How tall you've gotten.
The way your clothes hang on you--a lithe little boy rather than a chubby little Michelin-man cherub. You have clothing preferences--no jeans for you! You want "nice and toasty" pants, which means soft and fleecy sweatpants. Who can blame you?
You build things. You are DRIVEN to build things. Out of whatever. Anything. Everything. Blocks, train tracks, train pile-ups, bristle blocks, tree blocks, dominos. You love your cars, your trains, your stuffed animals, your tools, and of course, Tiggy.
Daddy helped you build this robot, but then you decided to take a nap with it:
You want to play games. Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, matching games.
You love books. You enhale them. You are a slave to them. Welcome to the order of the nerds, son. This is how so many of us ended up where we are today.
I put you to bed one night at 7:30 and peeked in on you a little later. You were still reading by the light of your nightlights and the hall light. This happens a couple of nights every week, and you usually fall asleep with an open book on your chest, part of it covering your chin.
This particular night, you were still awake at 9:30. I gently explained that it was time to stop reading and time to get some sleep.
3 years old and silently looking at books for TWO HOURS. Okay, almost silently. Occasionally you would slip and let loose with some exclamation or gibberish. But mostly, you were silent. Even when you got out of bed to grab new books, so that in the end you were trying to sleep with 10 or so books at once. In a toddler bed.
Ahem.
You are my son. I am so honored to know you.
You stayed the night with the babysitter for the first time a few weeks ago because it seemed easier than waking you up to bring you home (and it's easier for you to be at her house because she has a wee-un that's younger than you). You snuck out of bed at 5 in the morning, got a stack of books from their cabinet, and crept down to the living room to look at them. She woke up to the sound of whispering from the living room, and was concerned that someone had broken into the house. It was just you, and she sent you back to bed, but let you take some books with you. You were over there today, and apparently were trying to cuddle with and read to the cat. He was not amused.
You have imaginary friends. The whole lot of them showed up one morning after a week of crappy sleep. I have learned that when your sleep goes to shit you are either getting sick or about to have some kind of developmental leap. Some of your friends are Disney/Pixar/fill-in-the-blank-corporate-creations. But some are not. They ride in the car with you. You tell them to line up behind you to go into school. This morning, when caught tearing pages in a book, you said Penny told you to do it. We explained that sometimes you have to tell your friends no, that it's not the right thing to do. You introduce them as "see, mine friends" and pan your hand around. One of them is Petos, the dragon, along with his best friend Walter. Petos and Walter are characters in some of the stories I tell you. Stories about why it's a good idea to walk, not run, on ice. Stories about why it's a good idea to let your mommy put lotion on your face and hands. Stories about why it's important to wear your snow boots and coat. Petos ran on the ice, and he hurt his wing, but the wizard made it better and now Petos knows that walking is safer. Petos didn't want to put lotion on, and his poor tail and wings got all dry and cracked and hurt, but the special dragon lotion keeps his wings and tail soft. Petos got mad at Walter one day and hit him, and then he felt very sorry, so now when he gets angry he takes nice, deep, dragon breaths to let out his fire. I always ask you what color Petos is, and what color his wings are, and those change from day to day. I didn't know if you actually heard the stories, until you started repeating them back to me. One day I was so upset I couldn't stop crying, and you said, "mommy, just breathe, like Petos doos". You are such a blessing to me. If you can remember that, to just breathe, and remind other people to do it too, you'll be just fine in life.
You have friends from this dimension too. This year was the first year that when I asked who you wanted to invite to your party, you had an opinion and it was consistent over several days. You had opinions about your cake, too. It was to be a chocolate train cake. And so it was.
You love the movie Wall-E, and spend much of your time as Wall-E. You will pick up "trash" from the ground, squeeze it towards your belly with a grrrr sound and then drop it back to the ground, "like Wall-E doos". I recorded you one day as you acted out parts of the movie along with the movie. Then I showed you the recording. Now you ask to watch yourself doing Wall-E. I don't know what the long-term effect of seeing yourself on video so young will be, but I do know that we're well on our way to having another performer in the family. You also ask to watch footage of your cousins and yourself from when we visited Arizona for the holidays. I am so happy that you have a big extended family and can't wait to watch you all grow together.
It's hard to believe that less than a year ago, I was worried about your language. When we moved here in June, it was a big deal that you were consistently putting two words together. Even when I met with your teacher last October, it was rare for you to put four words together. Now, you talk constantly. And you even have a special language for your imaginary friends that is some kind of hodge-podge of English and gobbledeegook. I wish I could speak it too.
You asked for a Barbie. Sigh. What a dilemma for me. On the one hand, I want to support your interest in non-gender-normative toys. On the other hand, IT'S BARBIE. I don't want to support the notion that she is what a woman is. In the end, I bought you the Barbie, but it was the rock star one, by god. I kind of want to tell you that she's from another planet and that's why she looks so strange, but that might be a bit much.
~Mama
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