Jammie J's Quest

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

Dear William,

On March 8, 2015, you turned 3 years 3 months old.  You are 42″ tall and weigh 42.8 pounds.  You are in size 5T shirts, 4T pants and shorts, 5T footed sleepers (although I think we need to start looking a bigger sizes in pajamas) and wear size 11/12 EW shoes.

Something that happened this month… after only 3 classes, I decided to change your dance class to a different teacher.  The first dance class you attended, you were excited.  The second dance class you attended, you were looking for a reason to take a break.  So, when three other little girls declared they had to go potty (despite them having gone before the class), you said you did, too.  The third dance class, you went in and were cooperative, but did so with tears running down your face for 10 minutes and then “had to go potty,” but nothing came out.  After reviewing the videos your Grandma D. had taken, I realized that perhaps the teacher’s body language could be viewed as aggressive and I had no idea what she was saying to you.  The biggest thing seems to be that Miss O. consistently reprimanded students for talking.  You claim that you never talked in class, that “Karis did” … but I wonder… you were “teaching” me how to “make a crown” and then follow through with “opening the sun” and I asked you, “Like this?”  And you immediately and emphatically responded with, “We’re opening the sun right now, not talking!”  After all that, I decided that perhaps a better “fit” might be in order.

I switched you to Miss N.’s class… and your Grandma D. took you to observe the class the week prior to starting, which was a fantastic idea!  The teacher came out of the room for something and you reported to me later that “Miss N. said she had to go back in and I said, ‘HA HA HAAAA’ and Miss N. smiled at me!”  The first class you felt you needed Froggy to help you.  The teacher said that was fine, and actually encouraged it.  By mid-class, Froggy was placed by you at the side of the room and you were interacting and doing your best to keep up.  I’m hoping this week’s class brings you laughter and that Froggy will be left at home!

Things you did:

02/09 – first dentist appointment
02/14 – Sea World
02/16 – LegoLand with Mommy
02/21 – Ryan’s 2nd Birthday party
02/28 – Breakfast at Chick-Fil-A with your godparents (a playground where the slide made no noise!)
03/07 – Santa Ana Zoo to see model trains

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, swim class
Tuesdays, pre-school library storytime
Wednesdays & Fridays, gymnastics at MyGym
Thursdays, dance class

Firsts:
02/09/15 – First Dentist appointment (no x-rays, their machine didn’t work)
02/21/15 – Rode tricycle for first time (and pedaled!!) at Ryan’s house
02/23/15 – First Swim class (with Miss Elaine)

Sleep:
You have not taken a nap this past month at all.  You now tell us that you can’t sleep when the sun is up.  Your Grandma D. still enforces a quiet time, and she rocks you for awhile… but you no longer fall asleep.  You refuse to lie down on your bed, instead choosing to have your quiet time on the floor of your room, in the dark.

Nourishment and Nursing:
We continue to nurse, although I’ve noticed a gradual decrease… you love your morning wake-up nursing session and you stretch that out as long as you can.  If we’re just hanging out at home, you have a tendency to cluster nurse in the mornings.  If we’re out for the day, you’ll usually seek me out in the early afternoon for a nursing session instead… I call it your “quiet time,” because it’s really just you regrouping yourself (instead of taking a nap).  We tend to seek each other out around 5 or 6 PM, and then your bedtime nursing is pretty short.  Not because you don’t want it, but because you fall asleep so quickly (because you no longer nap).  It’s said that child-weaned nurslings generally tend to wean themselves between the ages of 3-4.  I guess we’ll see how this plays out with you.

You eat well and continue to be somewhat adventurous when it comes to sampling food.  When we have soup, it’s quite adorable to watch you stack your spoon.  Every bite has to have a soup cracker and you’ll put nearly anything (except bell pepper) on the spoon with the cracker.  You’ll say, “I’m having potato and a cracker… Mmmmm, that’s good.  Now I’m having onion and a cracker.  Now i’m having a green bean and cracker.”  And on and on it goes.

Things I want to remember:

One of the things we tell you (to make you laugh) when you’re having a difficult time after dinner transitioning to the idea that we’re going home is, “I bought you dinner and stuff!”  Now you repeat it back to us and laugh and laugh. You just think it’s the funniest thing ever.

You like to ask me about the chores that I do, “Mommy do you have chores to do?”  Yes, I reply. “Are they home chores or work chores?”  Because sometimes my chores are about getting ready for work the next day, and other times the chores are about keeping our home running smoothly.  It’s interesting to me that you are classifying my chores.

When I help you clean yourself up, or help you wash your hands, or even help you with a toy that is challenging you, you tell me, “Mommy, you did a good job helping me.”

When we were at LegoLand on President’s day, you accidentally walked under the hand dryer in the restroom.  It triggered and a huge gust of air and loud noise burst forth.  You jumped and almost cried you were so surprised and you said, “Oh no!  Do I still have my hair!”   You later told me that Mr. Steve (your teacher at MyGym) doesn’t have any hair.  I’m still puzzled over the correlation of those two things in your mind.

You were humming the Cars 2 intro song and you stopped after about the 4th round of it and asked, with an impish grin, “When is the man gonna start singing?”

Driving home from Sea World you were eating raisins.   You were bringing them up out of the container and narrating, “These are fishies coming out of the water. This one’s a big whale.”  There was a pause and you added, “It’s just pretend, OK? Because they’re really raisins, OK?”

One morning, you said, “I need to go to the bank!”  Your father and I looked at each other in confusion.  I asked, “Why do you need to go to the bank?”  You replied, “To get stickers!”  Apparently, when you go to the bank with Grandma D. they give you stickers?  I’m still not sure of that one.

On Valentine’s Day, we were heading to Sea World.  As part of our conversation driving down there, your father asked you, “Where should we take mommy for Valentine’s Day?”  You replied, “To the bank!”

One evening, after a big dinner at Chick-Fil-A, and you not having pooped all day, we took a risk and went to the park.  Sure enough, a few minutes of running around and you requested your portable potty.  A few minutes later, you were all done, you got up, turned around and looked and exclaimed, “That’s my work!”

Listening to the Route 66 song, you said, “The music is telling you to turn west!”

You still get all excited when you see a semi-truck and exclaim who the trailer belongs to, whether it be UPS, FedEx, McDonald’s, Walmart or Target… those are the most common ones.

One night, I was talking about how tired I was.  I jokingly mentioned that I was so tired, I might just fall asleep in William’s bed and sleep there all night.  You paused and said, “Mommy? You go sleep in your own bed.”  Although, later that night when I was nursing you to sleep, you sleepily and sweetly told me, “It’s OK.  You can sleep in my bed.”

On my old iPhone, I’ve downloaded some of your favorite songs and an app called “Bible Stories for Kids.”  It’s really a great app and you learn a lot of Biblical details from it.  There are animations of characters that you trigger by touching them.  I use the app to keep you awake when we have our “reconnect” nursing when I get home from work.  One of the animations was a guy sneezing behind another guy and it blew the guy’s turban off.  You played that thing over and over and laughed harder and harder every time it happened.

Driving back from LegoLand on President’s day, we were stuck in traffic. There was a guy in a SUV in the lane next to us on the freeway. You stared at him for a good long while and then said, “Is he eating chocolate?” I looked at him and could see his jaw flexing repeatedly and replied, “No, I think he’s chewing some gum.” You replied, “No. He is definitely eating chocolate.”

One morning after nursing, you started singing this song, “When the sea lions get on board, all aboard! May I say scat? The lizards, and cattles, and kangaroos!”  You stopped and asked me, “What are cattles?”  I still don’t know where the song came from, but you told me it’s about Noah’s Ark.

When getting you cleaned up after going to the restroom, inevitably, your head always ends up in my armpit somehow. Every time, I hear you say, “I love you, mommy.” Which is always nice for a thankless job. Sometimes you’ll sniff and tell me, “Mmmmm, you smell so good.” One evening, you told me that and then added, “Daddy smells good, too. So does grandma, but actually she’s kind of stinky.”

One morning, you woke early and your father went in your room first.  After a few minutes, I went in and your father left.  You curled into me and stuck your face in my neck and said, “Mmmmm you smell good!”  I replied, “Thank you.”  You said, “Daddy does not smell good. Does he need to take a shower or something?”

Stuck in traffic on the freeway, we branched off to another freeway and went up a freeway overpass.  You yelled, “We’re out of traffic! We’re up high! Yay freedom!”

I bought you a new pair of shoes and you wore them for the first time and said, “I like my new chuggers!”

You like to put a spoon in your mouth and hold on to it with your lips.  You then inform us, “I’m an elephant and this is my trunk.”

When you don’t want to do something, you’ll say (for example), “I don’t want to!”  Pause. and then you add, “Uhh!”

One morning, coming downstairs with your daddy after I’d left for work, you looked out the window and exclaimed “Oh no!  It’s foggy!  Mommy might get lost!”

When we were at Ryan’s birthday party, Ryan’s mommy offered to make you a hot dog sandwich, since she was cooking one for Ryan.  You were excited to try it and when she served it to you, you took a bite of it and then said, “This is like Weinerschnitzel!”  What I forgot to tell Ryan’s mommy is that is a high compliment, indeed, since you LOVE Weinerschnitzel.

At Ryan’s birthday party, you got adventurous and went down his little slide on your belly.  You accidentally nose dived at the bottom and had a brown smudge on your nose. After I determined you were OK, I laughed at you and told you that you were Rudolph the Brown Nosed Reindeer.  You replied, “Oh mommy.  Rudolph has a red nose, not a brown nose.”

The road from your Grandparent’s H. house has quite a steep hill.  Somedays you’ll say it’s a roller coaster and put your hands in the air.  After we let you see the Disney movie, Lady & the Tramp, you howled “Woo wooowooo!” And said, “That’s what we do down the hill when we are doggies!”

One of the questions you ask me when I transition into “business mode” and am just trying to get stuff done is, “Why are you going so fast?”

One of the songs on Signing Time’s Potty Time DVD is about how you’re supposed to listen to your body.  It tells you when it’s time to eat!  It tells you when it’s time to sleep, etc.  The past month or so, you’ve started talking to your body like it’s a 3rd person… “We’re having a picnic, body. Are you hungry, body?” “My body is telling me it’s running around time!” “My body is telling me it’s time to play with the trains now!”

When we were at Yogurtland, I got you three of your favorite flavors, one of which is “Cookie,” which is a type of chocolate.  For myself, I got a different chocolate and I offered you a small taste.  This is rare, I don’t normally let you taste my dessert, but for some reason I did that day.  You tasted it and then, in turn, you dipped your spoon in your chocolate and held it up to me to taste.  I was so pleasantly surprised.

Your father was so impressed one night when, instead of running away from him to go to Sunset Park (our name for the grassy area behind the houses) to see the sunset, you asked his permission to “go watch the sunset, please?”

Your Grandparent’s H. bought you a framed train picture for your 2nd birthday.  It’s been sitting in one spot or another the past year while I tried to find a good spot to hang it.  I finally found a spot I liked it in and put it up.  When I got you ready for bed that night, the first thing you noticed and said was, “You hung up my train picture!”

At the zoo, there was a roped off area for employees only. You told me, “I want to go back there. What’s back there? So many places!”  I told you that it was for zoo employees only.  Then, every person who went past the rope, you asked, “Are they zoo employees?”  There was a little boy who ran past the rope and you asked, “Why is he going back there?”  Then his mommy ran after him, you asked, “Is that his mommy? Is she getting him? What happens if she doesn’t get him?”  I’m thinking this is your version of the infamous “why?” phase I’ve heard so much about?

Every night during our prayer time, we give thanks to the Lord for all the things that blessed us during the day, or in recent memory.  If there’s a special need or something on our minds that needs to be settled, we pray for that, too.  The things you like to thank Jesus for are mommy and daddy, Grandma D., Grandma and Grandpa H., MyGym, Swim class and Dance class, the Queen Mary and for precious time spent together as a family.  We realize that every moment with you is precious and, even if we’re having a hard time or a rough day… it’s OK, we’re human.  I apologize to you if I’ve wronged you and you do the same to me, and we tell each other, “I forgive you.”  I tell you that I’m learning how to be a better mommy every single day and you tell me that you’re learning to be better, too.

We’re in this life together.  Trying and learning… together.  No matter what we face, I am so happy that we are a family.

Love you forever,

Momma

Pictures from this month can be found here: LINK

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