He has very few touches of baby left in him, and most of those revolve around being tired, or genuinely frustrated by a situation and not having the adequate skills to deal with those feelings just quite yet. Other than that, we all tend to forget he's still just 3. He's wise beyond his years and loves being a big kid.
He's TOUGH. And BRAVE. And wide open 90% of the time. He has touches of shyness in completely new situations, or when there are no kids around. He's not a big fan of all adult situations. He also still gets overwhelmed in crowds. He gets that honest from both sides, so mostly we just avoid large crowds for all of our sanity.
Along with the tough comes quite a bit of rough. He is not at all aware of his substantial strength. I am constantly in awe of his physical strength and how disciplined he is with himself when he wants to be. He's still not the biggest kid his age by a long shot, but he has no idea. He just finished a 3 month gymnastics class and he was so fun to watch. Our boy took it as seriously as the NFL combine. A little too serious at times. The 45 minute class consists of three 15 minute sequenced activities. When one of the other 7 kids stepped out of line even slightly, he was quick to remind them of the rules and what they should be doing. We knew this had nothing to do with rule following, but more with him being concerned that if they took too much time goofing off he wouldn't get to do that activity as many times as possible. The class really helped him focus on balance and luckily gave him some safe ways to fall and flip around.
Back to the rough though, he loves to wrestle and pretend fight. He's not very good at pretending though, so we've all had way too many bruises than we should. At first I was a little worried about how much he LOVES to fight. Complete with fake guns, anything he can find to be a sword, and fake dying. I tried my hardest to get him to soften his playing, then I read an incredibly interesting article on the importance of boys be boys. Guns and fighting and all. And you know the thing about internet articles? You can find one to say just about anything you want. But this one made sense to me and since there wasn't really a thing we could do about our natural little fighter, we are embracing it and trying to put realistic boundaries on his pretend play. It works about half of the time.
On to the sweet. OH MY GOODNESS THIS BOY IS SWEET. I never thought I would say this, because 3-3.5 had it's moments, but I wish I could freeze time at 3.5. I'm loving this age. Some of my very favorite things right now are:
- How his eyes light up when he sees me when I get home and he says "MAMAAAAAAAA."
- His voice. I wish I could bottle it up and keep it for ever and ever and ever. (To ever according to Hardin)
- The way he sleepily stumbles in my room every morning, his little walk, scratchy voice, and morning snuggles. He follows that most days with a sleepy "mama, what am I doing today?" He likes to have an itinerary.
- How he says "rune" for room. Mama, I'll be waiting for you in my rune when you put Hadley to bed.
- How "to" is still his universal preposition. This one is to me, this one is to Hadley.
- How he strips his clothes off the second he hears water running. No matter who gets in the shower, he's getting in. Hadley gets a bath? He's getting in. The sprinklers or hose turn on? He's naked.
- His scrawny little arms and huge hugs. The legs wrap around also. Now he rubs my back too.
- How when he's hugging on me he tells me how much he loves the most random things from my teeth to my story reading.
- What breaks my heart is when he tells me how much he misses me when I'm at work. Good thing is I know this is a direct result of me swinging him around telling him how much I miss him when I'm at work, because I know he's actually in hog heaven around here when I work. He escorts me out some mornings. He can't get to the surprises in Gigi's purse fast enough.
- His bedhead hair.
- How he eats. If you think his mouth is cute talking, it's even cuter chewing.
- How he wants me to hold the outsides of his hands when he uses the restroom. He'll settle for mom or Jason when I'm not here, but if I'm here, I'm sitting with him the entire time.
- How he LOVES to help in the kitchen and with laundry. He's very good at following directions when it's something he's interest in.
- Stories, questions and songs. Long ago I wrote about how if you add something to his bedtime routine it's a permanent fixture if Hardin noticed. That's how we ended up with books, followed by stories, questions and songs. I have to read book stories, then make up my own stories. Then I ask questions. Mostly what his favorite part of the day was, least favorite, what he ate, what he learned at school, etc. Mostly I only ask a couple and he ends up talking for a good 5 minutes telling me ALL about his day and asking questions to me about what things meant. He's incredibly intuitive about people's behavior, and ask me why people do the things they do. I love laying in his dark room (on the same side of the bed, he freaks out a little if not), and watching his little face and the expressions he makes telling me all about his day. Then we sing songs and say prayers. Then he begs to do it all over again or at least just talk to me a little more mama. Needless to say I can't resist that. It takes a good 30-45 minutes. Most days I love every second. On the days I catch myself laying there thinking about everything I have to do before I can put myself to bed, I feel cheated.
- I love how it doesn't matter if I spend ten minutes in his room or an hour, as soon as I leave his room and tell him I love him and to STAY IN BED, the next thing we hear is a little ninja walking down the hall. He then request Jason to tell him TWO DADDY STORIES PLEASEEEEE. And he gets them of course. Then he's normally down for the count until 7:30.
- How he loves to be outside. Alllllllllllllllll day. Every day. Doing anything. When I cleaned up Monday night (so mom wouldn't really see how sloppily we lived during a 3 day weekend), I noticed his iPad was still dead from the week before. His playroom was also in the exact same shape. He literally had been outside with one of us from Friday afternoon to Monday night.
- How he calls Hadley "My Baby." Meaning his. Not ours.
- His obsession combined with misconception of all numbers. I know it's totally normal at this age, but it keeps us smiling. He loves numbers, especially measurements, but doesn't grasp them yet. Time. Weight. Distance. All of it. And all of it's wrong. Mama, I weigh one thousand ounces. We'll leave at 20 o'clock. I did that last week ago.
- How he idolizes our neighborhood kids and thinks they are just the coolest kids ever.
- His love of all things superheros and sports.
- How much he loves his cousins. He talks about them every single day. Without fail.
- How he tells me how I have a big belly. Wait. I hate that. Honest little
sh*tguy. I do appreciate how literal and candid this age is.
The one thing all of us are incredibly tired of is "HUH?" My brother keeps joking that my dad is laughing down on us. He hated that word, especially when it was following a statement he knew good and well we heard. I feel his pain now. HUH? has become second nature for "I heard what you said but I'm going to stall in order to avoid you." Every time he says it we all say "you heard me" as politely as possible, so we're hoping to break that habit soon. Not soon enough.
There are surly a thousand things I'm forgetting, but over all he's just the coolest little kid. He's funny and sweet, stubborn and smart. We couldn't love him one single drop more than we do.
These are about 6 months worth of my favorite iPhone pictures. He's a mess!
