You may have noticed that I didn't do a monthly update on 6/30. Since Tyler is now two, I don't think I'm going to do a monthly update anymore- it sounds kinda silly to say "25 months old"... "32 months old," etc. Instead, I'll just do an update when there's something to update. :-) And, there's not a lot to report right now, although it feels like we have certainly had our hands full lately.
I think I completely jinxed us by bragging about Tyler being on his best behavior and not expressing tantrums before he turned two. The tantrums we thought he had before are nothing compared to some of the ones we have seen lately. I'm talking about tantrums that are full on with screaming and kicking while laying on the ground. (Thank God they have only happened at the house and not out in public!). And they can occur over anything. For example, I offer to carry him down the stairs and he tells me that he'll do it on his own, so I walk down the stairs while he sits at the top of the staircase and proceeds to scream and cry because he wants me to carry him down. ??? Needless to say, it's been very challenging and frustrating for us. I've had to raise my voice, Tyler has had several trips to time-out and there have been times when we have to just walk away and ignore him. All of that equals NO FUN! He has become very opinionated and I am slowly figuring out how to avoid a lot of the tantrums just by giving him choices on a lot of things: flip flops or shoes, pull-up or diaper, pants or shorts, shower or bath, what book to read, what show to watch, etc., and believe me, he knows what he wants at that moment and I can see a difference in his behavior just by giving him a little freedom to make his own decisions on certain things. And as you can tell by all the posts before this, we've definitely had our great moments with our fun/sweet little boy, but whew, when he wants to be a turkey, he most definitely can be!! Hopefully, the 'terrible twos' are very short lived!
And on to a funny update: with Tyler's rapidly expanding vocabulary, he picked up his first cuss word! "Damnit!" haha~! And he actually knows what context to use it in! It started out as "Damnit flies" when those annoying things were flying around in our kitchen. Then he just randomly started saying it. "Damnit, let's go" at the red light. "Damnit, come on" while trying to buckle his seat belt. We don't want to laugh at it and have him think it's funny and continue doing it and we don't want to tell him not to say it because of course, he'll continue to say it, so for the most part, we're just ignoring it and hoping that it will run its course. Although, we'll turn away from him and get a pretty good chuckle- it's hard not to and it really is hilarious!!
Here's a short clip of him saying this new word while playing with Travis.