Dear William,
On September 9, 2015 you turned 45 months old. You are 43 1/2″ tall and weigh 46 pounds, 10 ounces. You are wearing 5T or boys Small in shirts. You are in 5T two-piece pajamas; I don’t know what you are in footed pajamas since it’s summertime, so probably boys Small would be my guess. You are in 5T pants and shorts. Your shoes are size 12/13 (Crocs).
FIRSTS:
You rode the Atlantis roller coaster at Sea World for the first time! Also, the Shipwreck ride, which drenched us.
THINGS WE DID/HIGHLIGHTS:
08/15/15 – Orange County Fair
08/16/15 – daddy’s birthday party
08/23/15 – ocean
08/24/15 – LegoLand
08/30/15 – Laguna Hills mall
09/07/15 – Sea World, including Dinner with Shamu
Grandma D. ensures that you get lots of park & playground time.
Grandma D. also takes you to the library to read books.
–Your favorite ride at the county fair was the Kite Ride, your father called it the Superman ride, but you corrected him and told him it was the Buzz Lightyear ride. Then you told him, “I wish you could go with me, daddy!”
–At the end of your father’s birthday party, you did the cutest little “boo hoo” I’ve ever heard. Not crying, just saying boo hoo to express your sadness at the end of the day. You had played hard all day and it was hot. I guess you are one of those who, if you get overheated, you throw up… while driving home, you expressed that you were hungry. I offered you water, which you drank, and then food when we got home. When I got you home, I set you on the counter to dig some food out of the fridge and you puked all over me and the floor. I felt so bad for you. But, I made you some toast and it settled your tummy.
LANGUAGE/THINGS YOU SAY:
You have been stuttering this past month. The other day, you were trying to get your thoughts out, and you stuttered and stuttered and finally stopped, took a big breath and said, “He is having trouble talking right now.”
You told us one day that you were ready to do the Racers ride at Disneyland again, that you weren’t scared of it anymore. This was news to me, especially since you saying that was not prefaced by anything but you remembering it. I guess we’ll see how you feel when we go in December this year.
You told a waitress at Denny’s that you wanted to go to Snow Land. When she asked you where Snow Land was, you told her it was in Big Bear and that it was there now. Never mind that it was 90° out at the moment.
After we go to the ocean, we always stop at Sonic for a milk shake. It is just one of those things we do. You usually get a chocolate shake, but this month you asked instead for a “hot sarge shake.”
SLEEP:
You have been restless at night and waking up early, or middle of the night. We think it’s related to the awful heat wave we’ve been having, but who knows, really? We just can’t seem to get comfortable at night these days. To be honest, sometimes I get the best sleep when I just lay down with you. At least then I know you’re OK and am not listening for you. There’s another thing in play for me, too, one of our cats yowls at 5 AM and, thinking it’s you, I’ve gotten up and gone into your room, only to find that you are deeply sleeping. But then I have a tough time going back to sleep, because I’m convinced it was you that I heard, even though I know it wasn’t.
You say the funniest things when you’re mostly asleep. Like one night, you told me, “This is a good toy to play with. It’s easy to put together for putting away!” Another night, you declared, “OK, mommy, I’m awake.” Two seconds later, I heard a little snore escape your mouth.
FOOD & NOURISHMENT:
You have been eating enormous amounts of food and then claiming you’re hungry even still! One night, you ate a full dinner, then a half hour later in the bath tub, you said, “I’m very hungry and if I don’t eat I will wake up hungry tonight and I’ll even be hungry in the morning!!” You then proceeded to eat a banana, leftover pancakes, and a homemade yogurt popsicle.
You woke one night and I told you it was still sleeping time. You went back to sleep and a few hours later you woke up and exclaimed, “You were wrong, mommy, it is morning time!” Like no time had passed at all.
After dinner one night, you were excited to go to Walmart for a cookie. We got our cookie and you then said, “We need to go outside to eat it on a bench somewhere.”
From dinner we had leftover salmon, I told you to have it for lunch the next day and also told Grandma D about it so it wouldn’t be forgotten. Grandma D. told me she had a salmon sandwich for her lunch, so that was perfect. The next night I asked you about the salmon. You said it was good! I asked you if you had more salmon than Grandma. You said “No, mine was tiny. Grandma had a lot more salmon than me.” All I can say is Grandma must have had a whole lotta salmon, because you had two fillets in your leftover container!
NURSING:
You have started to tell me, “I’m so hungry! Only nah-nahs can help me feel less hungry!” You seek me out for nursing when you need comfort, or want to go back to sleep. My favorite nursing is the weekend morning nursings… I think they’re your favorites, too. You will ask, “Is this a short nursing or long nursing?” I feel forever blessed that we have this dimension to our relationship.
FAVORITES THIS MONTH:
Color: silver
Song: Buzz
Movie: Spirit (Disney movie, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron); Also, Wall.E.
Food: Grilled cheese sandwich
Snack: Melon balls
Dessert: caramel sundae from Weinerschnitzel
Fruit: Grapes
Vegetable: carrots
Class: MyGym
Teacher: Miss Nicole
Store: Walmart
Restaurant: Outback Steakhouse
Vacation spot: Nebraska
Toy: Toy Story toys
Favorite theme park: Sea World
THINGS I WANT TO REMEMBER:
How I was chewing some gum while waiting in line at Sea World. I picked you up and you stuck your nose in my mouth. Surprised, I asked what you were doing. You promptly replied, with your nose still stuck in my mouth, “I’m smelling your gum.” Like, duh, gum smelling is a normal activity!
How it just seems as if more and more things are imprinting on your brain. For example, we were eating asparagus for dinner one night. You held it up and told us “asparagus grows and grows and then goes to flower and then makes a plant again!”
How you are still reliving your visit to the vet with us from August (a month ago). We took Snuggy in for a dewclaw problem. In the waiting area were two dogs. One of them cowered under the bench with his owner and he had been bitten on the face by another dog at the dog park. The other dog, a golden retriever, had an injury to his front leg. You pretend that you are either taking a pet to the vet, or that you ARE the vet, or that you are one of the injured dogs.
This past month, my laptop’s hard drive crashed. It’s been in the making for awhile. We were without a computer for about a week, and then your father booted up one of his laptops and put it where mine had been. The next morning, you came downstairs, saw it there and said, “Yay! Mommy’s computer is fixed!”
Your father was chair dancing one night at a restaurant. I teased you that he was sitting on the toilet. Aghast, you peered under the table, looked at him, and then looked back up at me and said, “You’re wrong, mommy. Daddy’s not sitting on the toilet!”
How sometimes if you’re playing hard or you’ve been doing something for awhile, you’ll get up, walk over to another chair and say, “I think I need to take a break!” This is an important milestone, I think, that you know your limitations and when you need to stop and regroup!
How you are so into character playing and imaginary stuff, you put one of your Hot Wheels loops around your neck like a necklace and said, “Look at my new outfit!”
When you sat down to eat lunch, you exclaimed, “Oh, I’m so full of love, I can’t eat anything!”
Your Grandma D. sent me a text saying this: “I read Stinklebritches a book about bats. He asked if they bite you. I said only if you poke your fingers at them, like the bird will. He has been jumping off the couch saying he’s a bat with noises, too! He asked offhandedly if bats go poopy. When I said yes, he dropped his shorts and ran for the bathroom. I thought he was just asking for knowledge, guess it was permission. Wonder what he would have done if I had said bats don’t poop?”
After dinner one night at Red Robin, you were outside running around on a sidewalk loop. A few other older boys came up and joined you. One of them hopped off the sidewalk into the wood chips that surrounded a dried up shrub (drought landscaping). You looked at him and said, “Hey! You shouldn’t be in the landscaping!” They turned it into a game, and it was cute to see you, so small compared to these bigger kids, but they were engaging you in play.
Every time we go into a public restroom that has a child’s seat hanging on the wall, you sit in that seat and declare, “I’m Santa!” and then you point behind you where there’s nothing and say, “And these are my toys.”
Your father was cleaning off the kitchen counter, you started taking the dishes out of the sink and stacking them on the drying mat. You thought they were clean, but your father didn’t understand why you were doing that, because he was trying to put them in the dish washer. I explained to him that Grandma D. hand washes dishes.
You have been learning things about Star Wars this past month. I call it brain imprinting, because you pick stuff up so rapidly. You drew something on your drawing book and declared, “This is the Lemon Falcon from Star Wars. Lemon Falcon has places to go! Do you want to go see the world with me?”
How, when you’re watching a movie, you like to hold the DVD case for the movie and look at the pictures on it while you watch the movie.
When I was taking a shower one morning, you sat outside the shower doors and sniffed your way through my lotion bottles. You’ve liked to do this for over a year now. I emptied a bottle and dropped it over the shower door and it landed near you. Without missing a beat, you said, “Oh! Thank you!” I peered out and you were putting it in the trash can.
We stopped at the pet store one evening to walk around, and you informed us that you will be getting another kitty, and two doggies, and continued, “Then I’m going to put them on top of each other and I am going to feed them.” Interested, your father asked, “How are you going to buy them food?” You replied readily, “With my money, and maybe grandma will give me some money, too.”
How when we were at Sea World, we were at the “instrument” area in the play park, you were asking all the newcomers to play you a song you hadn’t heard before. A dad came up and told his daughter it was time to go. She told him she wasn’t done. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away, she wrestling against him with all her might to no avail. You walked halfway over, I thought you were going to play the xylophone, instead you said to the dad, “Hey, hey! What are you doing to her?? That’s not very nice!!!” All I could think was, out of the mouths of babes…when you asked me about it, I told you that I thought her daddy maybe had to go poopy or something! Sure seemed like had something stuck up his butt!
SWIMMING:
You love swimming with us in our community pool and are so brave and confident! We have done a lot of swimming this past month.
DANCING:
You are struggling with this class. I know it’s not your favorite, and perhaps the “unlimited” part of the enrollment the last two months has used up your tolerance for the class. We have placed you back in the Miss Nicole’s class, however, your first class back with her was her last class. She said she was leaving to spend more time with her kids. We don’t know who will take over that time slot now.
GYMNASTICS:
You are taking a break from gymnastics for awhile. You were doing really well with the athletic part of it, but you loathe red circle time and so we pulled you out of it because your attitude was disrupting the class. We think there may be some unresolved issues from the prior owner leaving and you not getting to tell him goodbye, because that was when your behavior started to decline. Mr. Steve (the former owner) had worked really hard to build a bond of trust with you, we think he may have been your first best friend “teacher.” And then, poof, he was gone! I reached out to him and he has said he will meet up with us for a play date later this month so you can see that he is still around, just not around at MyGym.
BATH TIME PLAY:
You have worked through your fear of the drain issues. I’ve started a game where your toys bump each other off the bath tub ledge and while you don’t like that they are floating in the water, you think the game is hilarious. You also like to make up variations of the Ghostlight story (from Cars movie).
We’ve been implementing water saving measures this past month and one night in the bath tub you took a tiny bottle and filled it up with water and then told me, “I’m saving this water. I will put it in my dump truck and then water the plants with it.”
I suspect that, as you get older, your father and I will have more and more of these “mind blown” moments and I look forward to them. It seems like your brain just absorbs things so quickly. Even when we’re not sure you’re even listening, a couple hours later (usually when you’re trying to fall asleep at night), you will start talking about things that happened or that you heard during the day. I know it’s your way of processing things and making sense of them — i do the same thing — and I am grateful that you are able to share your thoughts with me.
One of the nights this week, we were walking around after dinner. You walked up to a lamp post, tipped your head back and wondered aloud, “I wonder if I can climb this pole?” I replied, “If you want to, you can learn how to climb any pole.” You eyed me for a second and then said, “Not tonight, mommy.”
I hope, more than anything, that if you see something you want to do in life, that you will want to learn how.
Love,
Mommy and Daddy
More pictures from this month can be found here: LINK
Jammie J's Quest 