You Are 3

Sweet Boy,

Tomorrow, you are 3. You've been asking about your "dirtday" for about a month now. You tell us you want "bwoons" and "cake" and "cucakes" at your "dirtday" and I love every single mispronounced word that leaves your cute mouth.

This last year....wooo-eey! I've LOVED being your mommy every single second. Through your tantrums, your cuddles, your first sentences, your first deliberate repetition of "I love you", your stumbles, your illnesses, and your first moments as a big brother. It hasn't always been easy, but I wouldn't change the bad moments for a million good ones. We've learned from you and you've learned from us.

Let's see, where to begin. We measured you tonight and will make a big show of measuring you tomorrow to see how big you've grown from 2 to 3. Because 3 years old is now full on Big Boy territory. You will never be a little guy again. In the last year you have grown so much, both physically and cognitively.

We started out 2 with an Early Intervention evaluation. We were worried that your verbal language skills were lacking. You just proved to us that you were a confidence talker. Right before we started getting concerned again you started talking. And boy, do you talk. You've got a wonderful imagination. You play with McDonald's Happy Meal Transformers and they have epic battles that always end with "I sowwy" and "dat's go-kay!" You lug your many, many (oh so many) Mickey babies everywhere. They eat food, love on Eeny, and go for rides in the car with you. You love those Mickeys more than anything, even your Orange Monster couldn't hold a torch for too long against them. (Orange Monster is actually Muno from "Yo Gabba Gabba")

You are still a skinny little guy. We worry that you eat only PB&J or hot dogs. We wish you'd eat more vegetables, but your dad and I both know that you'll try them on your own time. Right now we feed you whatever you will willingly eat. We're okay with that. We were concerned that you didn't gain much weight between 2 and 2.5 years. In the last couple of months you've gained 3 pounds. This is HUGE, considering you remained so little for so long.

You adore your little sister. You can't wait for her to be big enough to play with your toys with you. You used to call her Een and now you've started calling her Eeny, which I love. I love that you have such a big heart and while you can be a selfish toddler, you are a wonderful big brother who shares toys with his sister. When you accidentally hit her with a wooden dowel, you apologized for hours, knowing that you caused her to cry. She loves you too, buddy. She might not say it, but her determination to scoot and roll to wherever you are should prove that to you.

Right now, you're screaming "MOMMY! DADDY! I MEED YOU! GET IN MY WOOM! I MEED MY DIRTDAY!" and it is adorable. I know tomorrow is going to be amazing for you. Saturday, though, is when your party is. You'll get a big surprise on Saturday morning. We decided to hold off on giving it to you because Daddy wants to see your face light up when you first see your big boy bike. You've been asking for a bike for a couple of weeks now and we are so excited to be able to give you one (of course, full disclosure, the bike is from GG and Pop Pop).

So, for now my boy, sleep. Go to bed. In the morning I'm letting you have a cupcake for breakfast. You'll take them to daycare with you and you'll eat one there. Then, I'm letting you eat cake for dinner. You'll love it, and I'll love watching you enjoy your moment. You only turn 3 once!

I love you Monkey Moo.

5 Months Old!

Nina is now 5 months old. This week has been somewhat of a disaster here on the East Coast, so I've been very busy shielding Jack from live TV. Also, it's really difficult to update my blog while holding/nursing the baby while the toddler screams for the iPad. Hey, at least this is only a day late, right?

A quick note as to the Boston Marathon bombing and following events: We were in CT driving home from NJ on Monday when the explosions happened. We live about 40 minutes west of Boston. We are not a direct suburb, and therefore remained out of harm's way during the manhunt. Todd works a little closer to the city, but his work wasn't included in the shelter in place lockdown, so he went to work Friday. We have friends and family who were on lockdown on Friday and we are thankful that they remained safe; also thankful that this week was spring break for our area and the logistics of school closures weren't added to the list of potential hazards on Friday. Thanks to the Boston Police, the various armed forces, and citizens who helped this week. It's been crazy around here.

Now, back to her cuteness: Sweet pie, Squish (surprisingly our favorite nickname), Bug, Een, Eeny! Nina goes by many names. She is active, crazy, she screeches...a lot (big brother never did, we are learning to deal with a loud baby...), she blows raspberries, says "mmmmm", and has discovered her toes.

In terms of gross motor skills, Nina sits, steamrolls across the room, and can go from sitting to belly without belly flopping on the floor. Nina does a modified army crawl; she can do arm over arm, but she also does a sort of rocking back and forth crawl. She's working on getting her butt and belly up in the air. As for fine motor skills, she's working on her pincer grasp (YAY! Almost puff time!) and follows fingers, toys, etc when they're dangled in front of her. She's skilled, that's for sure!

Baby comparison time:

Jack: rolled back-to-belly at almost 6 months, sat unassisted at exactly 6 months, and began army crawling at 7 months. He said his first word (MAMA!!!) at 5 months.

Outtakes

Nina's a bit difficult to photograph. She sees the camera (okay, she sees the iPad or my phone, very rarely our expensive "fancy" DSLR camera that we purchased specifically to get awesome pictures of our children) and gets SO EXCITED and flops and dances and reaches for whichever electronic I have.

We are going strong in our cloth diapering experience. Love, love, LOVE them this time around. We even took them with us to NJ last weekend and it worked out well. I think, though, the next time we travel I'm going to invest in a large zippered hanging wetbag. Just for transportation purposes. When we got back, our clean diapers had a funk from being in the same duffle bag as our dirty, separately bagged, diapers. Not a big deal, since it was diaper laundry day anyway. My preferred diaper is the Imagine AIO, followed quickly by the BumGenius Stay Dry AIO, followed by Best Bottom covers with gDiaper inserts. We will be investing in some hemp or cotton prefolds for the summer for a more breathable bum in our humid climate. I have a couple of Charlie Banana diapers, but they're nearly twice as much as my Imagine diapers, also I'm not too fond of the pocket style. I have a single Gro-via and I adore it, but it's not Todd's favorite. I would like more. They're super trim under her little jeans. My only concern with the Imagine diapers is that they won't quite make it weight wise through potty training. Of course, I could be wrong. Nina is still only on the middle rise and is about 17lbs and it's holding strong. I'm officially obsessed. I would only be happier if someone were to get a gift certificate to my favorite online retailer :)

Jack's been struggling with sharing lately. He's had to have the sharing talk at daycare a couple of times. We think it's because Nina is more mobile, yet still somewhat blobby, so he can just take toys from her and she rarely cares. We're working on this, but it's hard without a second kid that cares yet. He's wonderful most of the time, but we certainly have our moments. We skipped the terrible twos and are heading full on into the terrifying threes. He limp noodles in stores, screams, throws things. Oy. On the other hand, he still snuggles, is relatively agreeable. LOVES his sister. He struggles when she's napping because all he wants to do is "pway wif Eeny!"

I'm sure I'll update next month, when I have STATS for Nina. Hopefully sometime in between. Maybe. Don't get your hopes up...