THREE

Jack,
Happy birthday to my big three year old! I feel like I blinked and you became a big boy overnight. The biggest change happened in the last few weeks--you became a big brother! You have adjusted relatively well and love baby Paxton. You give him short spurts of attention and then move on to the next thing. You are a pretty busy boy!

You love to be outside and ride your tricycle around the neighborhood. You love, love, love it when Daddy gets home from work. You stick to him like glue and don't give him a moment of peace. And he loves it! You are truly the highlight of every day. You love to wrestle, play tag, and hide and seek. Your daddy will make a bird call when he is hiding to help you find him. You have started doing this when it's your turn to hide. It's hilarious. When you play tag or really any time, you will stick your hands out behind you and yell robo powers or turbo powers or super powers. You use them all interchangeably, but it apparently gives you an extra boost!

You have really started pretending and more often than not want us to call you a character from one of your favorite shows. We frequently role play with Mike the Knight, Miles from Tomorrowland, and recently Dash from The Incredibles. Daddy and I are always one of the characters too, and you will ask over and over, "What's your name?" until we say the right character's name.

You love to sing and are pretty good at making up songs. You get that from your daddy. He is real witty like that. You like doing art projects and it is so fun when you come home from school with a drawing and there is a little note written on it from your teacher telling us what it is. You have drawn pancakes and circles for Mommy and a rocket ship for Daddy.  You are pretty into rockets and we had a rocket ship birthday party for you this year. You also had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party at school. When you found out that Mason was having a TMNT party for his birthday, you insisted on having that as your theme too. When we showed up at school for your party, you were the only one up from nap time. Your teachers said you didn't sleep long, because you were so excited for your party.

You are a cookie monster and your favorite kind is Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies. You prefer these over the much superior homemade kind and ask for them for breakfast every morning. We don't indulge you at breakfast, but you do get one every night as a bedtime snack with your milk. You love snacks and would much prefer to snack over eating a meal. You do love pizza, hot dogs, cheese, pork chops, and applesauce. You eat a lot of fruit, but not so many vegetables, although you will eat peas.
You also love smarties and we save those for church in an effort to keep you quiet.

You moved to a big boy bed several months ago and do pretty good. We are in a bit of a regression now that Paxton is here and your schedule is a little off. You still sleep with bunny and have become really attached to your doggie. Doggie is small and we are constantly looking for him before nap time and bedtime. You do really well with going to the bathroom during the day, but we still put a diaper on you at night and at nap time.

Here are some bullet points from notes I have kept on my phone the last six months:

• You say "Oh dreidels" when something goes wrong. I'm pretty sure you picked this up from Miss Aya at school.
• Your prayer on 2-18-15: Dear God, Thank you for Mommy, Daddy, and keep monsters out of my house. Amen.
• Conversation while rocking before bed:

Jack: Daddy is texting me.
Me: What did he say?
Jack: He's on his way.
(This would have been when Ty was working a night shift and most definitely was not on his way.)

• "I have a question for you." He will then proceed to tell you something and not ask a question.
• "I work in Omahoma (oklahoma) City."
• "What are we going to do today?"
• "Actually"
• "I think so."
• We use the anatomically correct name for private parts. Jack says "peanuts" instead.
• One night during bedtime Jack read to me from his Bible. First he put a little fist to his mouth and cleared his throat and then said "Jesus loves us." Then he put his fist to his mouth again and cleared his throat some more and said "Jesus saves us."
• Your daddy worked 5 weeks of nights, so it was just us for bedtime during the week. I put you to bed, but you kept coming out of your room. You had an excuse every time, but not your usual excuse of needing some water or needing to go to the bathroom. This night on the second time you got out of bed you said "I just want to check on Paxton." The third time you said "Hey Mom, can you do me a favor and turn the fan off?" Such a big sentence!
• You are very verbal and always impress us with what you say.
• You do not like to sleep with the ceiling fan on and if we forget to turn it off, you will yell from your bed until we come back and turn it off. 
• You love Chick-fil-A, but it is mostly due to the fact that they have a playground.
• You love to go on special donut dates with Mommy. 
• We read several books every night before you go to bed.
• You love bath time and will play in there forever. You also think showers are pretty cool.
• You have started saying "This is awesome."

I could write forever about this stage. 2.5-3 has by far been my favorite. You are so much fun! You are such a sweet boy and always get so excited about everything we do together. Your Daddy and I hope you always like us this much. :)

We love you!

Love,
Mommy