Guess who just turned two?

I'm sure every mother says this every year on the birthday of her youngest child, but that makes it no less true: "I can't believe how big my baby is!"

Archer turns two today, and this birthday has caught me unawares in many ways. We've been so busy as a family these past few weeks, that I haven't finished sewing the homemade birthday gift I had planned to give him (that I had planned to give him last year on his first birthday, actually). Kevin and I haven't written our annual birthday letters to him yet (but there's still time this afternoon, right? After we finish work and before we pick them up from daycare?). And I didn't even bother making a birthday cake for him. We have some decadent cupcakes leftover from a friend's wedding celebration on Saturday. That's right: my second born will be getting leftover cupcakes on his second birthday. I shudder to think what this bodes for our soon-to-be third child's future birthdays.

But even though I haven't had the chance to prepare much for his birthday celebration, I have been paying very close attention to the changes—big and small—I see in my growing boy every day. For one, he's just so big! Even though he's only 24 pounds, he is strong and solid and commands whatever space he is in. And he does so many "big boy" things, that I never would have expected in one so young. We've only be able to go to the playground for the past two weeks, but already he's figured out how to do everything except the monkey bars—and he's only kept from those by his height. He races across the bouncy bridge, slides down the very biggest slide, climbs up every ladder (including one made of chains), and can scale the five-foot climbing wall at a speed that terrifies me.

He's also become very verbally agile in the past few weeks. Just this morning he told us three elaborate stories in more or less complete sentences: about the tigers we saw "fighting" at the zoo yesterday, about how Colin snuck out of the house last week and took off down the street on his bicycle (yikes!), and about how he wanted Kevin to make us pancakes for breakfast this morning.  And lately he's on a "counting spree": counting out his numbers 1-12 whenever there's some counting to be done. (I don't think he has any sense of what the numbers mean, but he's got their order down pat).

For all of this, there are still the occasionally moments when he's my little baby: when I drop him off at daycare, and he crawls up my torso and wraps himself around my neck like a koala bear. I'll enjoy those moments, too, for as long as I can, because I know it won't be much longer—especially with another baby on the way.

So happy birthday to my big boy baby!