"Hey guys, what's going on?"

Most days when dad comes home from work, Max asks if he can put on my company ID badge, so I help him attach it to his waistband, and he gets a big kick out of the pull cord, and he says "Now I can go to work at Safeco!" and runs off.

The cool part is this ... on a few occasions, I've forgotten to get it back from him and put it in my bag so I have it for the next day. So a couple times, I've gotten off the bus downtown the next morning and thought "Uh-oh, I never got my badge back from Max." But each time, I've unzipped the pocket in my bag where I keep it and there it is. Without me telling him to, Max goes and puts it there when he's done.

He loves stuff like that right now, the process stuff, like stirring a pot of oatmeal, getting himself dressed, putting my trumpet back in its case. He's adamant (sometimes stubbornly so) about doing things for himself; he'll exclaim "I want to do some!" And it's nice to be able to say to Max "Go get some shorts on and get your baseball glove" and he'll run off giggling and come back a couple minutes later with the task completed. The stage at which your kid can do most things for themselves is quite a relief for mom and dad, especially going to the bathroom, which he does completely independently now. Mostly, it's gratifying to see him grow into this little free-thinking person, wanting to take some control of his life instead of having mom and dad do everything for him.

But somehow, this hasn't translated so well into getting him to pick up his toys at night ... oh well, a work in progress.

A couple other things to note that Max has been saying/doing lately:

• He prefaces almost everything with "maybe" or "because" as in "Maybe we can have some snacks!" or "Because we need to have some snacks!" (One thing we've never had issues with is getting Max to eat. He consumes as much food as I do, his 210-lb dad ... no exageration.)
• Lately, he'll stroll into a room where Joi and I are and very matter-of-factly say "Hey guys, what's going on?" ... that cracks me up everytime. He also often says "What are we going to do next?" whenever we leave somewhere or stop playing something. For Max, life is a non-stop adventure.
• He's also saying his ABCs in Spanish, and he'll just randomly drop a Spanish word in here or there, like as we're walking out the door, he'll say "Let's go ... vaminos." We have to thank his daycare ELDC for most of this, with an appreciative nod to Dora and Diego.
• One of his favorite things lately is to have a parade through the house. He says "Should we get the trumpet out?" So he gets it out from under the bed, puts the mouthpiece in and hands the horn to me and we march through the house, me playing some march-like ditty and him humming into the mute as if its some kind of horn-like instrument. We have to get some video of this.

As we approach his 3rd birthday in a few months, his old Dad's heart swells when I think about what a perceptive, sweet and charming little dude we have for a son. Raising a two-year-old isn't easy, but Joi and I often talk to each other about how, overall, Max is well-behaved, very rarely throws tantrums and a real pleasure to be around.

For now ... stay tuned.