Letter to our 3 Year 2 month Old

Dear William,

On February 8, 2015, you turned 3 years 2 months old. You are 42″ tall and weigh 41 pounds 11 oz. You are wearing 5T shirts, 4T pants, 5T footed sleepers and size 11 extra wide toddler shoes.

Things we did this month:

01/17 – Santa Ana Zoo with both Grandmas
01/17 – playdate with Ryan at his house
01/19 – First Soccer Class
01/23 – First Dance Class
01/31 – Mountain cabin for the weekend — it snowed!!!

Tuesdays, Pre-K Library storytime and crafts
Tuesdays & Thursdays, Gymnastics Class

Firsts:

You rode your scooter correctly for the first time this month, keeping one foot on the board and using the other foot to push yourself along. Before, you would have both feet on the board and either just stand there or wait for someone to push you.

Sleep:
The ever elusive nap is rapidly fading. On weekends, I no longer bother offering you a nap. Weekdays with Grandma D., she offers you “quiet time” and I prefer that to be offered around 1pm. If you do happen to fall asleep, I’ve requested she wake you at 2:30pm, and even with that wake time, you aren’t able to fall asleep until 10:00pm at the earliest.

Nourishment:
You do well with your eating, for the most part. You are at least willing to try most any food at least once. Although, you seem to be overly sensitive to “spicy” things. This “sensitivity” is clearly your father’s fault, as I like my hot sauce with a side of food. ha! In fact, you now look at my plate and ask me, “Is that your spicy food, mommy?”

You do well when we go out to eat, although, I’ve noticed you do have a definite “transitional outburst” when we get to the restaurant. I believe this is due to you being hangry, and I try to head it off with an “appetizer” when we get seated. If I forget, then I find myself wondering where the contrary child sitting at our table came from.

We continue to nurse and it is truly one of the joys of my life and one of the most calming and comforting things for you. It is often one of the tools I use to comfort you when you are upset or to help you fall back to sleep if you have an early wake time.

Nursing you before work one morning, you reached over your head and held your other hand. Or so I thought. You looked up at me and held eye contact with a smile curving your lips as you continued to nurse. I asked you, “Are you holding your own hand?” You unlatched and said, “No. This says I… love… you. See?”

What you had been doing was not holding your other hand, but rather holding down your ring and middle finger with your other hand so you could make the ‘I love you’ sign to me.

Things I want to Remember:

Talking of all the places we could go in an airplane, you asked me, “Can I just fly up in the sky?”

You are accumulating a to-do list for when you get older. You tell me, “When I’m older I can scoop cat poop and go to Mommy’s work and type on the computer, and then go to Daddy’s work and type on the computer. And I can fill that (pointing at the humidifier in your room) with water and turn the sound machine on and turn movies on downstairs and drink coffee!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ve told me that you don’t want to get older and carry daddy around.  Then you asked me, “Are you going to get little?”

Getting ready for work one morning, you touched my nylons and asked, “What is this on your leg, mommy?” Apparently, I don’t often wear nylons?

Walking on your knees, you told me, “I’m a snail!” And if you walk with your hands down and butt in the air, you tell us, “I’m a bear!”

You REALLY enjoyed your visit to the Queen Mary and you didn’t want to leave, even though we had seen everything that was there. A couple days later, you told your Grandma D. that you have three homes: Big Bear, the Queen Mary and Home-home.

After our visit to the Queen Mary, I now have to include thanks for that in our nightly prayer. If I don’t, you will speak up and tell me, “Thank you, Jesus, for the Queen Mary. TOOT! TOOT!”

If anyone has a birthday within your vicinity, like at a restaurant, you will say, “I need a birthday too…” What you mean is, you “need” a birthday cake.

When we were out to eat this past month, I asked you if you wanted some steak. You very politely replied, “No, thank you. I’m fine thank you for asking, though.”

When you see a police car or motorcycle with their lights flashing, you say, “Uh oh. Someone’s in trouble.”

How clever you are when I was trying to get you to take a nap so we could stay out late in the evening. You comfort nursed and then put Froggy over your eyes for 10 minutes, then pulled it off and said, “I took a little snooze!”

How hilarious it was to me, one night I was recording you while you sang Away in a Manger. As it happened, you got midway into the 2nd verse and saw the camera and stopped. I told you I wasn’t going to record it if you weren’t singing and turned to walk away. You then followed me all the way down the hallway repeatedly saying the next lyric, which just happened to be, “I want to love the Lord Jesus!  I want to love the Lord Jesus!”

Along the same lines, on my old iPhone I have an app called Bible stories for Kids.  It tells stories with interactive pictures and, if you haven’t taken a nap and it gets to be evening time and you ask to nurse (like when I get home from work), I use it as a tool to keep you awake.  You asked for it one night when it was close to bedtime and I told you it was time for bed.  Your response was, “But I want my Bible!”

One evening out to dinner at a restaurant that had plates displayed on the walls, you started pointing at them and then said the little Apostles poem: “This is how the apostles go, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John…” and named every single one of them, pointing at a different plate for each one. I don’t know what the connection was with the plates and the apostles, but it was quite hilarious.

I finally got the Christmas tree undecorated and put away before the end of January.  You found an ornament that I had missed and you told me, “What should I do with this?  Should I put it on the tree? Daddy go get the tree and put it back up!”

You still love Signing Time, and particularly the TreeSchoolers. Now you tell me, “You’re Rachael, mommy! You sing pretty!”

You love to pretend that you’re daddy coming home from work. You go out into the garage and then come in and tell me, “I’m daddy! I was cleaning cat poop!”

How you found a tiny little fireman hat for a doll and you put it on your head and told me, “I’m a fireman!”

When we had just gotten over being sick, I came home from work and told you that I thought I was getting sick again. You told me, “No, mommy I don’t want you to be sick.” I replied, “I don’t want to be sick either! What should I do?” You replied, “Wash your hands!”

Every day when we were all sick, you would go ask your father, “Daddy? Are you feeling better?”

It’s always to neat to find out what’s on your mind. One night you started laughing while you were nursing yourself to sleep. I asked you what was funny. You replied, “Wood chips on the sidewalk at the park!”

You are now obsessed with germs. So, when you wash your hands, you tell me, “Talk about the germs, mommy!” And I’m supposed to enact the germs going down the drain. Then, if you sneeze, I tell you to cover your mouth and you tell me, “No, I’m spreading my germs EVERYWHERE!!! I’m going to make mommy and daddy sick!”

You like to pretend that your bath toys are shoes. You hold them like you’re putting them on your feet and tell me, “Say ‘That’s not a shoe’ mommy”. You also love the Soap Game, where I put foaming soap on your hands, and you clap them together and see where the soap goes. You love to try to get the soap on me and ask me after every “clap”, did I get you? Where did I get you?

One evening we left the drive-through and I checked the bag and remarked that there was no Splenda in there for my drink. From the backseat I heard you say, “Is the fireman supposed to come?” Confused, I asked you why a fireman would be coming. You replied, “Because Chick-Fil-A forgot to give you Splenda.”

Driving to our mountain cabin, you started telling us a story that went like this, “The bad guy fought the mice away and then they do dancing… Grandma’s not supposed to stop it, but that’s the whole story… The good guys are soldiers and the bad guy looked like the good guys and he chased the mice away. Then there was dancing.” When I asked you what the story was, you said, “That’s the Nutcracker Suite.”

When we went to the restroom in our mountain cabin, you told me, “This toilet is better than at home.”  I replied, “Oh?”  You said, “Yes because it’s Big Bear and it’s softer!”  (It is softer, it’s a padded toilet seat.)

Watching the Planes 2 movie, every time the music score would come on during the movie, you would ask, “Who’s playing that music?”

When we were headed to the candy store, you said, “I can’t have that! It has sugar in it and sugar is bad for me!”

One day you asked me, “Does a butterfly give me butter?”

When I was sick and trying to sleep, you came in to check on me and then left, you told me, “I’m leaving the door open just a little bit for you, mommy. See that little bit of light? That’s better than turning the big light on, now isn’t it? You go on to sleep now, mommy.”

One morning you woke up with a stuffy nose. You asked me, “If I have booger in my nose, I can blink really hard and that will make it better, right?” I asked you, “Oh, did that work for you?” You replied, “No.”

You stopped by my work one day this past month to nurse on my lunch hour.  I took you to the restroom and in our restroom at work, we have poo pourri spray.  You spotted the bottle and asked what it was, I told you.  You replied, “And WHAT does Poo Pourri do?”

You really notice details, like this story your Grandma D. shared with me, “William saw an “M” on the helmet of the driver of a motorbike yesterday. He started laughing & said that the driver came from McDonald’s. The letter was very small. I didn’t even see it until he talked about it.”

You have become very interested in maps this past month, one night you pointed at a map and said, “I’m going to Egypt where Abraham lives!”

You randomly will stop and pray, for example, if the sunset is particularly beautiful, you’ll say, “Thank you, Jesus, for the beautiful sunset.”  Then you report back to me, even though I’m standing right there with you, “I told Jesus about the beautiful sunset.  He says it IS beautiful!”

It’s so funny to look at you sometimes and realize that 3 years have gone by in seemingly the blink of an eye.  I look at these things I want to remember about you and wonder how you could possibly be any funnier, yet you’ve had this personality since you were a small baby.  Every night when we nurse you to sleep, I wonder how my life could possibly be any more blessed, or how my heart could be any fuller. I spend so much of my time when I’m home laughing about something that either you or your father are doing or saying.  And another thing I’m so grateful for is that you brought the name “Grandma” to my mom, and she came “home” to be near me, so that she could know you, help teach you, and take care of you when we’re at work.

This is not how I imagined my life could be 15 years ago, 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago.  No.  I couldn’t possibly have imagined how blessed I would be today.  Blessed, ten times a William.

Pictures from this month can be found here:  Link

Love you forever,

Momma