This Day: Rowan Turns Two

Today started at five fifty in the morning. I had one day off before going back to work tomorrow, five fifty wasn't when I wanted to start it. We tried sending Zane back to bed, which ended in door slamming, fit throwing, and everyone in the house being awake by six. That's too early to call the ball on a day so we powered forward. Zach made Halloween pancakes, complete with a No Noggin one, and was almost late to work. Once Zach was on his way we pulled ourselves together and made it to the gym by 8:15 when child watch opened. I did a random spattering of exercise and left feeling like I was terribly out of shape and fat, but trying to move forward. The boys were rewarded for their wonderful behavior in child watch with some time at the playground. Zane quickly found a friend and played Ninja Turtles while Rowan wandered around the playground, searching for Bobo, downtrodden that his playmate had been stolen from him.

All of this seems well and good, we had turned the corner, moved on from the morning meltdowns, and gotten lots of things accomplished by 10am when we returned home from our trip to the Y and the bank (side note who knew that there would be a million people at the bank at 10 am on a Wed morning, annoying). Let me just start by saying, unlike his brother, Rowan falls asleep in the car everyday, wakes up, and then easily goes back to sleep at nap time. He's lazy and gets bored in the car, is my assessment of the situation. That being said when we got home at ten Rowan had woken up from his ten minute snooze in the car. We ate lunch, played, read Halloween books. Then it was nap time.

Up until this point it had been a normal day. Then Rowan decided to turn two. Yes, today was that day, not his second birthday, but the day his mind, body, and spirit began to embody all that is two years old. I remember the day Zane turned two (see blog post here)vividly, not June 19th, 2012, but the day he starting acting like a crazy, strong willed, do the opposite of what I say, throw huge fits, make my own decisions, have strong opinions about everything, two year old. Today was that day for little tiny, body of a nine month old, Rowan. Sad was the day. The wheels had completely fallen off here by noon and they were no where in sight by the time Zach got home at seven fifteen this evening.

 Rowan Danny Korenak, Oct. 8th, 2014. Nineteen months old, two years old at heart!

Rowan wanted no part of nap time, going back and forth between playing happily in his crib, to screaming mamma, not a sad mamma crying, an angry, demanding mamma scream. Think Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers, trying to get meat loaf. We cuddled, we rocked, I tried to let him cry it out, I changed a poopy diaper, at which point I'm pretty sure he said "surprise" when I opened it. We ate a snack, we drank milk, but no this child had made up his little exhaustion filled mind that there would be no nap today!!!

So since Ro is the second child, after about an hour of this nonsense, I gave up and we moved on. There were things to be done and I only had one day off to do them. But as you can imagine the day was a disaster, made worse by Rowan's new two year old personality. He cried randomly and hit his brother the entire grocery shopping trip, he threw everything he could reach off the table at dinner time, then said "uh oh mamma and pointed." He bit Zane, successfully, twice, with multiple failed attempts in between. He climbed all over me while I tried to cook, clean, fold clothes, or just come up for air. He threw water at me during bath time, hit his brother with two different baseball bats, couldn't share anything, needed to be eating constantly, fell on the floor screaming randomly, or when I so rudely wouldn't let him eat the entire bag of croutons. At one point Rowan found himself in naked, sopping wet, timeout, on the bathroom floor, after refusing to stand up to be dried off and trying to hit me in the face. At which point he busted out a face that could not have looked more like Zach, so I died laughing, and I'm sure nothing was learned.

 Something like this, furrowed eye brows, "How dare you put me in timeout" type of look.

The tipping point, where I almost went into hysterics, well after I had a minor mental breakdown when Zach texted that he was still golfing with his boss and would be late, was after baths when I was laying on the floor of Rowan's room, being used as a jungle gym. Rowan sat on me, farted, then laughed hysterically, saying "I farted" in two year old speak. Meanwhile Zane is in the room next door singing and opera, he has composed himself, about how he was bad, and lost his skeleton privileges, (yes this is true), and that he tried to be good, but couldn't, and that he was never going to get his skeleton back. This song went on and on, I'm sure he was naked, dancing around, the whole time. That's when I died laughing at the state of my life at that moment and this crazy day.

When Zach got home I had to break the news to him that our tiny tiny boy, who is months away from being two had become two today and that I almost lost my mind. His response was that he felt like that was much sooner than Zane, but I mean look at Rowan's roll model. There were moments of cuteness, as there always are, and with all the craziness I decided to bring my camera outside and try to capture these two insane boys being them. Try to catch a freeze frame of the faces that can drive me insane now, but that I know I will so dearly miss soon. Here are my sweet blonde headed boys, being amazingly adorable. It shows the true power of motherhood, that I can still love these two so much it hurts, after all they put me through. It's a miracle!

Ro looking like daddy,

 then looking just like brother

 Crazy Zane

 Best buds

 My blue eyed boys

"Ahh Baa" 

 Rowan did learn how to say "I sorry bobo" after lots and lots of practice today. They adore each other, but somehow can't stop fighting. I guess that's the life of brothers.