Letter to our 3 year 4 month old

Dear William,

On April 8, 2015, you turned 40 months old.

You weigh 44 pounds and are 42 1/2″ tall You are in size 5T footed sleepers (getting too small), size 4T pants/shorts, size 5T shirts (or 4-6 boys/XS shirts).

Things we did:

03/12 – Taste of Jay’s catering event
03/13 – Irvine Spectrum, ferris wheel and train
03/14 – first real train ride (Amtrak!)
03/14 – Zoomars petting zoo
03/14 – Annual Green Dinner (with Irish dancers)
03/22 – Sea World/Breakfast with Elmo & Friends
03/28 – Bunny Blast (our city’s Easter event)
04/04 – Lunch at Johnny Rockets and visit some friends
04/05 – Easter!  (Mass w/ daddy, egg hunt at Grandparent’s house)

Monday, Wednesday & Friday – swim class
Monday, Wednesday & Friday – MyGym
Tuesday, pre-k library story time and craft
Thursday, dance class w/ Miss Nicole

Firsts:

03/24 – With your father’s help, you cleaned up your first cat poopy. HA!
03/28 – First port-a-potty usage
04/04 – played your first pinball game (Star Wars)

Language Development:

Sometimes you call Toy Story, “Stoy Tory.”
Girl is “Grirl.”
Mebraska is Nebraska
Abby from Sesame is Street is “Butterfly Grirl.” She gave you a hug and a pat on the head at the Elmo and Friends breakfast, and you are totally enamored with her now.

Sleep:

This past month has been challenging for us. A few nights you’ve had trouble unwinding/falling asleep.  It seems like you have a lot on your mind sometimes.  You’ve been waking in the middle of the night to go pee, sometimes twice, and then sometimes waking early.   I suppose it’s likely that you’re having some sort of developmental leap, as the inability to relax has always been one of the signals for you.

Food and Nourishment:

You are still obsessed with grilled cheese sandwiches, so that’s an easy meal if we’re being lazy.  We’ve been getting trays of fresh vegetables, we keep finding deals on them… big trays of crudites, and since your father and I are crunching away on them, you’ve started doing it, too.

Your creativity is extending to your food… on leftover night, you had (surprisingly haha) a grilled cheese sandwich. You took some mac-n-cheese from the bowl and put it on top of  your sandwich and informed us, “I’m having a mac-n-cheese sandwich now!”

Nursing continues to be a joy for us.  I’ve noticed that I’m using our nursing pillow for only 2 sessions… the arrival home and the bedtime.  All the other sessions, we’ve finally figured out how to nurse comfortably without the pillow.

Favorites this month:

Color: Red
Song: Siamese song from Lady & the Tramp; Also, El Shaddai (Amy Grant)
Movie: Lion King
Food: Grilled Cheese sandwich
Snack: Greek yogurt covered granola bites (aka melon balls)
Dessert: Chocolate
Fruit: Honeydew
Vegetable: Asparagus & soybeans
Class: Swimming
Teacher: Miss Michelle (swim class)
Store: Walmart

Things I want to remember:

How you woke one morning (3/25) and were singing El Shaddai and Thy Word (both Amy Grant songs) to yourself at 6 AM. I asked you what you were doing, you said, “Singing to Jesus.” I told you Jesus likes to hear you singing.

How we went to Taco Tuesday (it’s a local “family” style bar) and you really wanted to bring your music player in and listen to your songs.  We told you that you wouldn’t even be able to hear your songs because it is so loud in there.  You were insistent, and we shrugged… picking our battles.  So you set your player on the table and were looking around at all the TVs in there and you stared at one TV in particular and said, “Oh my goodness, that’s Amy Grant!”  I looked at the TV and it was on commercial, but I saw no Amy Grant.  It wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realized you were talking about your music player… I had just put a few Amy Grant songs on it the night before, and you didn’t know I had done that.

How sometimes you just start doing stuff that drives me up the wall and I realize that everything I’m saying to you is a correction of some sort. So I just take you outside and then everything I’m telling you is a fun thing to do. I’ve heard this referred to as a “Yes Space” and I love that name for it.

How one day, I tried to pick you up and you were all limp. I told you that you were a noodle. You thought that was pretty funny. I put you in the Tula and as I leaned in the car to turn off the engine, you got a blast of air in your mouth from the A/C. You said, “The noodle ate some air! The noodle likes air!” Then as we walked through the store, you asked me to blow in your mouth so you could eat some more air.

How sometimes when we watch a movie on the weekend, we will nurse and then when you were done nursing, I turned on my stomach/side to take a nap on the couch. You fit yourself to me like a little puzzle piece. It was one of the best naps I’ve ever taken… although you didn’t.  You tell me you can’t sleep when the sun is awake.

We let you have your first Lifesaver from an Easter egg this month.  You finished one, and we left for dinner.  You asked where your egg was, I told you it was at home.  You replied with great urgency, “Oh!  Drive back to home and get the egg!  I need more!”

You love the Old Oak Tree song, “One little owl says who who, two little owls say who who, three little owls say who who as they sat in the old oak tree”  Now you’ve started correcting me if I put silly things, like cars, in the old oak tree with, “Oh, silly mommy, cars don’t sit in the oak tree, they drive on the street!”

You were role playing the characters of Frozen.  You tripped and fell down.  In concern, I asked you what had happened.  You matter-of-factly said, “I melted.”  Obviously, you were Olaf.

While we were waiting for our food at Sonic after the Bunny Blast event, in the interest of keeping you occupied by something other than your hunger, I told you to count the cars going by.  So you said, “1, 2, 3… that car is in trouble.  1, 2, 3… that car is in trouble, too.”  I wondered how every third car felt about being in trouble. haha

Hilarious kid that you are, we were eating dinner in the back yard.  In excitement, you got up to look at something, I told you it was dinnertime and to get back in your chair.  So you grabbed your chair and held it up to your rear end and started walking around.  Cheeky little thing!

Your father has an awful time taking you down off of his shoulders.  Sometimes it takes him 2 or 3 tries!  Why?  Because you clamp your legs around his neck and holler, “No!  I’m sticky!”  And then after that happens, you find yourself afflicted with “stickiness” and often end up stuck to my legs or daddy’s legs.  Such a terrible thing to happen to you!

Swim classes have been a great success.  I see the progress on the videos your Grandma D. takes and also when we take you to our community pool.  You are excited to get in the water, so very happy.  You tell me, “Let me go!”  You role play that you are your other classmates, Logan and Millie, and you pretend to take their turn, willingly flipping over and floating on your back.  You call your legs and feet “kickers” and say, “Where’s my kickers?”  You also call me Miss Mommy during “class.”

How you like to lie flat on your belly in the bath tub and blow bubbles with your mouth, and then you say you are going to be a swim teacher when you grow up.  I tell you you need to get a bit bigger.  Then you said, “I’m bigger now and I’m the swim teacher. I am Miss Michelle. Today we are only blowing bubbles, we are not putting our eyes in the water today, OK?”

Your dance class is going better now that we’ve switched teachers.  While you still don’t love it like you do your swim class, you really like your teacher.  In fact, I think you tolerate the class because you like the teacher so much.  For some reason in your new dance class, the teacher uses different color spots for the kids to stand on.  After one day of you being traumatized by someone switching spots and taking “yours”, you now use your Froggy to save your spot for you.  You have almost become preoccupied with it.

When you start to feel overwhelmed with something the dance teacher is doing, she backs off, gives you a bit of space and lets you observe for awhile before requesting your participation.  And then she comes alongside you and helps guide you.  I am grateful to her for her patience and intuitive handling of you.   When I asked you this past week if you dance with the other little girls, you emphatically declared, “NO! No, I don’t.  I dance with Miss Nicole.”  Which tells me you are very possessive of your teacher.

Grandma forgot to bring Froggy to one of your dance classes.  You got about halfway there and she remembered and told you, “Oh dear, if we go back to get it, we’ll be late to class.”  You responded, “Take the freeway then!”

How proud of you I am that you willingly and happily let me floss your teeth (we started doing this after your dentist visit a couple months ago).  It helps that I found some kid flosser sticks with different colored animals.  Your favorite is the red crab, next is the orange monkey, next is the green dolphin and least favorite (sadly to me) is the blue elephant.

One night while you were in the bathtub, your father and I started chasing each other in the hallway outside of your bathroom.  You started laughing hysterically and when I looked in on you, you were “running” in the bathtub and were splashing water everywhere with your legs.

I bought a neat spinning thing at Big Lots, which you played with and when I leaned over to buckle you into your car seat,  it got stuck in my hair.  I managed to pull it out (with some hair loss of course), and your father fixed it and put it up on top of my dresser.  You spotted it, pulled up a chair, got it, brought it to me and informed me, “I found this! It isn’t in your hair anymore!”

It truly is amazing the things you notice, like, you were eating lunch with your Grandma D. in front of the library before story time one day.  You said, “Hey, there’s a bear on that flag!”  Of course, there would be. There is a bear on the California flag which was flying there.  Or, one morning, you said, “You’re not wearing your purple and black socks. Those are red and green stripes.”  Yep, sure enough, I had switched socks that morning.

How we came out of Walmart one day and the person who had parked in the handicapped spot had parked half in their spot and half in the wheelchair unloading area.  You looked at it for a minute and then asked, “Is somebody sick or something?”  I said, “I don’t know, why do you ask?”  You pointed and declared, “Their wheel is on the side that says ‘No parking’  they must be sick or something.”

You got water in your shoe one day from going through a puddle, and when the water streamed out of it with your next step you said, “Oh no! That’s pee coming out of my shoe!”

Sitting on the toilet at church, you said, “Get out poopy!”  After a moment, you turned and told me, “The poopy says no.”

Imitating the Frozen song, Let it Go, you sang, “Here I poop, and here I’ll stay.”

Eating a slider at the taste test event, you asked, “This is a slider?”  Yes, you were told.  You asked, peering curiously at the bun, “Is there a slide in there?”

You discovered a hole in my pajamas where a seam is coming loose.  You stared at it for a second, poked your finger in it and then informed me that I needed to go to the tailors.  I asked you why, thinking I could just fix it myself.  You replied, “Because you broke your clothes, mommy.  The tailor fixes broken clothes!”

You’ve started calling me “mom” (instead of mommy) just because you’re being mischievous.  In response, I’ll call you “Sim” (short for Simba from the Lion King movie).  You’ll say, “No, no, momMY…, it’s SimBA!”  You know exactly what you’re doing, and you know exactly why I’m shortening your name, too.  Smarty pants.

When you role play the toys in Toy Story, you jump off the top of your toy chest onto the entry way.  Before you do it, you yell, “To infinity and beyond!” Spread out your arms and then go.  One day after you jumped, you told me, ” I am a cool toy!”

How we were going through some of your toys and you came across a woolly mammoth toy.  You held him up and with a confused look on your face asked, “What movie do I live in?”

I took you into a local children’s resale shop and you excitedly asked as we entered, “Can I go look at all the broken toys?”  I said you could.  After a few minutes perusing the toys, you said, “Mommy, these toys… none of these toys are broken!”

More of the influence of the Bible for Kids app, you were role playing the other night and you informed us, “I’m Jesus and, daddy?  You are a Roman soldier.”  Before you could name me, I asked you if I could be Mary.  “Yes, yes, you may be Mary, mommy.”  I was grateful because I didn’t want to have to do reprogramming of you that I’m your mommy, which is what your father faced after an hour of him being a Roman soldier trying to convince you that he is actually Joseph.  ha

If I pull toilet paper off the roll to wipe you, you are quick to admonish me, “Don’t take too much! That’s wasteful!”  Same if I turn the water on to wash your hands, you’ll say, “Not that much. You’re just wasting water!”  And then the soap squirter, “Just a little soap.  My hands aren’t that big.”

You still love to be told parts of a movie like it’s a story.  Like, if you’re upset or being uncooperative or just need to have your mind on something else, I’ll start a story with, “Did you hear about Frank?”  And then launch into the story of Frank in the field and being awakened by Lightning and Tow Mater tractor tipping (Cars movie)… or the story about the Siamese cats coming out of the basket and causing a ruckus (Lady & the Tramp).  I’ll probably be adding something from Toy Story to my repertoire.

At an outing this past weekend, there was a fountain.  You walked around it, up stairs, down stairs, another little boy walked up to it and started putting his hands in the water. You walked up to him before I could get to you and told him, “Hey, you! Stop that! That’s my water!  You’re getting on my nerve!”  (I am being totally serious when I say, I really don’t know where you get some of these things you say.  They are NOT things that any of your caregivers say around you.  I just did a search of the Toy Story movie script, and apparently “getting on my nerves” and “stop that” are part of the script… Toy Story is one of your favorite movies right now.)

You love to help wash dishes and I usually manage to get you interested in doing it by nonchalantly asking you to help me clear the table after dinner.  Before I know it, you’ve got a chair pulled up to the sink and are rinsing everything off.

Before bath time, you get to run around upstairs in your underwear.  One evening, your father said, “You have a couple minutes to run around.  Don’t blow it.”  You started walking around, blowing air from your mouth in long gusts and short puffs.

One of my favorite things to do is to watch you play with your toys… whether your outside toys, your inside toys, or your bath toys.  Quietly watching you play gives me such insight to what you’re learning, but also to areas that I need to improve myself… because I hear myself (and others) in the words you tell your toys, how you treat the cats, and even how you treat other kids.  I can also see the influence of the movies  you’re watching come out in how you behave toward others.

I really enjoy my weekend mornings with you and our leisurely morning nursings… and how after you’re done nursing you’ll start talking and making up stories… like, one morning you decided to role play Thomas and the bee story, but you mingled in a practical joke about Spencer hauling a “septic” trailer and when he got where he was going he found he’d been hauling poop.

When we got  home from your grandparents house on Easter, you looked at me mournfully and said, “Oh no! We forgot to bring my bunny ears!”  I asked you, “What bunny ears?”  You said, “MY bunny ears.  The ones I wear for Easter!”  And then I remembered, you DO have a pair of bunny ears for Easter.  I think they’re in the bottom of your toy chest somewhere.

I love that your Grandma D. takes videos of your activities that you do. It’s such a blessing to us … all of us as a family. Not only does it help you do better in classes.  Often, we will watch your videos of the day after dinner, before bath time, together as a family. Not only is it constructive for you to see yourself, but it allows us to give you positive feedback. Also, sometimes when I miss you after you’ve gone to sleep, I will watch the videos and it helps me feel better, more often than not, I’ll turn around and your father will be standing behind me watching as well.

Your Grandma D. shared a little story with me this past week, how one Monday you had a really rough time after we had left for work.  She said you told her, “I don’t want Rachel (Signing Time), I don’t want food, I don’t want toys, I don’t want anything!  I just want mommy and daddy.”  The story is both sweet and sad and makes me hurt and melt at the same time.

Your father touched your hand one night before he left the room giving it an extra squeeze of love. You brought your other hand over your head and touched your other hand.  I asked, “What is that?”  You replied, “That’s where daddy gave me his love.”  You then put your hand and touched your chest.  You said, “I’m putting Daddy’s love in my heart.”  Then you  brought your hand from your heart to my heart and told me, “I’m putting daddy’s love in your heart now.”

Love, Momma

More pictures from this month can be found here:  LINK