + yellow = orange, etc.) She knows all her colors except gold and brown - she gets these two mixed up for some reason.

Letters: She's known all her letters for a couple of months but is now obsessed with learning them in alphabetical order. We sing the ABC song over and over. She can say A through F, she usually gets the "LMNOP" string, and she knows "WXYZ". She's pretty fuzzy on the rest. She can recognize - I hesitate to use the word "read" since that's not really what she's doing, I don't think - the words "GO," "STOP," and "IN" (all from reading Go Dog. Go! 100x a day.) And she recognizes her name as long as it's written in capital letters. I'm just starting to show her lower-case letters but she really doesn't get the concept yet.

Numbers: She is still really into counting to ten. She gets a little bogged down sometimes with 5,6,7 but she knows the rest in order. As for recognizing numbers, she still sometimes mistakes "5" for "2" and she's just getting the hang of "7" but she knows the rest. She's pretty obsessed with counting and wants to count EVERYTHING, everywhere we go. It's cute, but very time consuming!

Dressing: She tries very hard to dress herself these days, though she still needs help with shirts and sweaters. She usually gets tangled up with her arms in the wrong holes or the whole thing on backwards! She can take her diapers off but can't put them on. She can put her shorts, pants and shoes on and take them off with no problem. (Hooray for velcro-buckled shoes! They sure save a lot of frustration!)

Eating: She's a good eater, but a very boring one.. She pretty much eats the EXACT same thing each day. No deviations will be tolerated! : I've learned that the hard way! For breakfast: Oatmeal with bananas and applesauce mixed in. Lunch: 1/2 a bagel with cream cheese, grapes and blueberries. Afternoon snack: 2 fried egg whites topped with cheddar cheese, 1/4 of an apple or some strawberries. Dinner varies a little, but about 70% of the time it's baby carrots and red bell pepper, a piece of toast and some wheat noodles topped with butter and parmesan. Clearly this is not a child with an adventurous palate! She still hasn't eaten meat and nothing I can do or say will convince her to give it a try. She still won't drink milk unless we mix it with a little orange juice and call it "juice." (If we call it "milk" she won't touch it. ) I'm really excited to try peanut butter on her when she turns two - I hope she likes it!

Talking: She's just a little chatterbox these days. She's making 4- and 5- word sentnces now, which is just awesome. I love watching her figure out how to put words together to make a point! Her new thing now is figuring out the difference between "this" and "that" - as in "this one" or "this way" vs. "that one" or "that way." She's still mystified by the distinction, but she's trying hard to make sense of it.

Other Random Stuff: She isn't too great at sharing, but she's getting the idea of taking turns and can actually do it quite well ... with some prompting and refereeing, that is! She loves playing with her friends, though it is still mostly parallel play. Occasionally they'll invent a game to play together, though, and it's so fun to watch! She loves to play tag and hide-and-seek.

Her favorite books right now are the Olivia books, all of Mercer Meyer's "Little Critter" books, Farfallina and Marcel, and anything Maisy (of course!)

She's spent a lot of time "swimming" at the beach this summer. Over the last two months she's gone from being afraid to wade in past her knees, to running into the water and sticking her head in the waves! Carole bought her this innertube-like floaty toy that she can sit in and bob around. She loves this so much I think she'd spend all day in the lake if we'd let her.

We finally got her a booster seat so she is officially out of her highchair now. (Boy did it feel great to put that thing in the attic for a while! I was getting soooooo tired of looking at it!) It's fun having her sit at the table with us, and she is loving her "big kid chair!"

[Lette]

My daughter was almost 21 months when my son was born and I have to admit she is a very good girl. ...At least compared to my neighbor's daughter. She will sit and occupy herself for good amounts of time whereas Alli is very high maintenance and flits from activity to activity in seconds flat. I know if Lexie was like that, we would have had a much harder time, especially since my 2nd was a high needs baby (... almost on the edge of colic )

Now it is even better. Alexis is great at talking and doing things on her own. Our only problem is that she likes to take away Ben's toys when he's playing with them.

Good Luck with your decision. :1pound:

[Dennis]

I can pretty much echo everything that Lette said, including the same 21 month age difference. We have it a bit easier because Frances has been pretty low-maintenenace so far, as far as babies go. Our big problem was sleep, and now at 8.5 months she's finally sleeping through the night pretty well so things are much better.

I think there are pros and cons to every age difference. The biggest reason I really like our difference is we were never out of the "baby stuff" with Joe, like diapers bottles, etc. (He took a bedtime bottle until he was 2 per the ped's suggestion.) I know some people don't like having 2 in diapers, I couldn't imagine being done with all that stuff and then having to start all over again.

JMO.

Dennis

[harmonielyn]

Originally Posted by Dennis

I think there are pros and cons to every age difference. The biggest reason I really like our difference is we were never out of the "baby stuff" with Joe, like diapers bottles, etc. (He took a bedtime bottle until he was 2 per the ped's suggestion.) I know some people don't like having 2 in diapers, I couldn't imagine being done with all that stuff and then having to start all over again.

JMO.

Dennis

Thats one of the reason we're thinking of trying for 2 in 2. I would have never thought of having our second baby this close. But now that i think about it, I dont think I want to be completely out of the baby stage then get back into it. I dont think having 2 in diapers would be that bad. Im still thinking about doing cloth diapers.

[Hilary]

If I had to do it over again I would have waited until Madelynn was potty trained before getting pregnant again. Changing dirty diapers isn't much fun when you have m/s.

Also, Madelynn's started having a really hard time sleeping at night now that Ava is here. I think if she were a little older it wouldn't be so much of a problem.

[Dawnie]

Victoria had just turned 2 when Lauren was born and entering the horrible terrible twos. She is getting better but for awhile we were having to deal with multiple tantrums a day over silly stuff - well, silly to us at least. Victoria is very strong-willed and determined to get her way and we thought having another baby was going to push her over the edge but she did great. When it came to Lauren, Victoria was very loving and caring. She likes to sit with Lauren and hold her and give kisses and stuff. She was never like that with Alex (14 months difference). I think two years apart is a great difference.

[aylhu]

Zia was 27 months when Lane was born. She was potty trained (still not at night) right before Lane was born. That worked out great. Overall, it hasn't been as hard as I thought. I wanted them to be closer to 2.5 yrs or more apart, but you can only plan so much! Anyway, Zia has only been loving and accepting of her little sister. We have had more tantrums of late and that IS harder to deal with when holding a baby or trying to keep things quiet. But who's to say that won't happen at ANY age.

Honestly, I think that once you get over the initial changes, any age has it's pros and cons. You guys will do fine if that's what you want to do!

[Karri]

Aidan was 21 months when the twins came home from the hospital. My kid who slept through the night went out the window Though I have heard of this happening at other ages.
Anyway....spend a day alone with him, and he is the most wonderful 2 year old in the world. He loves to play, play, play, he is able to communicate fairly well, and he is very well behaved (aside from testing me once in awhile, like the normal toddler). Being home with him and the babies is a completely different story. He is naughty (hits them, throws stuff at them), and whines a lot. We do have some good moments, though. The babies adore him and he occasionally wants to hold them and hug & kiss them.
Honestly, I wish we had waited till he turned 2 before we tried for another. But then again, there is no guarantee that he wouldnt be this way if we had waited.

I have 3 in diapers and honestly, aside from the cost, its really no different than having 1 in diapers, IMO.