“Up Up Up!” my younger son cries, jabbing the air with his finger. I swing him up onto my lap, resting him on my left leg. He continues to clamber up me, holding onto my shoulders. “Up Up!” he says again. I can only say, “Dude, you’re as far up as you can go!”

But that’s his personality – always up, always bigger, always faster. Like his nickname of Little Bird, he’s both tiny and longs to fly.

Even when I was pregnant, he was constantly stretching and kicking, reminding me of his presence. He came into the world in a rush, almost a month early and with a labor so short that I gave birth less than a half-hour after we left the house for the hospital.

And now he’s two.

Oddly enough, I’ve been thinking of him as two for a couple of weeks already. Part of it is because in my writing. It’s simply easier to write almost-two-year old than 23 month old. But a larger part is because he just seems so kid-like already, shedding his baby-like aspects like a bird shaking the remnants of egg-shell off its wings. He climbs, runs, points, talks, hugs, squeezes. Despite our best efforts, he falls off things so often I’m surprised he hasn’t learned how to fly yet.

He knows exactly what he doesn’t want to do. As he stands on a kitchen chair, I reprimand him: “Sit down!” He looks me straight in the eye and shakes his hips. After my mom asks him, “Say Nana?” he shakes his head and blows raspberries. Despite our attempts to stay serious, we smirk at his cuteness.

He also knows exactly what he wants and how to tell you, even if he doesn’t know the words. He hugs his stuffed elephant to his chest and declares “Mine! Mine!” He jabs his finger in the direction of the cereal he wants as if he’s directing military troops. When I tell him it’s bathtime, he points at his brother and lets out a tiny yelp, letting us know exactly who needs to splash with him. (Even though his brother takes up 5/6 of the tub.) Wrapping his arms around my legs, he squeezes and says “Mama!” Watching the 1970s Winnie the Pooh movie, he laughs hysterically, his whole little body shaking. Standing at the gate separating the kitchen from the living room, he insists, “Up! Up” no matter what you’re doing. Always, always “Up.”

After “Up!” his second favorite phrase is “What’s that?” While his vocabulary grows by a few words a week, his need for language is insatiable. He’ll point and say “what’s that?” about everything, from the butterfly decals on his wall to the cardinals on my pajamas to the photographs in books. If he knows the name for something, he’ll proclaim whatever he’s spotted as loudly as possible. Most of the time, we hear “Elmo!” shouted in the tiniest of voices. If he realizes the object matches something he’s seen previously, he’ll gesture in the direction of that thing, as if to say, “You know, that thing over there?” Over there could mean anything from the moon being outside to Mickey Mouse on his diapers.

In contrast to his older brother, who often stands back and watches, Little Bird jumps right in to a situation, physically or metaphorically. He plunges his hands into dirt, swirls his fingers in milk on the table, splashes water out of the bath, squishes play-doh between his fingers. Everything is so tactile to him, existing solely for him to experience it.

My little two-year-old, so little and yet so big. Gazing at his tiny face, I wonder how it’s been two years with him in our lives already. Yet, looking back, I see all of these little moments adding up into minutes, minutes into days, days into months, and months into years. All of these moments that have made up a beautiful little life so far, with so many more moments ahead of it.

For more reflections on my kids’ birthdays, check out last year’s post: On Little Bird’s First Birthday. To follow our adventures, be sure to follow us on Facebook!