Letter to our 33 month old

Dear William,

On September 8, 2014, you turned 33 months old. You are 40.5 inches tall and weigh 39.3 pounds. Sadly, you have outgrown the Wee Ride seat that attaches to your father’s bicycle… and, apparently, after searching for something comparable, there is no attachment bicycle seat or trailer for kids that are over 40 pounds. Apparently, kids who are over 40 pounds are supposed to be able to ride their own tricycle or bicycle?

Nourishment:

After your last huge growth spurt last month, you started eating pretty sparsely. I was concerned for awhile, but then reminded myself to look at your eating habits on a weekly basis, not a daily basis. I also reminded myself that your continued nursing fills whatever gaps in nutrition you may have.

Favorite books:

Your favorite books right now are MIghty Dads and the Belly Button book. You ask for it to be read any time you can, upon wake up in the morning, before nap, after nap, before bath, and before bed. You love to repeat what the dad says in a high, sing-songy voice. Every time you get to the crane page, you ask, “Where’s his wheels?” And then you say, “They’re not in the picture, you can’t see them right now.” If you happen to see any of the construction vehicles in real life, you say the words about them. So driving down the road, we’ll hear, “There’s a cement truck, he says, spin, spin, pour.”

Sleep:

Things have been great this month. You awakened a couple times this past month in the middle of the night with a bad dream, but other than that, you sleep through with no issues. You are also able to go back to sleep after I nurse you in the mornings. I’ve been tempted to let you sleep uninterrupted, however, you look forward to it as much as I do. I know this because I nursed you one morning and true to form, you went back to sleep. When you woke to find Grandma D. there, you were inconsolable and told her that, “Mommy forgot to nurse me.” I hadn’t forgotten, but you had slept so deeply, you thought I had. Oh child, I wouldn’t ever forget something that important!.

An interesting development has occurred this month … if you do take a nap, you do not nurse to sleep at night. Instead, after about 20 minutes of nursing, you unlatch and request to go to bed. Once in bed, you request that I snuggle with you for a couple minutes. So that’s what we do, and then when I leave you say, “Mommy has to go downstairs and do chores.” If you do not take a nap, you do nurse to sleep at night, usually within 5 minutes.

Things we did this past month:

08/09 – Sea World
08/16-08-20 – Big Bear (Zoo, Castle Rock hike, bicycle ride)
08/23 – Great OC Park for storytime, carousel and park & family time at Grandparent’s house
08/24 – playdate at We Play Loud (indoor playground)
08/30 – Irvine Spectrum (ferris wheel, train, playground)
08/31 – Slip-n-slide and pirate ship pool
09/01 – Great OC Park for Balloon ride
09/02 – pool time
09/03 – library book reading w/ Grandma
09/04 – gymnastics at MyGym
09/06 – stayed home — haha

Things I want to remember:

How just in the last month, when you’ve finished eating your dinner, you will ask, “May I be excused, please, mommy and daddy?” The first time you did it without prompting, your father and I stared at each other in shock.

How you love to hang and then drop and land. You also really love to climb. I’m grateful that we’re near such a large variety of parks that you can do just that to your heart’s content. You also love to just flat out run. You did not get that love of running from me. You also adore swimming, and I take full credit for that one. In fact, you climbed out of the pool using the side ladder for the first time just this past week.

You love pretend play, whether it’s eating pretend food or conversing with pretend characters, or playing pretend sports. We were at the park one day, and four girls congregated at a table and pulled out a bunch of little toys. You ran over and sat down at the table next to them and called me over. You watched them with their toys, and then imitated them with our empty table … we had a hilarious tea party, hid behind imaginary walls and ate imaginary food. It was the best hide and seek tea party meal I’ve ever had. The next week, we went to another park, and no one was playing basketball on their court. You pointed that out and then ran over to the court and started shooting your imaginary basketball. I was impressed.

How funny it is that you’ve started telling me, in the saddest of voices when you’ve done something you shouldn’t, “Oh, mommy, please forgive me.”

You’ve started asking your version of the infamous “why” question. It goes like this, “If I don’t ______, then what happens?” Fill in the blank with whatever we’re asking you to do or not do. We’ve found ourselves scrambling for appropriate answers when you’ve asked, “If I don’t stop and run into the street, what happens?” We reply, “You could get hurt and mommy and daddy would be very sad.” Then you say, “If I get hurt, then what happens?” It’s kind of endless.

If we’re using the restroom, you wonder in and ask, “Are you all done?” Apparently we do that to you, huh?

If you ask for something that we don’t understand, you’ll expound on the explanation with a description, and without pause (whether we understand or not), you say, “Ohhhhh! THAT’s what you’re talking about.” We affectionately call this toddler charades. ha

How funny it was to hear you say “holy toledo!” for the first time this past month.

How uplifting and encouraging you were while I was rock climbing with you in the Tula… “You’re doing good, mommy. You’re almost there! Keep going! You got this! You did it!”

How you were talking nonstop as we drove down from the mountains. We stopped at McDonalds and got you a Happy Meal. It came with a yellow car, and you spent the last hour of the commute with your head stuck in the Happy Meal box playing with your new car and looking at the pictures on the box.

You’ve started doing weird stuff with your food, like sucking off the salt on the pretzel sticks or sucking off the Greek yogurt on the granola bars. I instructed you on the correct way to eat them, and would periodically check on you to make sure you were actually eating them. After the 2nd check, you started saying defensively, “I’m eating it, mommy! I’m eating it!”

Followed on the heels of this defensive behavior, you’ve become aware of when I turn to look at you if we’re the car together. One night, you freaked completely out, with tears and yelling, because I dared to check on you to make sure you were OK, and you finally quieted enough to tell me, “Please don’t look at me, mommy.”

Every Thursday night we go to the beach. When we crest the hill, you say, “I see the water!” Then when we roll down the windows, you say, “I smell the beach!” Our most recent Thursday evening sojourn it was high tide. You looked around at the non-existent beach and said, “They took the beach?” Somehow, I guess you’ve learned about the infamous “they.”

We went to the pool a couple weeks ago and it hadn’t been cleaned very well. You were swimming around and then told us, “We’re in a dirty washing pit.”

One night, you informed me that, “I really like banana treats… but I don’t like apples at all.” <—That was news to me, since you eat them both just fine. Apparently, you're experimenting with communicating opposites.

When we went to the Great OC Park, we intended to go up in their big orange balloon. Your father put our name in and we were told it'd be about an hour. We waited 1.5 hours, playing in their playground, and then I noticed they had shut it down. Your father went to check and came back and told me they had crossed names off from underneath our name, so they'd taken people out of order. Righteous indignation, I went in and bitched at them. When I got back, you were upset. I asked you what was wrong, and you told me, "I wanted to go talk to them, too." So I took you in, and you told the lady who worked there “I’m so sad… I can't ride in the big balloon." Then you told her, "My feelings are OK." Then, a few days later we went back early in the morning, they hadn't even opened yet, so we waited and got a pager. We were able to go up in the balloon's first flight of that day. After the ride, you said you wanted to go back in and talk to them. I took you in and you ran up to the counter and said, "Thank you, I had SO MUCH FUN riding in the balloon."

How one evening last week, after we'd done our "get home" routine, I left to go swimming and 30 minutes into my swim I looked up to see you and your father at the gate. I let you guys in, after donning your swimsuit and floaties, you walked down the steps and into the pool. You pushed off on the step, trusting your weight to the floaties. As you did so, you sighed and said, "I finally get to go swimming." I guess you'd been waiting all day for that moment.

How going into the stores, going to see the toys is the highlight of your trip. You aren't asking to buy them, but you do love to go look at them and examine them…. and after a minute or so with each toy, you'll hand it back and say, "I'm all done with that. May I see that one now?"

How, one day, reading a Thomas book with you, I stumbled over the pronunciation of "Sodor." Without missing a beat, you corrected me with, "Sow-dor."

We have a funnel that sits on the kitchen counter. One day, you picked it up and used it like a megaphone.

During the week, after you wake and grandma D. takes you downstairs, you've started taking the cat hats out of the drawer and putting them on the cats. A kid truly after my own heart. I'm thinking these practice runs could come in handy for holiday pictures this year!

How one morning, just after waking, I asked you what you wanted to do that day. You replied, "Ice cream land is on my to do list."

How when I lift you out of your bed in the morning, you're all warm with sleep. You audibly sniff through your nose, and in a sleepy voice say, "Ohhh, your lotion smells good." If I ask you if your daddy or grandma smells good, you always give an unequivocal, "No."

How you randomly will tell me, "Mommy, I like you. You're so pretty."

How you've randomly started to open your arms wide and tell me, "I love you thiiiiiiis much, mommy."

And then sometimes, still, you'll curl yourself up, your head tucked under my chin. I breathe in deeply the scent of your hair and the scent of you. You still smell half baby, but half little boy now. I knew this day was coming, the little boy days. The days when you lose that soft baby skin, and the hairs on your arms and legs are no longer downy soft. It's happening… but those times when you curl into me, I remember those fleeting moments of pregnancy. Moments that seemed to go on forever because we were so impatient to meet you. All those times that I held you as a newborn, seemingly endless times, but are now long past. Your legs are strong, your arms are strong. Your posture is the perfect posture of a child, untouched by years or burdens. You are but three short months away from being 3. It seems unreal to me that years of intertility could drag on forever, but years of parenthood flee into memories made in a matter of seconds.

I know for a fact that if your father and I linked our hands together and spread them wide, that there still wouldn't be enough space in the universe that could demonstrate that we love you THIIIIS much.

Love you forever,

Momma