Happy 3rd Birthday Big Boy! (the mega post)

When you were a baby, I planned to write you a letter on your birthday every year.  I hoped to keep all the letter and give them to you one some future momentous occasion.  I sat quietly and wrote on the eve of your first birthday, but when your second birthday approached, I put it off.  One of my biggest faults is that I want so much to do things perfectly that I often don't do them at all.  I keep thinking I don't have time now to do some thing justice, then the "time enough" never comes.  I am sad to say I never wrote your birthday letter last year.  This year I have felt a little overwhelmed by all the blogging and writing to be done.  Today not only do you turn three, but your brother turns six months!  We have one big birthday and one half birthday!  It's also the first time I've had to write your birthday post without monthly posts to fall back on.  Still, I've given myself permission to "just do it."  There are many areas of life where it is not worth doing a task if it can't be done well, but doing something "well," and doing it "perfectly" is not the same.  I'm hoping blogging falls into a different category.  One where doing something is better than nothing at all.  I'm hoping to be perfect in all my imperfection...sounds good anyway.  I'm hoping that, if you are reading this thirty-something years from now on your three year-old's birthday, that you'll understand, and maybe, just maybe, put this down and write a little something to your little one yourself.

I dare say this past year has been the one with the biggest changes in your little life.  Sure, the first year you came into the world and learned all about how to be in it.  Sure, the second year you learned to walk, and definitely learned to talk.  This year though, this year you became a big brother.  I think the only way to think about your third year is the first, pre-brother, half, and all the craziness that came with your baby brother in the second half.

The first half of the year I have to say you were exceptionally un-"toddler-like."  You talked up a storm, and had relatively few tantrums. The ones you did have were mild, and I knew it.  Your dad often remarked about how you didn't really display all the other behaviors he'd heard his friends talk about. I assured him there was plenty of time for those to develop.  In the meantime, I tried to soak up every last minute of your sweet self and the easy time we were having.  The closer you got to being two and a half, the better you were at doing things yourself.  You climbed in and out of your own car seat, climbed ladders and up slides at the park, climbed in and out of your booster seat at the table.  In retrospect, you were quite the little monkey!  You did not, however, climb out of your crib.  You loved your crib, and we decided to buy your brother a new one so you could keep your old one.  We also decided we'd wait until your brother had better night sleep before we transitioned you to a toddler bed.  We thought this would be easiest on you.  This is laughable now since your brother took forever to have (and may still not have) good night sleep, and you climbed out of your crib never to return when he was 4 weeks old.  The latter became a defining moment in the second half of your third year.

Your brother was born on your "half-birthday," and I cam only imagine how that must have seemed to you.  Your dad and I had only been away from you two weekend in your two and a half years.  We always talked to you about it before we left, we always said goodbye, and we were only gone one or two nights.  This time we tried to prepare you as best we could, but one night I said I'd "see you in the morning when the sun (came) up" and I didn't.  I didn't because I left the house before the sun came up to have your brother.  Your dad came home that night, but I didn't.  Two days later, you came to pick me up and met your baby brother.  I have no doubt that you love him very much, but I think you were a little mad at me for leaving and bringing him home.  So, in the second half of your third year, you have learned about sharing and jealousy, you have learned about loving hands, loving words, and loving hearts, and you have brought on your toddler-ness with everything you have.  You are fiercely independent at times and passionately dependent at others.  You have learned to pull up your own shorts, almost put on your shirt, wash your hands, brush your teeth, wipe your face and hands after dinner, and how to set the table and put your dishes in the dishwasher.  You do these things with a great sense of accomplishment some days and helplessly refuse to do them others.  You ask to be held or tickled some days, then ask me to leave the room others.  You wait to eat meals with each member of the family some days, then tell us you don't want to others.  Honestly, you make me want to scream and cry too some days, but almost every day you also make me laugh.

My sweet boy, I wish there was some way for me to explain just how much I love you.  (to the moon and back!)  Nothing gives me joy more than seeing you and your brother happy and playing together. You most often do that when I am trying to get your brother to settle down for naps.  You climb into the big brown glider beside me and when you are both on my lap, face to face, I can see how much you love each other.  He reaches out to touch your face and you giggle and pull away.  He laughs and reaches again.  This morning you told him you would eat his fingers!  You brought us books to read and told him not to eat them as we read together to him.  Before I knew it we were playing in his bedroom floor, not going to sleep at all!  I just can't resist seeing you two that way together. I think I can see your future together in those moments.  A future of you both fooling around, avoiding bath and bedtime.  One where your are driving me mad and warming my heart all at the same time.  It is such and honor to be a witness to that.  I hope I am right.

I also love to see your sense of accomplishment when you learn new things.  The look on your face is priceless.  Lately we have battled the "I can't"s and I wish I new better how to support you but help you see that "you can."  I remember that being so frustrating for my dad when I was much older.  I hope you out grow that sooner than I did.  I think it comes from being a first-born child.  I think we have such high expectations for ourselves that we'd rather not try than fail.  There's a lot of grey area in between failure and perfection, though, and a lot of it is perfectly acceptable!  Your three, now, though, and that's heavy stuff.  I hope we'll figure it out together, but we've got time!

On a lighter note, here are some superlatives for you this year:
favorite color: still orange
favorite activities: digging in the dirt with "one-time" toys, "playing mattress" (jumping, climbing, and sliding on old mattress) with "Da", eating/cooking (really so you can taste), Kindermusik
favorite silly words: "scayo-mayo"
favorite phrases: "why?" "when?" "then what happens? what happens after that? what next?"
favorite toys: Lovie and Pooh (both really for night time), diggers, one-times, dump truck, play-doh
favorite foods: banana, cheerios and raisins, "treats"
favorite books: "Dig, Dig, Digging," "Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site,""Chuck's Truck" and "Chuck's Band" among others during the day.
favorite song:"Hush little baby" (mama remix) and "Bye oh baby" at bedtime, any number of Kindermusik songs and "Old MacDonald" during the day.
future profession: Your dad says a commentator of some sorts.  You and your buddy Sam could make a great team.  Sam could play all the sports, and you could describe every step! Grams votes something in construction or a chef.  Certainly those are your main interests right now.


Ten things we loved about you this year:
1) Your many facial expressions, including your sweet, genuine smile
2) Hearing you sing
3) Seeing you meet your baby brother for the first time
4) Seeing you rush to soothe and care for your baby brother
5) Hearing you sing "Bye oh Baby" and "You are my Sunshine" to soothe NB
6) Your bashful smile showing satisfaction over a new skill or a job well done
7) Kindermusik class with you, especially seeing you dance, and rocking you
8) Seeing you be kind and gentle with other children
9) "Pretend sleep" in our big bed or seeing you tuck Da in and give him your Lovie
10) Watching you start to pretend play and hearing you incorporate songs and books into that. For instance, you quote books as you are playing. "Is it way compacted?" you asked about the trash in your new trash truck.  Furthermore, you get a kick out of it when I recognize the connection and can add the next line. You surprised me today by pulling a line from a book we read months ago!

A few things we look forward to leaving behind:
1) Diapers...please. Surely you will be in undies by this time next year.  Surely you will not be the first neuro-typical boy ever to go to prom in a diaper!
2) sleeping in the floor. While I'm sure this will be your last year of naps...so sad...I hope you will once again sleep in your bed.  One more thing we will be patient with. Sleeping on the floor cannot last forever.  Can it?
3) "Why?" and the other barrage of questions that go with it.  I know one day I will be begging you to talk to me.  I will miss the constant flow of words from the time you wake to the time you settle into sleep.  Really, the words are fine, it's the non-stop explaining and defending of every thing I do that I'd like to have move on.
4)Whining. I suspect this will not come to an end as soon as I'd like. (Which would be yesterday, if I had my choice.)
5) tantrums. Gosh, I see a pattern here.

We celebrated your birthday with a party this past Saturday.  It will probably be the last year we can keep it small and have only family and Nanny K.  Even keeping it small we were rather cozy in our sunroom.  Here are a few picture highlights of the day:

Nanny K made this great I Stink styled garbage truck. You recognized it right away.

Seeing Mama come with the cake

In keeping with the "garbage" theme, the cake had bags of garbage and a truck on it.

All you wanted for your birthday was "cupcake and candles" until about two weeks before your party, when you said you wanted a big cake.  Good thing I'd ordered both.

Cool magnetic building tiles from Toona and Gido. Look they can hold your garbage cans!

Dr Suess collection from Toona and Gido.  Now we can read the whole story...over and over!

Someone likes his garbage truck. 

Your new garbage truck from Mom and Da

Aunt Cat, is it going to "gobble" the garbage?

Dumping the garbage, "gobbling" it up, then dumping on the "barge" just like  the I Stink book

Thanks Nanny K!  I'll love digging with these new tools and can cart my toys outside in this wagon.

You learned about party horns and punch balloons this year. You were also a pro at opening gifts!

Baby brother made a guest appearance for a little while

Not pictured are also a set of "driver men" and an Optimus Prime transformer from Grams and Gramps.  Da is so excited for you to have the transformer.  He had a similar one when he was little.  You are getting to know all your driver men.  Interestingly you singled out the pink "gurler" (girl) right away.  For some reason you want all your drivers to be men. Papa and Lah-oo sent you bean bags and a CD of bean bag activities.  We haven't had much of a chance to play with them yet, but you already are singing the songs. I think they'll be good for lots of rainy day fun. 

We continued to celebrate your big day yesterday by sending pumpkin pillow cookies to school.  We also gave your class a new book (a school tradition) and a garbage truck.  You were so excited to open the new truck and have the cookies, that you almost didn't say goodbye to me at the door.  That was quite a change from recent weeks (months?), so I guess we just need to send a gift and snack every week and drop-off with be smooth sailing. 

With all that celebrating, I'm afraid you might have had high expectations for your day today.  When I told you "happy birthday" this morning, you asked if you were going to have breakfast first.  You associate "happy birthday" with cake, so I think you thought you'd get cake right away.  It just so happens that I had made you pancakes for breakfast, so I guess that was true.

I didn't even ask for a smile, just pulled out the camera....

You had Kindermusik today, so I arranged for us to have a mini party there.  Ms Mary Chris saved time at the end of class for everyone to sing "Happy Birthday" and we shared pumpkin fluff sandwich cookies and milk.

LO and Ms MaryChris playing bells before class.

Story time in music class.  The story was "Cookies and Milk"

LO and his cookies and milk

After Kindermusik, we went to get veggies from our weekly co-op.  The men there love to feed you and you are always up to the task.  Today they gave you a pear for your birthday, and you sat politely eating it while they loaded our bag with other goodies.  At home you had lunch, played garbage truck, then took a nap.  After nap, you had snack on the front porch, then "played football" with Da (which I've never seen you do before, so it was really fun to watch).  Your brother and I cheered for you on the front stoop.  After snack, we surprised you with a last gift and some cards.  Our sweet down-the-street neighbors sent this John Deere barn that seemed to be a hit.

We squeezed in a little playtime before din-din, then rushed through bath to get Da to work and you to bed.  So ended your birthday extravaganza.  I think it took you about 45 minutes to settle down...on the carpet.

Good night my sweet three year old.  I can't wait to figure out this next year together.

I love you. You mean to world to me.