Dear William,
Today you turned 3 years old.
Statistics and Developments:
You weigh 41 pounds 10 ounces. You are 41″ tall. You are in size 4T pants/shorts. You are in size 5T shirts and footed sleepers.
Sleep:
Naps have been hit and miss this month. On the weekends, you don’t take them anymore. Your Grandma D. can sometimes get you to take them.
Your bedtime has necessarily moved to 8pm on those no nap days. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child talks of children dropping their nap, that their wake times should be max of 6.5 hours, otherwise it’s time to go with no nap. And we’re finding it to be true… 7 to 7.5 hours, or longer sometimes, is what you’re needing for wake time, and that just doesn’t make sense mathematically in a day, because if I put you down 7 hours from wake time (7 AM), that’s 2 PM, and if you do manage to fall asleep at 2pm, then you are awakened at 3:30pm and that puts your bedtime at 10:30pm, or sometimes (usually) 11pm before you can fall asleep again. That’s simply too late of a bedtime. So we’re pushing you through and putting you to bed at 7:30 PM or 8 PM. This sucks because there’s really not much time that we get to see you in the evenings after we get home from work, and there’s not really that much we can do together. So we’re constantly trying to make our limited time with you matter.
Nourishment and Nursing:
Nursing has been less this month, usually a longer snuggling/nursing session in the morning. A decent one when I’m trying to get you to take a nap. And then a 5pm session, sometimes, but that one is short. And then before bedtime, another short session, not because you don’t want to linger, but because you’re so tired from not taking a nap that you fall asleep instantly. Those nights, I just sit there and hold you for awhile and reminisce on those nights that you’d nurse forever and ever and how tired I was and just wanted to go to bed myself, and how, now, those are just distant memories.
Things we Did:
11/22, Santa Ana Zoo
11/23, Grandparent’s house
11/24, got a haircut
11/28, visited Sea World, Shamu breakfast and Santa
12/04, California Adventure and Disneyland
12/07, Downtown Disney
Recurring events are MyGym and Library story times
Things I want to Remember:
You have been really interested in “when daddy was a little boy like me.” Your father pulled out some of his childhood photo books when we were at his parent’s house one weekend to sate your curiosity. That night, you said to me, “Mommy, when you were a little boy, did you brush your teeth just like me?”
When you were giving candy canes the once over at Michael’s this past weekend, you told me, “When I was a little girl, I used to eat those pink ones.” (You say the word “girl” with two “r”s in it and its really adorable, “grirl”.)
Earlier this month, you weren’t feeling well due to a bit of a cold. You had a stuffy nose, sore throat, etc. Before bedtime, your father was giving you a bit of Benadryl and a bit of Advil. You sat there and between doses said, “We’re having a medicine party! I’m feeling happy!”
Sitting at Yogurtland one evening with you, an unkempt, long haired and bearded fellow left after paying for his enormous bowl of frozen yogurt. You glanced up from your yogurt and said, “Jesus is going outside to eat his ice cream. Is he going to be cold out there?”
Probably not so cute was you asking a lady who was teasing you that she was going to eat your yogurt (she was kind of invading your personal space), “What happened to your teeth?” (They were crooked in front and went inwards forming a “V” with her two front teeth.) Teach her to tease a 2 year old about his food
We were at Yogurtland and were waiting for the restroom to open up so you could go, and after a long while, you finally piped up and asked into the big, echoing room, “WHY IS HE TAKING SO LONG IN THERE? IS HE GOING POOPY OR SOMETHING?
I mentioned as we passed a Chapstick display in Walmart that they had Gingerbread flavored ones and you nearly came unglued. I kind of wanted it, too, so I grabbed one for me and one for you. You wanted to put some on your lips and smell it. Usually not a problem. At least until you started digging in it and spread it all over your face and up your nose. You then informed me that, “It smells goooooooood.”
Singing your Thomas song, you handed me a clothes roller and said, “Here’s your singer, mommy.” You are also obsessed with learning the Blue Mountain Mystery Thomas song and Cars 2 intro song by Weezer.
How when you hear a song you really like, you’ll run over and grab my hand and start stroking it. The first time you did this, I asked you what you were doing… you replied, “Your hand is my guitar.”
You really took a fancy to Thomas the Train’s Blue Mountain Mystery and learning about Luke and Victor. Now every yellow item in your toys is Victor and Victor is continuously falling into the sea (as you perch the yellow car or bus or whatever on the edge of the couch, table, or whatever and bump it off.)
Your love for getting painted in the bath tub, and yellow is Victor, blue is Thomas, red is James and Green is Luke.
Getting you out of the bath, you tell me, “I have paint on me, you can’t clean me up!”
You tell me, “I’m all shiny! I’m the shiniest engine on Sodor” after you’re finally all cleaned up after bath.
You frequently introduce yourself as Thomas or Luke to people who want to meet you, or at circle time at your MyGym class.
You hold your fingers up, like they’re finger puppets, and declare, “This one is Lightning. This one is Finn McMissile.” And you walk them around and they talk to you.
In your bath a couple weeks ago, you painted one of your fingers red and the other blue. You then informed me, “The red one is Lightning. The blue one is Thomas.” After introducing them to me, you proceeded to tell me a story about Lightning visiting the Island of Sodor. You started with, “It was a beautiful day on the Island of Sodor. The sun was shining and the birds were singing. Lightning fell in the water. Luckily, no one was hurt.” <—All of your stories start that way. haha
You know that you have Take-N-Play sets of Thomas the Train, and that there is another set out there called Trackmaster. You saw a lady checking out at Costco with a huge Trackmaster set and you said, “Is that Trackmaster?” I said, “Yes, it is.” You said, “Some lucky little boy is going to be very happy!”
I’ve been shopping for cameras this past month as my other one has been dying a slow death over the past year. Ever since I dropped it with its lens fully extended a year ago. You have enjoyed being my side kick for those events and love to play with the display cameras. As we waited one evening for a couple to finish their discussion, you said in a loud whisper, “Come on, people!” I whispered back, “It’s OK, we’re not in any hurry!” You whispered back, “Yes, I am. I need to look at Cars after this!”
That same night, though, when I told you it was time to leave the toys aisle and go home, you said, “OK, mommy, thank you for letting me look at the cars and the trains!” I couldn’t believe how polite you were, as you walked out holding my hand and happily “balance beaming” on the curb and crawling into your car seat.
At the park, you told me how to go down the slide and what exactly to do. So amazing how far you’ve come in a few months. You also will say, “Someone is climbing… someone is spinning” as a heads up that you’re going to do that.
How you’ve started to say, “Oh my!” Instead of “Oh my gosh.” Or something similar. I actually prefer the new saying, especially when you drop something, for some reason that is just so cute. I’ve also heard you say, “Oh shoot!” a few times.
Anytime we go somewhere and get in the car, you ask, “Do we have the snackie bag?” If we get into my car, I have a tropical trail mix that is “Mommy’s car snackies.” You love the candied mangos out of there and you ate them all… you’ve dug and dug and shaken and shaken the thing, and they really are all gone. You sighed and said, “I guess I’ll have to eat the pineapples now.” Now I just need you to remind me to bring your shoes, because pretty much every time we leave the house, I have to back track and go get your shoes.
Every time we go past the movie theater, you announce, “That’s where we saw the Planes movie. No movie today, though. We’re waiting for a good one.”
You told us one Saturday morning that you wanted to go to Sea World and see the big birds and the dolphins and Shamu! We ended up at the Santa Ana Zoo, instead, because Sea World is too far away to go to at 11AM. You had fun at the zoo, riding on the train, riding on the carousel, seeing the animals. Most of all, you had fun sliding your feet in the dirt making big puffs of dust and saying you were making steam.
How super cuddly you have been this month. You love having us (parents) around and ask every single morning, without fail, after you nurse, “Do I get mommy and daddy all day?” or a variation of that question. How you’ve then started to ask, “Is Grandma here?” The first time you did that, I answered honestly, “Yes, I think so…” and then you freaked out. Now I know to say, “Oh, I’m not sure, but we still have some time together. What I realized is you were transitioning yourself, hoping that I would say she wasn’t.
Same thing at My Gym. You asked Mr. Steve, “When is circle time starting?” When he answered, “How about now?” And stopped the music, you started to cry… you were really trying to ask him, “Do I have time to play for a few minutes.”
You are really loving the Christmas songs, but your favorites are Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Oh Christmas Tree and Away in a Manger. One night you started singing, “Oh cloudy sky, Oh cloudy sky, How pretty are your clouds…” To the tune of Oh Christmas Tree. And when I sing the second verse of Away in a Manger, when I sing, “The cattle are lowing… ” You immediate do a great big “MOOOOOO!” and keep mooing the entire second verse.
Listening to Joy to the World the words in the second verse “rocks, hills and plains”… You asked, “Is she singing planes?” And we had to explain a homonym to a 3 year old. Then, once you understood, you wanted to hear that verse over and over again so you could learn the words.
You asked to listen to Joy to the World, and Grandma started singing silly and you said, “Nooo, that’s not music!” You now request Joy to the World to be sung by Dolly Parton, and any other Christmas song, too. You apparently like her voice.
The last few days, you’ve been asking your daddy if he is going to put up the Christmas tree… and then, when he said yes, you said, “Don’t forget to put the train around the tree.” Shocked, we asked you “What train?” You said, “The red and black one that goes up in the tree? Yes, that one.” We couldn’t believe that you remembered that from a year ago when you were barely 2 years old.
On Thanksgiving, you confirmed that MyGym was closed, even asked to go there and “see how quiet it is.” You asked if Mr. Steve was home with his family, and a couple other people.
At Sea World, after visiting Santa, you were given your first candy cane, which we let you eat. Now, every time someone asks what you want for Christmas, you say, “A candy cane!”
At California Adventureland, we went on Racers for the first time. For some reason, I thought riders have to be 42″ tall, but it’s really 40″ tall. You could have gone on it in September, I think. Oh well. You were really happy to go on it and loved the intro part of the ride and the racing part, but were terrified of the tunnel part of it. Especially at the start of the tunnel, where Mack is there and afraid and yells. It surprised us all! The ride shutdown at the end of the tunnel, and we were stuck on the tracks for about 10 minutes… and, because of that, we could have just stayed on and gone again, but you said you wanted to get off. Since then, we’ve been working with you to work through it, including watching the video of our ride. Now I think you’ve gone the exact opposite from being afraid to being amused, because every time we go under a bridge on the freeway, you tell me, “Yell at me like Mack!”
Every month, I write these letters to you and I feel like there are about 10,341 things I forget to mention, those things that I talk to your dad about as we go to bed each night. Like, how could I have handled a situation better, or something that makes us laugh like silly kids as we relive it with each other. Or, like when you’re playing in the bath tub and your dad and I are out in the hallway listening to you tell yourself stories and sing songs to yourself… I can’t remember the details of those things, just the overwhelming feeling of rightness about it. That every day with you is so full of joy and silliness and wonder, and though we’re tired at the end of the day, I look forward to being with you as you slip into the magical place of dreaming, safe and secure in my arms. Moments, minutes, days, weeks, togetherness, memories… we love you through all of them, that’s really what I’m trying to tell you.
Last night, I held a 2 year old. This morning, before I left for work, I held a 2 year old. When I come home today, I will hold a 3 year old. But, really, you are just one day older than yesterday, and as I watch your legs lengthen and your confidence in yourself grow, in my heart’s eyes, I still see that precious, perfect newborn that I held 3 years ago today.
I’ll tell you now what I told you then: We are so glad you’re here. Happy Birthday, sweet boy.
We love you forever,
Momma & Daddy.
Jammie J's Quest 