Letter to our 43 month old

Dear William,

On July 8, 2015 you turned 3 years 7 months old. You are 43 1/2″ tall and weigh 45 pounds. You are wearing the same sizes of clothing as listed last month.

FIRSTS:

Over the July 4th weekend, while we were in Big Bear, you had your first ice cream truck treat. The rest of the weekend, you would wake up, nurse and then say, “When is the ice cream truck getting here?” And then you would stand on the couch and wait, while peering expectantly out the window. Sunday you even declined breakfast because you wanted the ice cream truck. I told you it wouldn’t be there until later when it got hot. You waited a second and said, “It’s hotter now, is the ice cream truck here?”

At LegoLand, you went down the red “adult” slide all by yourself. We watched it for awhile before hand. You climbed all the stairs by yourself, determined. You expressed some concern when the time came to get on the slide, I told you that you didn’t have to do it if you didn’t want to. You climbed in all by yourself. When you came out the other end, you were smiling and proud of yourself. Riders have to be 42″ tall, you were 43″ the day we went (you grew a half an inch in the last couple of weeks).

THINGS WE DID:

6/13, lunch at Ruby’s
6/20, LegoLand Waterpark
6/27, breakfast with your godmother at a local park
7/2, weekend in the mountains with Grandma & Grandpa H.

LANGUAGE/THINGS YOU SAY:

You have started using the sign (along with speaking) for “May I be excused?” and “Dessert.”

Outside, playing with your “diggers” I asked, “What are you building?” You replied, “Not anything, I don’t have sand on my scooper.”

One of your favorite things to tell us is, “I’m telling you the truth! You’re just being silly!”

We see a truck going 70 MPH down the freeway with a load of chickens, their feathers ruffling and they are huddled together in cages. You said to them, “Sorry chickens. I love you chickens! I will catch a grasshopper and feed it to the chickens. The chickens will follow me to get more grasshoppers.”

Driving along, rather than saying “please”, you told your father, “If you turn on tractor tipping [song], I’ll give you Buzz [Lightyear]!”

We leave the house and drive one block, you said excitedly, “We’re that much closer to Legoland!”

You told me one Saturday morning, “I’m your present… You get to keep me!”

Your Grandma D. asked me one evening, “What is with the high-pitched voice? He uses it all day long, I’m starting to think it’s his normal voice.” This is because you are role playing so much, and for your Froggy or queen Elsa (Frozen movie), you adapt a high-pitched voice.

While at Ruby’s eating lunch, a poster on the wall garnered your attention and you asked all sorts of questions that made me think about earthquake insurance, like, “What happens if the poster falls down?” Without pausing for an answer, you asked, “What happens if there’s no glue under it or tape?” I was surprised you didn’t ask about a nail!

Seeing kids out your bedroom window, you stood there and yelled out to them “Hi!” There was no response, and you turned to me and said, “It didn’t work!”

One morning, your father had to leave early for work. He went into your bedroom and kissed you goodbye and gave you lots of hugs. When you heard the garage door open, you frantically opened your curtains and pulled up the shutters as you watched your daddy’s car drive away with tears in your eyes. It was one of the sweetest and saddest things I’ve ever witnessed you do.

We love to give each other Eskimo kisses (rub noses) and one night you asked, “Can we touch noses?” I replied, of course we could. You then asked, “Can we touch tongues?” Uh no. No, we cannot.

Apparently you are learning new songs all the time, one of the songs you sang to me while I was working the kitchen one night went, “Kitchen is a place to make and bake, it all happened there!”

I popped a pan of brownies in the oven one night to bake while we ate our dinner. Halfway through, you stopped, turned around and looked into the kitchen and said, “Oh! Can I have some chocolate??!!” Dinner was ruined, of course, and note to self, brownies have a distinctively and distractedly chocolate smell!

You got on the toilet one night and your father said, “Let mommy know when you’re done!” You replied emphatically, “Oh, when I’m done, I will tell YOU, daddy!” I snickered to myself all the way to the bedroom.

Your father wore a weirdly patterned shirt that made his back look wet. You cried out, concerned, “Ohhhh no! Your back is dirty, Daddy!” We had to explain to you that it was just patterned that way.

Reaching for something, you gave up and encouraged your father to get it for you by saying, “You are very tall, Daddy, you can reach it!” You paused and then said, “But… Is it too heavy?”

You customized the Amen song by singing, “Corn men, grape men, Corn men, grape men, corn men!” You were quite pleased with your creativity.

One Saturday morning, you came downstairs for a minute and explained yourself to the cats by saying, “Sorry kitties, I’m just getting my toys!” Oh, yes, I was certain the cats were sad… as I heard them all breathe out a collective sad sigh. ha

One night, we were talking about the 5 senses and the topic of your Grandma D. not being able to smell certain things came up. I asked, “Do you want to hear something sad?” You said, “Yes!” I told you that your Grandma D. couldn’t smell certain things. You said, “I want to hear something sadder than that.” And then, you got curious and asked, “Why can’t grandma smell things? Is there something in her nose? Does she have a plug?”

I handed you a fruit pouch with carrots, mango and apple in it. I tasted it first and told you, “Mmmm, that is good. If you don’t want it, I will eat it. You tasted it and said, “I’m going to buy that. If I find it in the store I’m going to buy one of them every single day.”

Tuggy waits for you, sitting on my desk chair, and meows for you to come down in the mornings.

We went to dinner one night and you proclaimed you had to go to the restroom. It was a one-person bathroom, so I stood there and waited and then realized that I, too, needed to go. I asked if you were done yet, you said no. I waited and waited and you WERE going, but sometimes these things take time. You grinned at me and cheekily said, “I’m going to make you pee your skirt!”

You saw a baseball in my car and asked, “Where’s the hitter?”

You scrunched your body into a little ball one morning and told me, “I’m trying to make this little so I’ll be a little baby.”

One day in Big Bear, you were getting crazier and crazier, dancing around, not paying attention to a movie that you wanted and I asked you if you had to go potty, you denied it. And then you made a mad dash to the restroom. Oh, yes, you did, too, need to go… and then you had the audacity to say, “Oh, that’s much better.”

Setting out food on the deck in Big Bear for dinner, you crawled up on the bench and dug in. You looked at me, as you guarded the food and pointed off yonder and said, “You can have the dirt for dinner.”

Talking to your Froggy lovey, you told him, “It’s OK Froggy I’m here to protect you. I always come back, Froggy.”

You have a fondness for pulling chairs around, climbing up, and reaching for something that’s higher up, that sometimes I’m not thrilled for you to get your hands on. One night, I had just told you that I didn’t want you to play with something that was on top of my dresser.  You went and grabbed a chair and just as I was getting ready to say something, you said in just the right tone of voice between exasperation and sarcasm, “I’m just grabbing a chair to sit on it. I’m not going to grab something, Mommy.” Huh, guess my suspicion was easily readable on my face?

You like to put a wad of bread in your mouth and around it, say, “That’s my new teeth!”

I told you I had a treat for you if you got in your car seat. Your father was loading the car to leave Big Bear and I looked out to see that you had crawled up in the back of your father’s car. You looked at me expectantly and said, “I’m in my car seat!”

SLEEP:

You’ve been doing fairly well with your sleep. You do occasionally wake and cry out, “Daddy protect me!” Your fear is real!

When we went to Big Bear, as we usually do, we bed share. You woke in the wee hours of the morning and said, “Mommy?” “Yes, I’m right here,” I replied. You rolled over to me, shaking, and said, “Hold me. Hold me really tight!” You curled into me and fell back to sleep, 5 minutes later you jerked awake and said, “Keep holding me tight!”  It reminded me that you are so very vulnerable and precious.  I wonder what dreams you are having that make you feel so scared?

FOOD & NOURISHMENT:

When you proclaim you’re done eating and ask to be excused, I love to ask you, “How is your belly?” You always reply, “It’s rock hard. But I still have room for dessert.” One day you’d had a donut earlier (daddy!) and you replied, “That was just a donut. I want something better than that!”

NURSING:

For the most part, you primarily nurse at wake up (morning) and before bed time.

There have been occasions that you seek me out. One time at your grandparent’s house, you were playing outside with everyone and all of a sudden you stopped and said you were going inside. You called for me, I was trying to take a nap in the back bedroom. You found me and asked to nurse and then realized you didn’t have your Froggy. So, you single-mindedly went and got it from your father and then returned to nurse. After about 10 minutes, you happily proclaimed, “I finished my nah-nahs!” And off you went.

One morning, after we’d been separated from each other, you crawled in my lap and whispered, “Mommy your nah nahs smell good. I want some.”

These sweet moments, as we nurse in the “golden” years of our nursing relationship are precious to me.

FAVORITES THIS MONTH:

Color: Red. Brown and white and black and blue.
Song: Jesus died on the cross.
Movie: Cars and the yellow car part of it.
Food: Grilled cheese sandwich
Snack: Melon balls
Dessert: Porcupine. Zurg house. Zurg Cake.
Fruit: Turtle. No, no, no… grapes and cocoa. No, cherries & grapes and I want lots of them!
Vegetable: Carrots. Broccoli
Class: MyGym, because it’s not dance class.
Teacher: Miss Talli
Store: Poopy store. No, Walmart! Because it has cars in it!
Restaurant: Outback Steakhouse!
Vacation spot: Big Bear
Toy: Big Dumptruck and Big Excavator.
Favorite theme park: Disneyland

THINGS I WANT TO REMEMBER:

You’ve been very into smells this month. One morning you told me that I smell like vanilla. When I asked you what you smelled like, you said gingerbread. Then you told me that your daddy smelled “awful” and your Grandma D. smelled “stinky awful.” I checked with you periodically over the weekend (random pop quizzes) on this topic and your answers were always the same.

You hauled my basket of lotions out several times this month and sat there, opened every bottle, sniffed it and closed the bottle and put it away, and then hauled the entire basket back to its living spot. You told me you were having a smelling party.

You have several of your own bottles of soap in your bathroom. Some of them are Big Kids kind of soap and you got into them one night and one of the bottles “popped” when you opened it and it squirted soap in your eye. You screamed and cried and we wiped and rinsed. You finally told me, “Please, can you put nah-nahs in my eye?” I shrugged and said sure, we had already tried everything else and it wasn’t working. Miraculously, “nah-nahs” soothed the stinging eye immediately upon contact. Sadly, that incident did end your bath, though.

How one day you said you needed to go potty, and so I quick grabbed the homemade PooPourri spray that I put together and sprayed it in the toilet. You looked at me, curious, and said, “What is it that you sprayed, mommy?” I told you it was spray to make poopy not stink. You sniffed appreciatively and said, “That smells like oranges. It smells good.”

I was wearing a belt one day and you walked up to me and pressed the circle on my belt to make a bubble around me, like Buzz.

SWIMMING:
I switched you to a Wednesday class with Ms. Michelle. Mr. Jordan’s Friday class was getting too full and many of the kids in that class are constantly playing with their goggles and that time takes away from your swim instruction time.

Your teacher has been using you as an example for new kids in her swim class, which I’m sure just tickles you pink. 🙂 You play well with the swim toys that are sitting behind you on the deck when you’re not actively swimming.

DANCING:
For the months of July and August, your dance place is offering unlimited classes. I have been able to get you into two additional dance classes each week, which I think it helping you over your emotional hurdle with the class. One of the classes I get you in is a late class, so I’m able to get there to pick you up, which surprises you every time. Watching you do the routine, there is a part where you hold hands and jump in a circle. When that part if over, you don’t want to let go of the hands and keep trying to hold the girls hands longer. When they don’t cooperate, you moved over to another set of girls and tried again.

GYMNASTICS:
You continue to have issues with red circle time. We’ve now found the most effective strategy is for your Grandma D. to go out on the floor and get you at the one minute notice time and take you over to the red circle. We discussed various scenarios and this is more in-line with our goals of helping you learn to transition yourself vs. taking away something (MyGym class) you love because you’re having trouble with one or two parts of it. We were encouraged that a couple times you went to red circle all on your own.

One day your Grandma D. sent me this text: “Priceless! Girl next to Wm and Wm were bothering each other. Kevin stopped it. A min later, the girl leaned over & kissed Wm on the cheek. no reaction from Wm.”

BATH TIME PLAY:
This continues to be something you love to do. You articulate various stories and sing songs to your bath toy characters. You re-enact various movie scenes and create your own storyline with your toys.

One of your bath stories you told me, “One day an elephant was swimming in the water and came across a blue box and in the box was Siamese cats. And that’s it.”

Playing with your bath toys, “Oh no! It’s a shark! Don’t worry, I’ll use my bad breath to blow him away!” Repeat for scary monster…

“Oh, the string is a curb. Buzz and Woody and Daisy can’t cross the curb but bull’s-eye and Rex can because the curb doesn’t go in front of them. What are we going to do?” You problem-solved to have Bull’s-eye and Daisy go and then the others slide to their spots.

Every night when I drain the bath tub of water, you are very concerned that all your bath toys are out of the water and you stare at the drain the entire time it drains to make sure no one goes down the drain!

ROUTINES:
Our morning routine, after I’m finished nursing you, is that I tell you about the things I’ve already done. It usually goes something like this, “This morning when I went downstairs, Buggy was sitting at the gate. When she saw me, she said, “MEOWWW!” and then she ran downstairs as fast as she could. I saw Slasher in the living room and Tuggy was sitting on your chair. When I went in the garage to put my stuff in my car, Ripper was in the litter box. Then when I went back upstairs, Buggy almost tripped me. When I was putting my make up on, I heard, “MOMMY!” And then I came in here to say good morning to my little boy!” Some mornings the story varies, and you love to try to help tell the story when things happened in a different sequence than they normally do.

Part of our coming home routine is that I set you on the counter, get you a tiny piece of chocolate and then a vitamin. Then you piggy back on me back to the couch and you say, “Let’s talk about what you did today!” One day, your story was this, “I didn’t go to dance class today. I decided to walk around the lake. I saw a kitty there in the plants. He was like Snuggy, but nicer. He licked me. Grandma said he had a collar. I saw Canadian geese, too. The $.99 cent store was out of round cookies so I got a donut instead. It was chocolate.” Remarkably, it was all true.

You examined my hair one evening, noting its length you asked me, “Have you ever, EVER had your hair sticking up in space?” I told you that my hair has never been in space. But my love for you regularly goes to space and back because there’s not enough room in the world for it, so it has to expand out into space. I like to tell you that one of the reasons we decided to have you in our lives is because daddy and I have way too much love for each other and we needed someone else to give it to, so that’s why we have our William!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

More pictures from this month can be found here: LINK