Miss Three Years Old

Jedi alphabet practice

Zaeda is making good progress in potty training. It’s a lot of laundry but I’ll take that over the money spent buying diapers/pull-ups.

The potty training has led to a lot of discussions about her becoming a big girl. The other night we had quite a few big girl accomplishments. She rode all the way home in her underwear and then came home and promptly went upstairs to go potty. She helped with dinner including taking a plate of bread to the table. She finished up by taking a little shower. Our kids hate showers so this was a big deal.

A self-styled rats nest of hair bands

Zaeda talks a lot. She still has a bit of trouble pronouncing the letter “s” but I find it kind of cute. Some of the things we hear lately are--

“Hey guys….”

“Hey Mommy, I need to tell you something.”

“What the heck?!”

“You are the weirdest brother.”

“You are the meanest mommy in the whole world.” (I’m getting this a lot as we go through the terrible threes with blood curdling screams.)

“That is sooo cool.”

Zaeda is a bit bossy and being 3, almost 4, everything revolves around her or so she thinks. During Zaeda's parent-teacher conference, her teachers told me the following story:

Zaeda's boyfriend at the time had chosen not to play with her one day. This did not go over well with Zaeda so she threw a fit. When her teacher tried to explain that this little boy, in fact, did not have to play with her, this was her response:

"He's my boyfriend! He HAS to play with me!"

 

Zaeda and Phineas

He Did What?!

There are many things you know to expect when you become a parent. There will be diapers, tantrums, messes, cute ‘out of the mouths of babes’ sayings, etc. There are some things that have you shaking your head and wondering, “What possessed him/her to do that?” We had one of the latter recently.

Oliver attends the Camp Fire after school program and absolutely loves it. He has a girlfriend named Maya and they are inseparable. One February day they were on the playground and Maya blew Oliver a kiss. How sweet you might be thinking.

What was Oliver’s reaction?

He turned around and mooned her.

Yes, our son when presented with such a sweet gesture dropped his pants and showed this little girl his behind. Maya’s reaction was to laugh. Oliver got in trouble which distressed Maya. He was quite remorseful and embarrassed which made me feel a little bit better. No reason to spend a lot of time explaining why you don’t moon people.

A week later, she gave him this Valentine:

Oliver is doing well in school. Recently, his class has been working on a weekly dictation where the kids study a sentence in Spanish and then must say the sentence in Spanish, explain in English and write in Spanish, including correct capitalization and punctuation. It’s pretty impressive to see his language skills growing so quickly. So far he has been getting 100%. His teacher told us that she is having to make his dictation a bit more difficult because he is catching on pretty quickly. Below is an example of his latest dictation. Love that extra credit!

Oliver is fascinated with animals and has recently changed what he plans to do when he grows up. So far he has wanted to be a comedian, a builder, and a traveling artist. Lately, it is to become a traveling animal rescuer. Oliver is still a very curious little guy. Most of his sentences these days start with, “Did you know…..?” And he fills us in on something he has learned.

“Did you know a porcupine quill is really just a super strong hair????”

 

Here is a picture of the presentation he gave to his kindergarten class on the mighty Bald Eagle.

 

We could post pages and pages of his drawings and self-drawn comic books.