Thoroughly Two Years Old

I want to be clear here -- I'm well aware I am possibly just looking back on my girls with rose colored glasses -- but I do NOT remember two years old being quite so, um, crazy as it is with this little guy.  I remember being surprised with Annie that the 'terrible twos' wasn't so bad (threes though, don't get me started!)  Isaac is much more your stereotypical two year old.

He's bossy, opinionated, grumpy, moody, strong willed, just plain strong (Greg can barely keep him down for a diaper change) -- and the sweetest, most adorable, cuddly little guy in the whole wide world. 

He goes nonstop, he gets messy, he colors on walls, smears peanut butter on anything, he thinks sharing is for suckers, he pushes around his big sisters when they get in his way.  And he gives the best snuggles in the whole wide world.

He's the most talkative two year old I've ever met -- he talks and sings nonstop, in gigantic and hilarious sentences.  He'll say one thing, then just start to expand on it, adding more and more details in following sentences.  He repeats everything his sisters say, and turns around and uses a surprising amount of it in other conversations.  I mentioned singing -- he LOVES to sing.  He sings along with every CD we listen to in the van.  And he's super opinionated about what we listen to.  The Tangled soundtrack is his favorite.  He has quite the two year old little crush on 'Punzel' and talks about her constantly, and has stolen Ellie's Rapunzel pillow and moved it in to his own room.

Where he now sleeps in a toddler bed.  This is the earliest we moved a kid into a toddler bed (preferring the 'keep 'em in a crib for as long as humanly possible' way of parenting), but he's much bigger and climby than his older sisters and it was time.  It works fairly well.  Except that he ends up on the floor each and every night.  Sometimes clear across the room from his bed -- I have to be careful when I go in to get his crying little brother in the middle of the night that I don't step on Isaac, since he is often right in my path.  Then each morning he carries in his Pooh Bear, his Bear Blanket, his Cody Bear, his U of U blanket and sometimes a giraffe and comes in to cuddle with me. 

And now, a couple pictures of my boy.  All summer the kids have played outside, and barely tracked in even a bit of sand -- until this last week, when they started somehow bringing in giant piles of it.  Hiding in the girls hair, in their clothes, in Isaac's diaper.  I'm kinda shocked we even have more sand out there, there's so much I've vacuumed up in the last couple days.  Isaac came in the other day looking like this:

 He was not too happy about being cleaned up.  This is an ongoing theme in our lives (despite loving the actual bath more than just about anything else.)

Edited to add:  Of course after writing a post like this earlier in the day, I'd have the below experience later the same afternoon:
Lately Isaac has been doing his best to remind me why two years old get such a bad rap.  For instance.  Today he emptied an entire container of greasy diaper rash cream (Bag Balm, to be specific) ALL OVER his ENTIRE body, all over my bed, bedroom floor, computer desk, monitor and mouse, then SLID his little greased body DOWN my stairs to show off his handiwork (where we were making dinner).  I spent a chunk of the afternoon scrubbing my bedroom carpet and the stairs, making no less than 20 trips to empty my carpet shampooer as I used bucket after bucket of hot water and carpet cleaner to try and get it all out of the carpet . . . my bedroom carpet looks clean (cleaner than it was beforehand), the stairs I'm not as sure about . . . we will see once they fully dry . . .