William: Three Years!

On more than one occasion during the past year I thought to myself "I should really do an updated post on William because he has changed so much". And--not too surprisingly--I never got around to it (although I did do a pretty good job getting through all of Garrett's monthly updates, so there's that). Even now I have kept pushing this post off (hence why I'm barely getting it finished before the end of his birthday month)--not just because I'm in denial about how big my (first) baby is getting, but mostly because I just don't think I can do William justice in a blog post. You guys, he is seriously turning into the most fun kid ever. His personality is just so fun, he has the cutest mannerisms, and yes--he says the darndest things. And there is no way I can capture even a fraction of that in my post. But, because he is my favorite three year-old, I'm sure going to try.

At his three-year well-visit, he weighed in at 31 pounds, 6 ounces, and was just over three feet tall. Somewhat surprisingly, this puts him near the fiftieth percentile for weight--but only the thirtieth for height. He's such a beanpole that I would have expected the percentiles to be the other way around, but Darrell assures me he's "hiding" all that weight as muscle (because obviously that's what three year olds do). He's wearing size five diapers around the clock and pretty much shows zero interest in potty training. In fact, he's told us that "big boy undies are uncomfortable", despite the fact that he's never put on a pair. So that'll be fun to tackle (probably sooner than later). He recently started wearing 3T shirts and pajamas (although some of the pajamas already seem to be a little small!), and as long as they will stay around his waist I'm going to start moving him up to 3T bottoms as well.

With a few exceptions due to traveling or illness, William is consistently a good sleeper. We usually finish our bedtime routine right around 8:00, and although he rarely falls asleep before 8:30 (and sometimes it's even closer to 9:30!), we can usually count on him to stay in his room and read or entertain himself quietly during that time (don't be too envious, though--it took a fair amount of work for that process to get accomplished). Most mornings he is up right around seven, although occasionally he likes to get up as early as six (which--shockingly--Mom does not appreciate). We still enforce a nap every day, although lately there have been days where he just reads in his room instead of sleeps. I'm definitely not ready for him to give up his nap, and will probably continue to require quiet time in his room even if he does refuse to sleep.

I could spend a week trying to compile a list of all his favorite foods, and I would still probably forget half of them. Truthfully, the list of stuff he won't eat is significantly shorter--so short, in fact, that I'm not actually sure anything is on it. Our boy loves to eat, and he will eat pretty much anything (seriously--whenever we make pizza dough he has to clean the raw dough out of my mixing bowl). I can honestly say that he has tried more vegetables than I had tried by the time I was a teenager; I don't know too many other three-year olds who can identify (and get excited about!) asparagus, radishes, lima beans, and beets (among others). We do have to be a little careful with spices sometimes (especially because Garrett is now eating everything we eat as well), but otherwise we cook one meal and everyone eats it, no substitutions (although occasionally I'll give the boys more veggies than I eat myself--and then I'll sneak a cookie later when they aren't looking #momconfessions). Of course, he is still a typical moody toddler in that he will barely touch something at dinner and then inhale the leftovers the next day (or vice versa), but suffice to say we really don't have any complaints when it comes to him and food.

At his two-year well-visit (and pretty much every previous visit), William had scored right at or just below the "normal" range for communication, to the point where our pediatrician had warned us that if his scores weren't up by three then we'd need to consider speech therapy. Suffice to say we won't be needing that. Once William started to talk (probably just shy of two and a half), he didn't stop--his sentences just kept getting longer and longer and he kept stringing more and more sentences together. He has become quite the storyteller, and he proves that he really does listen to pretty much everything we say by repeating it (sometimes when we least expect it--like when Garrett is doing something that we have reprimanded him for and all of the sudden William starts reprimanding him).

It's so fun to watch him grow and see what kind of person he is turning into. I definitely see a lot of myself in him, particularly in some of his introverted qualities. In familiar places and with familiar people he is a wild, loud, and super energetic little boy. But if someone he doesn't know starts talking to him, he gets really quiet. If we go somewhere that is too new and unfamiliar to him, he'll just sit quietly and watch the other kids until he warms up to the environment. I tried to push him at first ("C'mon, stand up and sing with all the other kids, you know this song!"), but I've learned just to let him be and he'll come out of his shell on his own. Sometimes he gets a little overwhelmed around super outgoing kids as well (which I'm thinking is what his brother is going to end up being), but the other day he actually responded when a boy ran up to him and said "Hi, I'm Sam, what's your name?" Granted, his response was a little delayed and barely audible, but it was something.

And, just for the sake of having them documented, here are a few of the things William can do at three:

• Identify every letter of the alphabet--and write a handful of them too!
• Count to twenty with almost 100% accuracy, and can get close to thirty with only a few errors
• Tell you his full name as well as most--if not all--of the letters in his first name (although not always in the right order)
• Tell you what street we live on
• "Read" you multiple stories (obviously it's just from memory at this point, but there are seriously times where we wonder if he is going from memory or if he is actually identifying and reading some of the words)
• Name the majority of the engines from "Thomas and Friends" based on their pictures. Between any and all Thomas stories we can get our hands on and the occasional (at least at our house--I know Grandma and Grandpa spoil him a little more with Thomas shows) TV show this kid has a pretty impressive knowledge of the trains and what they do. Case in point: he randomly started using the word "shunting"--correctly, I might add--because he learned it from Thomas 

I know there is so much I'm forgetting, but I said from the start that it was going to be impossible to capture William in a blog post so I just have to accept the imperfections of this post and publish it anyway. Truthfully, I feel like I could dedicate a post to him every week and it still wouldn't be sufficient because he grows and changes so much every day, but I guess that is a good problem to have, right?