My dear darling Lucas,
You are TWO today! Two years old! My goodness, was it not just last week that you arrived, late and large, to join our family? (And of course, on the other hand, have you not always been with us? How quiet our lives must have been before we had three boys contributing to the cacaphony!)
You, my son, are a delightful child. Smart, sweet and loving, you charm all who know you. You are also stubborn, strong-willed, jealous and territorial. Did I mention stubborn? Not to mention the fact that you’re a bit of a brute, regularly taking on your big brothers and coming out the victor. I’ve stopped protecting you from them and now expend my efforts protecting them from you!
You love to draw and to colour. You astonish me by actually colouring on, if not within the lines of, the images in your favourite Sesame Street colouring book. We no longer put stray papers in the recycling bin but keep them handy for your daily colouring exploits, and I’ve given up on putting the crayons away after each use and simply leave them near the table where you can help yourself. The other day, you turned over a blank page to find the original notice from the big boys’ school and my mouth dropped open in wonder as you started calling out various letters of the alphabet as you scribbled over the text. Not even two yet and you realize the difference between text and images!
Also at not-quite-two, you can count beyond 10, make a pretty good stab at the ABCs and mimic just about any song. I love to listen to you sing yourself to sleep with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Yet, brilliant as you obviously are, you stubbornly refuse to regularly differentiate between your two older brothers. They continue to be the two-headed brother creature with interchangeable names.
You’re a moderately good sleeper, waking occasionally in the night and asking to snuggle into bed with your Daddy, who is far more a sucker than me. You’ve just come through a patch of resisting going to sleep at bed time, but I suffer no delusion that you won’t soon be standing in your crib again, flipping the light switch on and off to get our attention. No bedtime would be complete without a cuddle from Mommy and your precious “blankey and soo”.
My dear Lucas, you are so very two. Terrible twos indeed! But your old mother is getting crafty in her dotage: I’ve learned to ask permission before taking the banana out of the peel before I hand it to you or (god forbid) snapping the cookie in half. I’ve learned that you’ll accept a swap for whatever treasure you’ve acquired (permanent markers and tiny bits of Lego come to mind) without a fight, but you’ll scream blue murder if I simply try to take them away from you. I’ve learned that you may in fact be just barely two, but you think you are the equal of your older brothers and fully entitled to participate in any and all mischief into which they might get.
You love Sesame Street, the Muppets, the Wonderpets, Bob the Builder, Thomas trains and Lego — especially the tiniest not-safe-for-toddlers pieces of Lego. You will play contentedly for long stretches of time, lining up action figures or trains on the edge of a table, and you love to sit on the floor with me passing a train or car or even a ball back and forth. You love books, and while you will occasionally entertain yourself with one, you much prefer to have them read to you. Tristan’s lap is just the right size to accommodate you, but even Simon will give a good stab at narrating the pictures in a book to “read” to you.
You are not particularly fond of strangers, and it amazes me that the third child in any family could be the most shy one. You have a most endearing way of nodding your head solemnly when I ask you something, and an equally adorable way of laughing out a shouted “Yes!!” when you are particularly excited.
Despite your shyness with strangers, you have an entertainer’s love of the spotlight. When you notice you have your family’s attention, you are quite the ham. Your favourite trick lately is to shake your arms with wide eyes to the boys’ laughing exhortation of “show us your muscles!” You are endlessly patient with your brothers’ requests to have you repeat just about anything they can think of: “Lucas, say ‘Mario Brothers.’ Say ‘Luigi’! Say ‘pumpernickel’!” You never seem to tire of this, nor do they.
Sweet Lucas, you are more delightful by the day. Challenging though your capricious moods and vexing needs may be, you more than make up for them with the joy you bring to every moment of our days. Happy birthday, my little one. You are loved.
