And just like that, we’re a quarter of the way through three already.

So many sound effects, super powers, gruff lower-octave tough-guy talking. “I can do ANYTHING!” attitude and frequent mention of “protecting” people and “saving the day”. Lots of live action pretending to be the PJ Masks, the ghostbusters, and a T-Rex. You are ALL. IN. when it comes to the world of imagination. And you have BIG reactions to things right now, often with catch phrases you’ve memorized from characters you love.

All letters. All the time. You want to read so badly — you insist on “reading” (memorized) books and you stop at every sign, shirt, etc. to spell out the letters. You ask what signs say or make up what they say, speaking in a dialect that suggests you are sounding out whatever the (made up) text reads. You are starting to connect letters and the sounds they make, and words with the same sound. Several times when reading a book with you, you will go through a whole page of text and name each letter. You’re trying to tell time and you can correctly count up to thirty and are so much better at tracking items that you’re counting (you rarely skip or double-count something anymore).

Your eating habits are slowly loosening up. Several times you’ve tried a bite of something new without so much as a second ask by us (or something even a first!) and while I’d still absolutely categorize you as a picky eater, we can find something on just about any menu that you will happily eat now. Phew. (Although noodles of any kind are still a hard pass!) We continue to get the reports from school that you are a “really good eater” now (?!) and will try just about anything they put in front of you. I chalk it up to peer pressure from your friends!

You are mastering the scooter you got from the Easter Bunny. It wipes you out, but you can rotate swimming freestyling and rolling to your back for a break when needed, back and forth until you swim the width of the pool at swim lessons. You have just enough confidence that you can get around in water, that I’m a little nervous for pool season ha! You continue to play soccer through a school program and I was impressed how much better you were when we got the net out recently, after a few months of snow.

You’re up over 3 pounds from your well check in January, and at least another inch in height. Most of your pants are suddenly too short — yet another reason we need shorts season to just start already! You’re in 2T bottoms for the most part with a few 3s mixed in, and firmly size 3T in tops. We recently had to replace all shoes in the next size up as well. All that growing is helping you sleep better — the phase that lasted ALL of fall and through the holidays where you’d come into our bed most nights somewhere after midnight, has nearly vanished. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve woken you in our bed. You’re an easy one to bunk with, but I’m okay that we have our space again. 🙂 You’ve skipped a nap a few days here and there, in particular if it’s a day you slept in that morning, but other days you can easily snooze for a couple of hours. We play it by ear anymore and I’m just grateful we’re into age three without really ever “fighting” naps when they’re needed.

You continue to love to cook (in the kitchen for real and as the chef in a restaurant in your play kitchen). You’ve branched out significantly in the toys you want to play with, but garbage trucks still have your heart, and the local news station even recently stopped by to film a segment about the love affair. When we read, you gravitate heavily toward the alphabet-based books. You are turning into quite the entertainer and like to try and make us laugh. “Guys! Watch THIS!” is also a repeat phrase right now.

You show SO much of both your dad and me in that we want to be experts in something and correction is sometimes hard to take. 🙂 But when it comes to language and learning new words, we’ve both remarked how amazed we are with how you process. We see examples like the following nearly daily: you were making a comment about the grid design in our doors and said something like “look, there are five windows in this door” and your dad said “yeah, there are five panels”. “Panels? Did you say panels, dad?” “Yes buddy, panels.” “Panels. Yeah there are five PANELS.” You are just unbelievably thirsty to learn all the words, you’re determined to get them right, and it’s the one thing you will let us correct you on.

We love watching you learn and grown and figure the world out, one step at a time. I love seeing big boy traits like compassion and protection coming out more and more, and of course your unwavering enthusiasm and positive attitude about everything, just makes the day brighter. You can of course test us like any three year old can, but we’re grateful nothing seems to bum you out for very long, and you bounce back quickly. Looking forward to more of this fun year we call three.

All the love,
Mom