Big milestone for the Big Ragu this week. His first haircut.
My baby is getting all growed up.
I'm really feeling surprisingly ok about it, though. I was a little melancholy, thinking about the fact that this will be the last time we'll ever go for a 'first haircut,' but really, I'm ok with that. This is our last baby, and I feel so confident that that's how it was meant to be. He's completed our family, and we're good : )
The haircut experience, on the other hand, was far from good. He was too confused at first, I think, to get upset, so the first few minutes he was pretty quiet. But then he caught on to the whole thing and the squirming and protesting and hand-swatting began.
We urged the woman to speed it up and just do the best she could, but there were still quite a few tears - and I ended up having to trim a few spots in the back a little bit more after we got home (with him strapped into his booster seat in front of an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse).
But all in all, it could have been a lot worse. And since his cute baby curls had turned into a combination mullet/rat's nest/baby dreadlocks, it was definitely time.
That first haircut does instantly make them look older, though. He's still got his little baby face, but he looks so much more like a little boy. A little boy who's going to be two in just a few weeks!
A little boy who has fully embraced the terrible twos, and has made it his personal mission to make as much noise and create as much chaos as he possibly can - and is excelling at fulfilling that mission.
Case in point - while I cooked dinner the other night, and the boys played a game of Bingo at the kitchen table, Carmine grabbed a toy from the living room and proceeded to whack it on the edge of the kitchen table over and over again, all the while grinning at me and yelling "BANG! BANG! BANG!"
And in true 2-year-old fashion, one of his favorite words is "no." When I tell him we're going to the gym, he says "No, Mommy." And when I finish my workout and arrive to pick him up from the gym daycare, he says "No!" and follows it up with a glance around the room and a very emphatic "MINE!" as if all the toys in the daycare room belong to him, and we can't possibly leave, since the other kids would then be playing with all of 'his' stuff.
This month's choice for most dangerous hobby (last month it was trying to slide down the stairs instead of walk, and previous choices have included such fun activities as standing on the kitchen table and diving headfirst off the edge of the couch) is closing doors. As soon as we enter a room, he whips around and yells frantically "shut door! shut door! shut door!" With all the door shutting - which, truthfully, is really door slamming - going on, it's only a matter of time before someone's fingers get smashed.
Our little danger boy is also a good helper, though, and one of his favorite things to do is put his dirty clothes into the laundry basket. When we get him ready for bed, we hand him each item and he runs and throws it in the basket and runs back giggling. Who knew laundry could be so much fun?
Like any little brother, Carmine wants to do everything his big brothers do, and although we watch our fair share of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (which, despite all their protesting and complaining, Gabe and Dante end up being completely captivated by), he's also watched lots of Scooby-Doo, and just the other day he grabbed the remote and started asking for "Ferb," so I guess he's just become Phineas and Ferb's youngest fan.
His eating habits are still horrendous, but we've all learned how to deal with it, and since Scott and I have made a concerted effort to ignore all his antics, meals have at least gotten slightly more peaceful. We still aren't ready for a family meal out at a restaurant anytime soon, but we're at the point where we can get through a dinner at home without any blood-curdling screams, so I'll be happy with that progress for now.
He's a handful, and he's a ton of work, and he can make me want to tear my hair out at times, but there is nothing quite like seeing him come running across the room in a little half run/half skip that he does, with a huge grin on his face. Or watching him carefully drive his trains around the wooden tracks, yelling "Choo-Choo DAY!!! Choo-Choo DAY!!!!" Or hearing him up in his crib while he's supposed to be napping, singing and bouncing and saying "hot baby, hot baby, hot baby."
He does everything to the extreme, and while that can be exhausting in regards to the bad behavior, it is absolutely exhilirating and rewarding beyond words when he applies it to the good stuff : )
all final babies should be EPIC :-)
Posted by: Wes | January 15, 2012 at 09:59 AM