Our oldest little man is three! Josiah’s favorite number is four, though, so when you ask him how old he is he insists he’s four :) (Note: this is how it was until his birthday, but the day of, he started acknowledging his age.) Despite the fact that he is, in fact, only three, he is such a big boy! He is ever changing, growing, developing…and learning what he wants while experimenting with how to get it. He loves to laugh, play, run, and tractors and trucks are still a favorite. He makes us laugh and we have loved the last three years with him. Oh, and he is SO cute, I mean handsome, too!
Some of the most delightful developments about him from the last three months since our last update are that he has begun to LOVE to sing, he’s semi potty trained, his imagination has blossomed (or at least now he can communicate it), and he tells me I’m pretty :)
Here are some of the great faces of Josiah! He’s looking more and more like Jacob everyday.
Jacob is usually the one to put him down at bedtime because I have Elijah and he has been teaching him songs after nighttime prayers. He’s learned quite a few. He and I often sing in the car to a new CD we got from the library that we love. He’s so cute when he sings with a CD because the words come faster than he can get them out. So, when he sings Zacheus, for example, you hear him hum the entrance followed by an off key “mumbly mumbly mumble…little man…mumbly mumble…he…mumble…sycamore tree…mumble mumble…see….” Then later he yells “you come down!” It makes me smile every time. Oh, and that 40 second song is his favorite so we play it REPETITIVELY all the way to anywhere. I’m thankful we aren’t in the days of tape decks! (Oh, and coincidentally, or maybe not, as a baby I always sang him a song I made up about him using that tune. It kinda makes me happy that he loves it.)
Josiah loved Valentine’s Day, particularly the snacks involved. These are the cookies he helped me make.
Potty training…he is pretty much perfectly pee pee trained. We are still working on poop training, though. I’m trying to come up with a good method to use in the near future, but for now I am trying to be patient and let him take his time since he is resistant and we’ve had to deal with recovery from a GI bug. Until we have success we have the constant dilemma of pull ups vs underwear. Do we treat him like a big boy showing we have confidence in him and likely have to clean out underwear, or just give in and make it easy on everyone? It usually depends on what we are doing.
Josiah’s imagination has been cracking us up. One thing he likes to do is run around with his arms behind him while making motor sounds. He says “do you want to hear my mufflers?” and he’ll ask this repetitively until you say yes and watch him, then he’ll say “vroom vroom” while pumping his arms and then take off! He also likes to “get stuck” while running around, then he pumps his arms, revs it up and gets out of the imaginary mud. Imaginary play with his toys, stuffed animals, and random household items is endless. The names of his favorite stuffed animals are not all that imaginative, however, as the rabbit is aptly named “Rabbit, the giraffe is “Giraffe”, and so on. He does like to baby them as he puts them to bed, diapers them, feeds them, and generally cares for them. Giraffe is currently wearing socks to keep his feet warm.
Silly boy!
As is true with any 3 year old, he says some really great things. We so frequently told him how proud we were of him at the beginning of potty training that he started randomly telling us how proud he was of us. I realize it came from training, but it still melted my heart :) He also frequently tells me I’m pretty. Most often it comes after I’ve changed from PJ’s to clothes, but sometimes he says it when I think I look my worst and I have to wonder where he is coming from! The other day I came out of the bedroom dressed for work and he told me I was pretty and begged me to come close to him just “so he could touch me”. And he did! It made me feel so good to see the peace and comfort on his face that he gained by just having me near. He also asks me everyday that I pick him up from his sitter, “what did you do at work today, Mommy?” I never know what to say. How do you explain euthanasia or radiographs? He does understand shots, though, and he thinks I spend a lot of time feeding animals – which I never do. The other day he said he would go to work to feed the animals and I could go to Mrs. Cindy’s. I thought that sounded like a deal! He also asks Jacob nearly daily if he “mowed grass or worked bees”, then he just says “hmmm” like the answer means something to him. I’m so glad he cares about our days, but he only randomly dishes about his. One more cute thing he has said that I can think of off the top of my head…one day when I was picking him up from his sitter’s house after a good rain, he jumped in a couple of shallow puddles. As I put him in the car he begged to “walk on water” again. I told him he was a good boy, but not THAT good!
Here are some pictures from his actually birthday. This is a remote control John Deere Gator Jacob picked up on clearance. It was cheap enough to risk a 3 year old breaking it!
We played with the Gator a lot the next day:
Jacob and I have slowly been learning to deal with an opinionated preschooler by learning to start giving choices with appropriate consequences rather than constant threats. Rather than “do ABC or else XYZ”, we say “you can either ABC or you can XYZ (ex. sit in the corner), which will it be?” He only had to sit in the corner through dinner once to realize that we’d follow through. Now it is about 99% effective. We are also fervently trying to curb the whiney voice. I don’t think he even realizes he does it, but once it is addressed he immediately reverts to a polite tone. We have also started to utilize a chore chart. He has four chores and gets stickers for each one daily. He has to make his bed (sometimes he helps to make ours for two stickers), pick up the toys, replace the books onto the shelf, and pick up the food from the floor after each meal. He really loves it!
Sigh…this whole transition into young preschooler-hood has been a challenge. It is hard to see your nearly perfectly behaved (I realize we were blessed!) toddler who was eager to please turn into a little boy who has to learn how to navigate life and learn to get what he wants/needs while considering others. Don’t get me wrong, he is still very good, but it is a learning curve for us to adjust and try to guide him in a way that will be best for him. I count it a privilege to attempt to deliver a child/adolescent/young adult to adulthood in a way that gets him where God wants him to be. It is no longer about precious babyhood and taking care of basic needs, but rather shaping a whole person. What a challenge! Hopefully we are successful!
Obviously Josiah is very special to us. He will always be our wonderful little boy who introduced us so gently into this great thing called parenthood. I’m overwhelmingly proud of him and I love him to bits. He has so much potential and I’m so excited to see what his life holds, but for right now I hope he just has lots of fun turning three.
2 comments:
AW! He's growing up.. that means that's going to happen to Henry as well!! I love the pic of his hair combed to the side, funny how different he looks. Yay for peepee training :) Almost there!!
You guys handle it all with such grace, it seems!! I love the parenting tips you included. I'm going to steal the chore chart idea! He is looking more like Jacob!!
Post a Comment