Can't We Just Skip Two?

In the midst of my bliss concerning the fact that school has started again is the thorn of a two year old who gets so very bored without his two older brothers here to entertain him. And at two, bored=naughty. And to add to the fun, two is also the age at which most children catch a serious case of I-Want-To-Do-It-Myself-Itis. Matthew has been no exception. So I have spent the past three weeks attempting to keep him entertained enough to prevent too much serious damage to himself or the house. Just to highlight a few of his finer moments:

One morning while I was getting dressed, Matthew decided to pour himself a second bowl of cereal instead of asking for help. The good thing about Kix is that they roll so instead of having a mountain of cereal on the counter, we had Kix all over the kitchen.

Matthew has learned about time outs due to his enormous propensity to play with the DVD's, T.V. and computer. One day he actually got a new movie in for himself and I didn't notice until I took a moment to survey the cases because he had switched one Thomas DVD for another. The fact that he can now run the DVD player by himself is not a good thing. And not only did I have to put the child latches on the computer cabinet, but I have to do them up tight or Matthew can still get them open.

One afternoon last week Matthew got ahold of a bottle of Windex that the big boys had left out. He didn't spray it into his mouth like Nathan did when he was two, but he did repeatedly spray the back of his head giving himself a fabulous new hairdo.

Matthew frequently gets in the fridge (because he can't get in the pantry) to get himself a snack. On numerous occasions I've come back from the bathroom to find him sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor having a picnic. I guess he really is serious about second breakfast.

No matter what spoon I give him, it is the wrong one. And he can't use the same spoon for two different foods at the same time. If he has cereal and applesauce, he has to have a separate spoon for each. And his favorite spoon? My blue measuring spoon, the tablespoon. It can't be easy to eat out of that thing, but he does.

Yesterday Matthew got his milk out of the fridge. It comes in a 2-quart carton with a lid and a spout on one side of the top. He tried to put it up on the counter (ummm, way too short), getting just the bottom balanced on the edge, and then while the carton was still vertical with the spout on the bottom, he decided to take the lid off. By the time I realized what was going on and took the two steps necessary to get to him, he was spluttering through the milk pouring down into his face looking completely surprised. He was pretty upset when I made him take off his Lightning McQueen shirt because it was soaked.

But along with all the eye rolling behavior, two has been pretty entertaining as well. Matthew has had a language explosion and has started saying some pretty funny stuff. He helped me make his oatmeal for breakfast and after tasting it, instead of saying "Yum!" like a normal two year old, he exclaimed, "It's tasty!" When we got in the car after being out in a slightly chilly day, he told us it was "cozy." He knows what a lightsaber is (He's the third boy. There was absolutely no hope of him not knowing about stuff like that at an early age.) but he doesn't call it a lightsaber. It is a "Lightsaver, ffft, ffft." The only thing I can figure out is that perhaps the "fffft, fffft" is the sound the lightsabers make. And for this last one, you'll need to know that 1) Matthew is a gasmaster and 2) around here we call passing gas toots. Yesterday Kev came to find me, smirking, and informed me that Matthew had just announced, "My toots go uphill!"