3 Years Old!

Ben!

Holy cow, man!  You're 3!  That's so amazing and surreal and just weird!  I love it, though.

This has been a wild year.  Shortly after your birthday last year, we shared with you that a new little brother or sister was going to be joining our family.  Of course, at 2, you had no idea what we were talking about.  We did our best to prep you though, before he got here.

This has been the year of the yuck. You, my tiny friend, embodied the terrible twos.  Woosh.  I certainly don't mean it to sound like the entire year was the nasty and I know that's how it can come off some times.  You push buttons, you toe the line, you run right over the line, you are defiant, sassy, and some times violent.

You are also incredibly funny, so super sweet, so easy going and good natured.  You're 3.  What else can we expect from you?  ;)

We've asked a LOT of you this last year and I'd have to say you held up to it really well.  In April we got on a plane and traveled forever to go visit nana, granddad, aunt Tara, Uncle Rob and cousins Shea & Ruby down in Florida.  We had the best vacation.  We did a little of everything and had a blast.

Oh, and did I mention we did this in the middle of hard core potty training?

Yeah, your mom is a sadist, apparently.

See, we started potty training the fall prior.  You were doing really great, then we went on vacation to Chicago and potty training came to a screeching halt.  I got lazy and it was easier to just change a diaper than clean up messes, do mass laundry and constantly remind you to go.  Then I decided enough and we went 100% diaper free during the day.

Anyway, we visited Florida & Seattle that spring.  Then little brother was born and Nana came out to help.  She spoiled you rotten and you loved it.

Then we stopped sending you to Tumble Time and enrolled you in preschool instead.  You love it.  Love, love, love it and I love that we're able to have you go.

Then we switched you from a crib to a toddler bed.

Then we took away your diapers completely.

I didn't do as much for your birthday this year as I have in the past and I felt really bad about it.  Time is stuck on fast forward and I can't seem to keep up.  Mommy is in charge of a kiddo bookclub with our play group and it just happened to fall on your actual birthday in December.  Rather than reschedule it, I meshed our bookclub with your birthday and we had a lot of little friends over for a PJ party to play.

After your nap, family came over for dinner, presents & cake and ice cream.  You chose a strawberry cake this year and we had a spaghetti dinner.  You were spoiled.

At 2 years old, you were still mostly in diapers, using the binkie pretty much all day and were a tall skinny boy at 26.5 lbs and 38" tall.
At 3 years old, we are completely diaper free, only using the binkie at night (we've made you do so many changes this past 6 months, we're letting you hold on to your "security blanket" just a little bit longer) and are still tall and skinny.  You only grew 2 inches over the last year (you're now 40" which put you in the 93rd percentile) but nearly 10 pounds (35 pounds, which is the 87th percentile) - WOW!

You have an amazing vocabulary and a delightful sense of humor.  You stutter a bit, which I'm not sure if I should be concerned with or not. I assume it's a phase as your mouth struggles to keep up with your brain to get the words out.  You know all your colors, you can count to about 20, you have sight recognition of all your letters and a lot of your numbers.  You are so independent, which often turns into a power struggle with mom & dad, but is wonderful to see at the same time.

Your daily schedule hasn't really changed that much in the last year.  You wake some where from 6:30 to 7:30 pretty much every morning.  You sleep a good 2 to 3 hours every afternoon for nap.  Your bed time is still 7:30.  You still love Caillou, though you rarely watch it.  You're all about movies now and are always asking if we can put a movie on.  Your favorites are the Cars movies (Cars 2 beats out the original - you love Finn McMissile or "Mick-a-sigh-el" as you say it), Monsters, Inc and Ratatouille.

You love to play with cars.  All cars.  Big cars, little cars, cars you can ride on, cars you can push around, cars that crash.  You love to color and play with stickers and have recently really gotten into Playdoh and Legos.  You're not that into action figures yet, but Spiderman and Buzz Lightyear are starting to catch your attention.

You love to read.  Books about cars, construction or dinosaurs seem to be your favorite, but there's very few stories you won't sit and listen to.

Your imagination is astounding and pretend play is starting to get very fun, though you're not especially into dress up play (but I hope it comes - mommy picked out a fun doctors set for you for Christmas that you've barely touched).

I'm so excited to see what this next year brings!!!