Paddy Cake

Patrick has changed so much in the last couple of months. He has grown up a lot, he is certainly not a baby anymore! He has started to talk a lot and every day he says new words. It's wonderful that he is able to understand a lot more of what we say.

He is our "pip," that seems to describe him perfectly (or as Thomas says, "he's pipalicious"). When he is good, he is so sweet and fun, when he is bad, he is horrid! He still has tantrums and those have gotten worse, but with more discipline and attention, they are less frequent. I think I have to accept that tantrums are just a part of the "terrible twos." The dictionary has four meaning for the word terrible and there are two that apply to Paddy: 1. distressing, severe, and 2. formidably great. Two-year-olds are amazing, they are learning so much and changing so much, it is easy to see why they would have a hard time emotionally dealing with life.

He is so incredibly fascinated with cars. He will spend hours arranging them and saying, "vroom, vroom!" Guess what is his favorite movie? That's right: Cars! He likes to think that every toy car on earth is his, so he starts many fights. The older boys are getting better about it, but still have a hard time dealing with him. He is now able to join in with the older boys in play. It is fun to see them wrestle or engage in pretend play. Last night we had McDonalds and the boys shared a pop. It was so sweet to see them say "please" and "thank you" and pass it around very politely. Paddy was just as polite and gracious as the others, I was very pleased to see the boys getting along.

Patrick has also gotten a lot taller, seemingly overnight! All of his pants that we once too big fit him perfectly. He loves to dance to music and play little hand games (so big, paddy cake, etc.).

A couple of weeks ago he got his finger stuck in the hinge of our screen door and hearing him cry, I tried to pick him up only to discover that he was stuck. The poor baby got hurt pretty badly, and I almost took him to the hospital, but luckily it wasn't too bad after the initial hurt. Because of the injury, his fingernail has fallen off. It doesn't bother him and isn't nearly as "yucky" as I thought it would be. The nail is already starting to grow back!

Paddy is such a huge part of our family now, it's amazing to see him grow out of the baby stage so quickly!