20 months going on 4 years old

Gabe's cuteness these days is staggering. He is sweet and helpful and charming and chatty and scrumptious. My parents and I spend every two seconds exclaiming over something else he said or did. He imitates everything you say, and combines 2 or 3 or even 4 words together to make mini sentences. "Mama go cahhhr, Gabe get down walk, bye choo choo, Nonna help Gabe, I sit chair," and so on. He narrates everything we do, and has definite opinions about the state of the world. He says 'no' firmly with a shake of his head and he cannot be persuaded otherwise, no matter how many different ways I present the same question. His 'yesh' is the same way. A sweet nod and a smile if he likes your offer. He answers me in Spanish or English and seems to understand almost everything we say.

He loves cars and diggers and trains and trucks. I've taken him on miniature trains at amusement parks or to stand on the subway overpass and he can barely contain his excitement. While we drive, he points out every digger or 'bire (fire) truck' or car. His newest interest is dinosaurs and the dinosaurs seem to engage in serious battles where one dinosaur bites the head or tail of the other one. Then they call out "help" (which is his favorite request from any one of us) to one of their other dinosaur buddies and they get rescued.

He separately identifies baseballs, soccer balls, footballs, basketballs and golf balls. He will also correctly identify the sport from its various paraphernalia, such as a goal net for soccer or a bat for baseball or a helmet for football. He also, to my chagrin and his father's pride, can recognize the Red Sox or Patriots logos as their respective sports. He kicks hard and throws harder and swings a golf club with follow through and occasionally even hits a baseball with the baseball bat if I lob it at him slow enough. He imitates the professional athletes on television, so he lifts his leg when he pitches and lines up the soccer ball before he kicks it. I remind myself regularly that he is only 20 months old, because he seems so much bigger than that.

Everyone tells me that he will seem huge when this baby arrives, but that seems impossible because he is already huge. He is barely a baby and so much little boy all at once. I can't look at him without smiling, even when he has thrown his 79th piece of food on the floor. Today he angrily threw my cell phone onto the public bathroom floor and when I admonished him, he sheepishly looked up at me through his long eyelashes and said "soyry Mama". And then my heart broke just a tiny bit. Maybe if I box him up he'll stay this size forever?

** (He's actually 21 months now, but I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago)