Chase Update

On February 8th, Chase was 2 1/4 years old. I had most of this post written on that day, but never finished it. Blogging has not been my thing lately. However, here is the update. There is very little about him that seems babyish anymore. The three things I can think of are his use of his pacifier and blanket and his need for 2 naps most of the time. Other than that he talks and moves like a big kid.



The past month or two has been rough. With me not feeling the best and a busy schedule, we saw a decline in Chase's behavior. This can also be attributed to his age. We definitely experienced what people call the terrible twos. He is a highly independent child. He thinks he knows what is best. If we cross his will, there is quite a scene. We are constantly reminding him of who is in charge. He experienced some of the worst temper tantrums. They had him and me in tears. We have been making a conscious effort of training him to obey us the first time we tell him to do something. He would wait until we would tell him the 5th time to obey and we would raise our voices. After reading a book on child training, we learned that we had "taught" him to wait to obey until we had told him 5 times and raised our voices. We are working on keeping a calm tone and making him obey after we tell him 1 time. It has been about a week and we have seen much improvement. Yay!



In general, Chase is a fun little boy. He says and does such funny things. He can talk up a storm. My days are filled with many conversations. One thing that is so helpful is that he can communicate his needs. There are very few times we are left guessing what is that he wants. He can communicate his needs almost too well :)



He has started to pretend. He talks to his stuffed animals. He tells them to open their mouths, so he can give them water out of his sippy. He is very aware of what is "pretend" and what is "real life." I am not really sure where he learned the difference, but somewhere along the line he picked that concept up.



He has also started to be interested in playing with other kids. He loves to play with Bridgie which is a huge milestone. He had almost no interest in playing with her for many months. This change has made such a huge improvement in our daily lives. Much less fighting between the two kiddos. Ahhh! As far as playing with kids closer to his age, he needs to develop in that area. He is a very possessive kid (as are 99% of 2 year olds), and has a hard time sharing. This makes playing with other 2 year olds a little sketchy. It will all come in time though.

We are slowly easing him into the idea of having a sibling. We tell him that he is going to be a big brother. Last week I was talking to him about buying the baby new pacifiers and blankets and that he needed to help me pick them out. He thought that was a good idea. If you ask Chase if he is going to have a brother or a sister, he will say "not a sister." He really wanted a sister, but the Lord had other plans. That is in the next post :)

We love our little boy so much. He is a challenge, but we can't imagine our lives without him.