Twenty-Four Months

October 09, 2013

Seth,

Two. Already. So fast. In so many little ways, you’re no longer our little baby any more, you’re such a big boy! Complete sentences, using the potty, handling cups without water immediately going everywhere, feeding yourself with minimal mess, it’s all wonderful and coming too soon. You’ll notice that I apparently consider your biggest accomplishments to be less mess and more talking this month…carry on. This journey is way more fun without an instruction manual.

Your imagination and your mind have just blossomed this month. You’re connecting ideas and words, and it’s amazing to see happening. You’re building your train tracks yourself, painting, and pretending. We gave you a cardboard box drawn like a stove and you proceeded to break out the pots and pans to make oatmeal and sausages (?) for yourself and Daddy. After I informed you that you were not, in fact, allowed to eat playdough, you looked at me at stated that you “pretend to eat playdough for breakfast”, you know, as you do. You spent 45 minutes on our flight back to Colorado attempting to put 8 crayons into a 4-crayon box, with eventual success. You’re connecting details with place. We got into the hot car, and you noted that, “very hot in the car. Turn on air conditioning!”. You will endlessly repeat “Hi, Mommy!” or “Hi Daddy!” for as long as we’re willing to say hi back, and even sometimes longer. On hearing the landline at Papa’s house ring, “Nana, get the phone.” Just as we reach the edge of patience, after reminding you with a “can you ask nicely?” approximately 438498723 times each day, just as we’re despairing of you ever listening, you’ll break out a fully formed, “Daddy, may I have a cracker, please?” in the sweetest little voice.

We’re very fortunate that you’ve got coordination to go along with your growing love for extreme sports. Climbing out of the crib not one or two, but three times. Copying your cousins in diving headfirst down the slide. Climbing six feet up a chain link fence. No fear of the 15 foot cargo nets at Sea World. It’s a good thing we’re laid back. It’s also looking like a good thing that we have good health insurance, but that might come later. You can try and break Daddy’s record for most trips to the urgent care for stitches in a single year.

Books are bringing new worlds to life each time we read to you. You can’t get enough of reading time, which is great, as far as we are concerned. You’re even memorizing your books now, and attempting to read them back to us, until we ask you to. At that point, you clam up with a “Daddy read it”, and won’t do any more. It’s quite endearing to have you read most of the Giving Tree to me. Last I checked, we were reading bedtime stories to you, not the other way around. You’re happy to get everyone in on the act, and it’s a lot of fun to pull out books that we still remember from our childhoods. That brings back plenty of good memories for us, too. At Papa and Nana’s house, after I kissed you goodnight and left the room, I heard Papa’s voice start up with the phrases so well remembered from our childhood. “George was a good little monkey, and always very curious…”

I cherish walking into your room at night after you’ve gone to sleep and seeing you curled up, clutching your blankets or one of your animals. It’s such a blessing to just go about the daily like of being a father to the greatest little guy in the world. I don’t know how the math works out exactly, but I think your Mommy and I love you about 24 times as much as two years ago when we first met. We love you all the way to the moon and back.

Sadly, your great-grandpa passed away the 24th of this month. It’s a blessing that we were all able to go back and see him in July, and have four generations of Witmer men sit down together. You come from quite a legacy of wonderful husbands, fathers, and men, from your great-grandpa to your grandpa (Daddy’s still working on it). Loving, dependable, responsible, and respected. You can be proud to be a Witmer, little buddy. Great-grandpa was a pretty amazing guy. You probably won’t remember getting to meet him, but you’ll meet him again one day, a long time from now, and you can be sure that he’ll remember you.