Dear Mr. Rosy Cheeks,
I will remember your rosy cheeks and happy spark this month. You were also nicknamed "35 pounds of cute" by your doting grandparents. You also picked up Aiden Bobblehead from your silly friend at school, Alyssa, who has a nickname for everyone (Aidan Whitehead for your other friend). Picking your brother's name is still in progress, but you get pretty adamant about a name you like for a few days - like last week you wanted to name the baby Marco. If I suggested, well, maybe Mark? You'd get feisty and insist "No, no, no Mommy Marc-O!" Uh, the name game is getting interesting.
You had so much fun helping celebrate your Gran's 60th birthday in Ohio. You kept the surprise by being nice and quiet as Gran came up the stairs to her surprise. You loved the hippo cake and helping Gran blow out her candles. Being surrounded by your family energizes you and you are so lucky to have such big group of jokesters. You will tease them, and you are catching on to even the classic Uncle Billy teasing. Sometimes as your bed time creeps later or you've been woken up from an impromptu nap, you will start squaking, but it is quickly replaced by giggles when you realize you have a bunch of family smiling at you. I told you a few times this month that you were "out of No for the day" - You had used up all the Nos and couldn't say it anymore. You actually seemed to follow that rule, but we'll see how long that lasts.
A symptom of seeing plenty of movies recently (specifically the awesome Omnimax movies at the science center) as you were starting your own "show" for us, and you announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Be sure to turn your cell phones off!" You find many random objects that serve as your microphones, usually for some rendition of the many christmas songs you learned this season. Your repertoire of songs is much, much larger than mine at this point and you are sure you get the words right each time.
You love an excuse to ride an escalator or an elevator. You will carefully step on with a little hop and you watch for the end very patiently. You were the best travel buddy when it was just me and you on the way home from ohio. You were very determined to get home to your daddy and that was what motivated you to behave. "Mommy, If I'm a good boy, I get to see daddy soon!" On the way there, you were also a good boy sitting next to daddy playing many rounds of M&M wars. Many M&M's were smooshed and munched during that flight.
You loved a new What's in the Cat's Hat Game you got from your aunt, uncle, and cousins (thanks M, J, K, and T!) You like using clues to play guessing games so it is right up your alley. Your auntie and uncle babysat you when we were in Ohio and they discovered that you would spend tons of time writing words on the computer screen. Gran helped you spell out some fun stories, and your pre-reading is in full force now. You think sounding out words is a pretty fun game. Your new Tag reader (another thanks!) scans over the words and you will actually read them out loud as you scan.
You started independently writing your name sometime in the last two months. It was hard for me to keep track because you came home with some papers in your school bag with your name letters written on them. Initially, you would just get the five letters on the page somewhere, but now you are keeping them in a line most of the time. You've come a long way from tracing the dots in a pretty short amount of time. You even agreed to "work hard" to sign every one of the thank you notes that you'd recited to me for your fun presents.
You are pretty excited whenever you enter a new museum and the science center in Ohio kept you excited even after three visits. The Discovery Museum here in Mass held your interest too. It is fun to see what you get excited about and watch your little eyebrows raise when you try out something new. I am really glad that you have a natural inquisitive approach.
As we hung out at the science center one afternoon, you really believed that Santa had called my voicemail to tell you he was on his way because you officially made it on the good list and to leave him a grilled cheese sandwich (thanks to K!). You reminded me that you wanted to be sure that the reindeer had some energy too for their takeoff, so you asked for carrots. When you woke up you were so excited to see that Santa had eaten his grilled cheese.
This year the christmas presents were opened in nice easy going rounds. There were about five rounds of present opening throughout the day, you lucky duck. You were super easy going and enjoyed helping everyone else dig through their stockings and open their presents too. I'd imagine that as you get older there will be a more frantic pace to opening presents. I do think that you like being an elf and delivering and helping open presents.
You ditched any sort of consistent napping completely this month, and instead you would occasionally fall asleep in your red plastic chair or on the ground in front of your book shelf. I wouldn't really say that you fight being tired, but you'll just konk right out. You do fight waking back up though and those quick naps are worse than the long late naps which keep you up singing to your animals past bedtime.
Sometimes you say things that sound very grown up. For instance, I think you got a kick out of telling people "I don't have time to talk - I'm busy!" I think you kept saying it only because of the giggles you'd get in response. Since we were crafting something nearly all month long, you started saying, "It's time to add the details." You will look at me in a quiet moment and say "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Santa delivered a paddleball, but the actual ball was a little bit dangerous, so we converted it into a "pretend" paddleball which I think you were even more excited about. You would duck and go "woah, here comes the ball, whack!" You love to really act out your pretending.
This fun turtle ride on at Gran and Pop's is even more fun now that you can really zoom on it. You asked to fly high like a mario turtle while someone held the turtle under you and zoomed you around. You love of Wii breaks at Target was expanded to Wii breaks at home thanks to a nice present from your Nana and Grampa. It's hard to believe that my three year old has been introduced to the Wii, but I guess it's just a more interactive version of the tv and your imagination keeps going even after it is off. You also just love the Sing It game that has all of your favorite Lion King songs. You are usually listening to the song and mumbling away. The Just Dance game my cousins had in Ohio seemed to mesmerize you into some sort of dancing trance.
Poppop would ask you, "What kind of cheese do you want on your grilled cheese?" and you'd look around like he was crazy and reply, "Grilledddd cheese!" If he gave you the actual cheese options you'd get kinda bossy pants and repeat, "grilled!" The bossy business can sometimes be nipped in the bud by asking you questions:
"How bossy were you being?" A: A little bossy
"How bossy should you be?" A: Not at all bossy
Your dad used his thumb to count number one, and you insisted that you should count one with your finger and you count "happy" with your thumb. You were in the habit of adding 'ed' to verbs to A: make it cuter and B: make sure we repeated it for you with the correct pronunciation. It's fun to see how you interpret language and how not just your vocab expands, but how you use it is growing.
You brought up a bunch of times that you loved helping Gran "blow around" her birthday cake candles. You had so much fun playing animal "tea party" with a specific blue capped cup. You would pour a pretend cup of "skunk tea" or "porcupine prickly tea" which you would then expect a peeyew or ouch reaction from when they drank it. You would serve tea with nearly non-stop giggles. Then you'd go floating down "moose moss river" to find more animals.
You love making up your own songs - Here is one I managed to jot down which I think it pieces of other songs you sang at school:
"Taping taping through the woods
We go every year through the snow
We seem to go extremely slow!"
You like to make up new "ideas" that you explain in detail. One of your ideas was a new instrument, which puts a drum on the end of a trumpet, which you named a drumpet. You nicknamed the berries you eat at lunch "chuckle berries" because they make me [insert big guffaw] I love to ask you more and more questions about your made up ideas and hear you make up more details.
I think you are the perfect blend of your dad and me. I think you've picked up most of our better attributes. Your dad is very patient and helpful when something is missing. You will help me if I'm looking for something, and the other day you said, "If you can't find something, you just need to get a hint." You can turn anything into a game.
You try to imitate the hibachi chef by tapping utensils and banging the salt and pepper around on the table. Your Uncle David would up the ante for you and show you some new tricks. We pretty consistently eat in the dining room instead of the kitchen now. You are learning to ask to be excused from the table when you are finished. You are also not as squirmy in your chair as you used to be - thanks to your school I think. Although, I did feel like it was a small miracle that you didn't fall from any of the high chairs along Gran and Pop's kitchen counter.
You love to giggle at the same stories or jokes over and over again. You brought up the "crazy otter and max game" I think more often than any other. Although the good ol' why did the blank cross the road - to get to the other side is a close second. Crazy otter came from this ridiculous news story we saw about otters attacking Floridians in their backyards. There was this home video from this guy that was cooing at the "pretty little otter" and then all of a sudden it attacks him. So you think it's hilarious to reenact this with your Wild Things Max and your hand as the otter.
"Magic is when one thing disappears and reappears in another place... that's called magic!" You like to explain things that seem like magic to you - "You heard Peanuts' footsteps, but then Sophie appeared - Magic!" I heard you explaining your funny little ideas to your friends. You will also recite funny little lines that you hear and they are usually a little morphed - "I am a robot - I come to peace!"
You have a habit of marching right in the door wherever we go. Your favorite new restaurant is a place you call "Howdy BBQ" and you will bust right through the door shouting howdy! You are usually pretty good at restaurants, but sometimes you get a bit overzealous. Like when you won at tic-tac-toe and yelled "I won" in the way-too-quiet restaurant.
When we were saying goodbye to everybody in Ohio, you gave huge squeezes and said, "I'm going to win the prize for the best hug!" You definitely get the "Best Hugger" prize from me. Earlier tonight you wanted to spin with me, and once we were all dizzy, you asked to give "my baby" a hug. You then wrapped your little arms about half way around my belly (since it's getting too big for your arms to reach all the way) and whispered, "Hey baby, thanks for spinning with me!" That is the best. Rosy cheeks are the best.
Love, Mom
