What happens between 18 months and 3 years?

Okay, so I went shopping for Nate's 2nd birthday last weekend. I had been browsing for a few weekends, deciding where to drop the grandparents' money (and some of our own) for the celebration. (David still thinks it's ridiculous that there is more money going into plastic stuff for our already cluttered house, but that is the way North America works.)

What I noticed, while trawling Wal-Mart, Sears, Toy Jungle, Granville Island's kids market is that something weird happens to children once they turn 2. There are virtually no toys labelled 2+ years. 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, sure. Then it jumps straight to 3+, 4+ or 5+ years. What makes the 2 year old impossible to design for? Let's face it, those 18 month toys are really glorified 12 month old toys, probably labelled that way to make the parent feel like his/her one year old is gifted with a 1.5 year old learning curve.

So I rebelled. I bought the 3+ toys. No, I don't think my child is a genius (okay, sometimes he is), but the reason I could see for barring the 2 year old is the "Contains small parts. Not suitable for children under 3." Apparently 3 year olds never swallow small toy parts. Whoosh. And I was wondering when I could finally become less vigilant. But really, some of these toys only have small parts that can be swallowed if the child actively breaks pieces off and gnaws on the fragments.

I finally settled on a Thomas the Tank train track set. It was not a hard choice at Toy Jungle where 1/3 of the store was devoted to all that train memorobilia. I did draw the line though at the $60 "gold, silver and bronze" plated "Anniversary edition" engines. David and I will set up the train for Saturday morning, so Nate can be surprised.

All these plans aside, Nate woke up this morning of his birthday (at 12:05 am) barfing. Unpleasant for any child, but what I've realized recently, even more unpleasant for the parents. Thank god he doesn't get stomach upset often. Except 4x last night. Still, we had a lazy day at home today, watching Blues Clues and hanging out. Not a bad way to spend a 2nd birthday.

Kiss my Boo-Boo

Nathan's latest trick is to acquire a "boo-boo" that needs to be kissed better. It used to be that these were actual (or actually perceived) hurts which often had tears accompanying them. Anyway, in the last two weeks, he's developed a need for boo-boo kisses, even when he doesn't really have a boo-boo. I kiss them, he smiles and he's back to playing.

Yesterday on the car ride home, Nate decided that he had a boo-boo on his foot. (The first thing he invariably does in his car seat is remove his shoes and socks.) He kept pointing to his big toe and saying, "Boo-boo Mimi. Boo-boo." I kept explaining to him that Mommy couldn't turn around and kiss his boo-boo while she was driving. After enough whining about the boo-boo, he took matters into his own hands, lifted his foot to his mouth and kissed his boo-boo with a loud smack. He proceeded to find another 15 or so boo-boos all over his feet, kissing them loudly each time.

Thank goodness for toddler flexibility.