I feel like I don’t give the Madman his proper due here on the blog; poor, neglected second-born that he is. As the third child I always swore I wouldn’t let my kids experience different treatment…that they would have equal billing in baby books and beyond. I’ve told you about old boxes of slides with my name spelled wrong, right? Yep…one of my parents (I won’t out the guilty party) spelled my name wrong nearly a year after I was born. Pretty good reason for me to try harder, right?

But, I haven’t. I must say that I didn’t even make a baby book for Matilda until she was 3. But then I did her first three years in beautiful oversized photo albums and never even attempted to start another. Perhaps Madman will get a baby book for his 3rd birthday but the truth is I didn’t document his first year as well as I did Matilda’s and I’ll have to cobble together his 1st year via this blog and my twitter archive.

Bieber hair

But this boy of mine, oh he has my entire heart. He’s tall for his age with a strong, athletic build. I let his blond hair get shaggy because I can’t get enough of it, but once it gets too far into Beiber-territory we get it chopped. He refuses to stand still for even a second so getting a photo is nearly impossible. But beleive me when I tell you I could right volumnes about this kid’s smile, his laugh and don’t even get me started on his dimples.

Dimple!

At 2 years and almost 7 months he’s finally just starting to talk with some clarity, which, to be honest, if he were my first I would have had him in and out of specialist offices by now. But he communicates well without a full grasp of language and gets along just fine so I’m trusting myself (and our pediatrician) that he’ll figure it out sooner or later. It does get him frustrated sometimes but if you don’t understand him he’ll just grab your hand and drag you to what he wants and makes you understand.

His favorite thing in life is his big sister. The two of them are pretty great together, and Madman wants nothing more than to be doing whatever Matilda is doing. His fearless nature coupled with his desire to do exactly what she’s doing has led to some harrowing experiences.

Madman is the one who is teaching us all to slow down to look at the bugs and dig in the dirt. He’s showing us to just go with the flow (especially if that flow includes wearing costumes in public) and to just laugh because laughing is fun. I just love this kid so damn much.