Such a big boy!

Sweet Nathan has passed a couple of big milestones recently. He turned two last month. Actually, if we counted all the birthdays he has celebrated since then, he'd be about 130 now. He really got into the whole birthday thing this year (having three in our house in close succession probably helped!), and we sing and blow out pretend candles several times a day, most days.

Nathan became a cousin when Baby Natalie was born right before his birthday. It's crazy to me to think that this is just how old Rachel was when Nathan was born! Natalie is a sweet baby and we adore her. (Well, one of Nathan's early sentences was "I don' lahk baby cuh-yen," which still has David in stitches whenever he thinks of it. But that was just once, and he was in a mood. Most of the time he talks of her quite adoringly!)














AND--here's the biggie--Nathan got a haircut! He went from having a wild mop



to having a darling, fairly tame little 'do.



And it makes him look like such a big boy! Hard for Mama to get my head around, but really quite cute. It's already growing in curly again and a little wilder, which helps with his image, I'm sure.

People told me, when Magellan turned out to be a boy, that we would have fewer battles about clothes and colors than we've had with his sister. Not so! Shortly before his birthday, Nathan received a pair of blue socks from Grand-Merr and discovered how fun it is to choose his socks every day. He promptly began refusing to wear his usual white socks. Now he has a variety of colors to choose from, and the battle each morning is to persuade him that one of the several clean and attractive pairs is a good pair to wear for the day. I haven't quite got the rules figured out, but some of the colors are just less appealing on some days, and stripes are definitely a last resort. (As in, "Well, Mom, if you can't get it together to do laundry every other day, then I suppose I'll deign to put these striped monstrosities on my feet, purely for warmth.") Same for clothes--he's been choosing his outfits (often less enthusiastically than Rachel, to be sure, but not always!) for some time, which makes for some interesting pairings. He's a ton of fun, and now that he can talk so much more, he's become even more amusing--both to his parents and to his beloved Rachel!