Madmartigan, 2 Years Old | one day, you'll be looking out your window when something wonderful comes your way

About Mads, 2 Years 11 Months Old:

• Wolfman's mama taught Mads how to give a thumbs up. It's so dorky and so adorable.
• When Mads and Ella find poop in the back yard, they stop everything and announce the fact until an adult scoops it.
• Mads reads along to Little Blue Truck with me at bed time; he's memorized nearly the entire thing.
• Everything in his hands is a potential grappling hook or "bat line"--it's the Batman effect.
• He plays at going pee on the toilet, sitting and making a "pssss" sound with his mouth, but at this point he does not actually use the potty.
• Mads is becoming more engaged than ever at the public library preschool story time (to which we go once a week), but he still will not participate in the songs and dances (though he'll sing the songs at home).
• Mads says, "Do you guys smell that? It smells like Joker."
• Mads pantomimes fighting the Joker.
• Mads and Ella are very color aware. Everything they experience, they describe by its placement on the rainbow. Ella, however, is more insistent on the gender specifications of certain colors; specifically, she insists, pink and purple are girl's colors. (And she continues to insist this fact no matter how many times Wolfman and I tell her, "all colors belong to all people; there's no such thing as a girl's color or a boy's color.") When Ella's not around, Mads might tell me, "Oh, no, that's Ella's" if I pull the purple plate out of the cabinet at lunch time, but he's more willing to "bend the rules" than Ella.
• Mads says, "I got to drive my wife."
• He calls all spiders "Itsy Bitsy."
• He wants me to join him in all things--eating cookies, taking vitamins, watching Scooby Doo.
• Whereas Ella takes after me (and, I know, her mother, and so probably, our mother) and needs time in the mornings to wake (in which she sits on the sofa quietly and only grumpily if bothered, wrapped in a blanket), Mads wakes in the morning WIDE OPEN--with noise and energy.
• Favorite shows and movies: Cars, Tarzan
• Favorite books: Can I Come Too?, Your Alien

Madmartigan, 2 Years Old | doin' alright

About Mads, 2 Years & 10 Months Old:

• Martigan says, "I got a birthday coming up! Yeah! I want that birthday!"
• Martigan's favorite color is blue and for his birthday he requests "a blue present."
• This month Martigan spent his first weekend away from Mom and Dad, spending one night with Jared's mom and one night with my grandmother and sister. He did brilliantly, of course, and didn't miss us at all.
• This month Martigan also came down with the croup. It was unpleasant and a little scary, with a few nights of sleep loss for me, but he came through it like a champ (even if he did spit out his last dose of medicine).
• When Mads was feeling down and sickly, he asked to watch Paranorman--apparently that is his comfort movie.
• During the course of his illness, whenever I asked how he was doing, he answered hoarsely, "I doin' alright." He is always "doin' alright."
• He's been practicing putting his shoes on by himself (almost always he gets them on the wrong feet.)
• He surprised me by singing (and teaching Ella) one of the songs we sing at library story time each week. He knew not only the tune, but all the words, which surprised me because:
• he still does not participate much during story time, and prefers to hang back and watch the other kids interacting.
• Martigan has been practicing some new dance moves that have me in stitches, and the more I laugh, the more he wiggles. 
• Martigan is a clown.
• Martigan is also Batman.
• Martigan says, "I don't like to behave."
• Favorite book: Little Blue Truck
• Favorite show/movie: Batman, Scooby Doo (and of course the classic, Scooby Doo Meets Batman)

Madmartigan, 2 Years Old | My pad is kind of messy, and there's whiskers on my chin, and I'm all hung up on music, and I always play to win

About Mads, 2 Years and 9 Months Old:

• Mads asks, "Mommy, will you call me Batman?"
• He's been suffering a touch of separation anxiety with me lately, perhaps because of my work schedule. When I'm home with him, he's insistent that I be the one to change his diaper, fix his food, read his books to him, etc. "No, I want Mommy do it." On my days off of work he requests, frequently, "Mommy, don't leave today."
• He tells me and his dad, "You're my best friend." And also, "I love you so much."
• He refers to Ella as, "my cousin, Ella" and still uses the Spanish pronunciation of the double L's in her name--Eya.
• He skips E, F, and G, and jumbles "L, M, N, and O" so that they are all one mumbleword, but otherwise can sing the entire alphabet, in the correct order.
• He knows the first verse of "Dream a Little Dream of Me," and smiles so dreamily at the line, "night breezes seem to whisper I love you," in particular.
• Mads protests, "Hey, I just wanted to check that out!"
• Mads says, "Googie is a cool girl, and she is really sweet. You're really sweet, too." (Googie is Shaggy's "adoring but liberated" girlfriend in one of the Scooby Doo features Mads has been watching this month.)
• Firsts this month: comic book store visit (where he was most impressed by the Batmobile collector toys and an old Marvel arcade game he called "the computer"), dim sum, strawberry picking
• Favorite new words: spooky, infinity ("inbinny"), granola ("granona"), excavator, pine needles
• Favorite shows and movies: Scooby Doo (in any incarnation), Toy Story 3
• Favorite books: Goodnight Little Monster

"I'm A Man," Spencer Davis

Madmartigan, 2 Years Old | I'm a hot air balloon that could go to space

"Happy," Pharrell Williams

Madmartigan, 2 Years Old | no his mind is not for rent to any god or government, always hopeful yet discontent

"Mommy! Look at me!"

About Mads, 2 1/2 years old:

• He loved riding around in our rental car in early January. He referred to it as "my new red car," and told everyone sadly, "my red car all gone," after we returned it.
• He sings along to songs now, like "Rebel Rebel" (singing, gleefully, "hot tramp") and "Another One Bites the Dust."
• He is obsessed with his back pack. He loves zipping and unzipping all the pockets, taking things out, putting them back in. He tries wearing his back pack, though it is comically much too big.
• Martigan says, "You're ridiculous!"
• Martigan says, "I not got a tail. Lunchbox has a tail. I got a butt and a penis."
• He still does not sleep through the night.
• Martigan announces, "I want to be king!" and puts Lunchbox's anti-chew collar over his head.
• Martigan says, "Mommy, you got sharps on you. They hurt me!" when his foot brushes against my leg in bed one morning.
• At the breakfast table one morning Mads looks at the crust on his toast and tells us, "I can't like this." After Wolfman breaks the toast in half to expose the jelly and butter in the middle, Mads says, "Hey! I can like this now! It don't want to bother me!"
• Favorite shows/movies: Thunder & The House of Magic, Dora the Explorer, Home
• Favorite books: Julia's House for Lost Creatures, The Tree House that Jack Built, Tap Tap Bang Bang

A conversation with Mads

Me: "Mads, what are you thinking about?"

Mads: "Nothing, Mommy."

Me: "What's going on in your head?"

Mads: "Are there toys in there?" He places a hand on top of his head. "I can't get them. I can't get those toys."

"Tom Sawyer," Rush