There have been so many things the past three years that I've wanted to remember about Will. I feel like we are on the edge of a precipice and soon he is going to plunge into the body and mind of a kid and I'll forget all the fun things he used to do in the first half of the first plane of development. Just a few....
1. He is still challenged by "r"s. For a long time we enjoyed the "fiwatwucks" (firetrucks) and "weckfast" (breakfast). Today he asked if someone could get him some "chopstick" for his lips because they were chapped.
2. His eating habits are fickle. Tonight he exclaimed that salad was his most favorite food in the whole world after he ate his third bowl. Last week he wanted nothing to do with it. I've come to the conclusion that he only likes fresh foods. This means that those whole grain carrot muffins I made for him last week were delicious right out of the oven but after freezing and defrosting the following week he didn't think they were so great. Basically anything that is freshly sliced or freshly steamed, baked or cooked whether it is raw onions or warm blueberry pancakes, he will eat voraciously. When we go to a restaurant he will eat an adult portion of whatever he orders and then half or more of whatever we ordered for ourselves! Should we bring home something and have it as leftovers the next day, he barely eats.
3. He is completely in love with his dad and likes to dress like him, do things with him, and sticks to him like flypaper whenever he is around. Paul has started waking up early so that he can try to quickly get ready before Will gets up otherwise his morning routine takes twice as long with Will's "help" (rinsing off his razor, timing his toothbrushing and instructing his technique, making his breakfast for him, etc.)
4. He is quite friendly. He invites kids to play with him whether they are 1 or 9 years old, he likes to dance and sing LOUDLY, has virtually no fear about talking with people in stores or venues. The other day at the library he just marched right up to the librarian when I wasn't looking and asked if she could help him find a book.
5. He is completely transparent and shares his inner thoughts under his breath.
6. He is a chameleon and will duplicate behaviors that he sees. Our mantra for well over a year now has been, "Just because someone else does something doesn't make it right." In some ways this can be a good thing because he'll imitate whatever we model for him but should there be another boy on the scene doing something he shouldn't, Will just joins right in! I worry a little about this because this follower mentality could get him into trouble but it also translates into him wanting to please other people. I have already seen glimmers of him doing things for other people that he doesn't want to do and then his eyes well up with tears because he doesn't think he can say, "No."
7. I know that Paul is quite proud of all the things that he has introduced to Will in their evening and weekend adventures. Will knows many of the bus routes around his house and can identify the 5 and 44 bus. He also reminds us to turn off the engine at stoplights if we idle longer than 30 seconds to "save the biodiesel". They take out the compost and recycling each week together, have taken several dump truck loads of dirt and/or building materials around town and have spent an incredible amount of time in the basement digging, pouring concrete, and building our new closet and bathroom. They have matching father and son PFD's for their sailing trips and matching father and son guitars.
8. As much as I've tried to introduce dolls and accessories into his life, he will toss them aside for a transportation vehicle. He loves planes, trains and automobiles.
9. I guess I'd have to say that he's always been more fine motor skill and language oriented than gross motor oriented. I actually took him to the pediatrician because I worried that he couldn't run! He still is the absolute slowest walker on the planet next to the sloth. He can open anything in the house, slice, peel, chop, etc. He threads needles and ties the knot at the end, cuts well with scissors, and accomplishes innumerable tasks all on his own. We are working on tying bows and snapping right now but I still don't see him running and whatnot with the same interest or ability. He isn't what I would call fearless and fast-- he is a more calculated risk taker and slow mover.
10. His toddler class had twelve students in it and strangely, even in this age of parallel play I saw friendships emerge for him. His first year he seemed to prefer Finley who upon first impression seems rather outgoing and motherly bordering on bossy. The following year a new friendship emerged with Cole (who is very similar to Will's personality), Andy (who is outgoing and very funny), and Jasmine (also outgoing, strong willed and full of attitude). This year in his new class of 24 he seems to prefer his friend Jack, who is a little sprite, always smiling, very outgoing and funny. I find it fascinating to see how these friendships emerge so quickly and they do not seem to be a fleeting fancy. These friends have found each other and prefer to be with each other whenever possible. So interesting...
11. He has had a stutter since the early days of language acquisition. It used to settle mostly on the beginning of his sentences and is readily apparent that the more excited he gets to say something and the more he has to say, the more he stutters. "I" sometimes goes on and on for awhile before he finally gets out the rest of the words.
12. He wears backwards shirts, pants and shoes along with inside out socks. On occasion he goes without underwear or wears several pairs on top of each other or comes home wearing someone else's underwear. This is where three years old has been so interesting because all of this is his choice in a sense because he either has seen another child who has this "style" or he decides that it just isn't that important to him to wear underwear that day. That conscious mind is so interesting!
13. His very first word was "boom" from what we can tell which was a generalization for many different things, one of which was flatulence. He persists to this day to call flatulence "boom boom". I always vowed to never use pet words for body parts or functions but the everlasting "boom boom" prevails.
14. I think this is true of many children so I can't say that he has full blown perfectionist tendencies but he does seem to feel embarrassment or surprise or whatnot when he takes a calculated risk and fails. When he was very small he might fall into pterodactyl screams or maybe a tantrum with breath holding after something didn't happen as expected but now as a three year old I notice that a mistake or a missed expectation will elicit some serious tears. It isn't that he can't get himself dirty or meet a challenge but more typical things like a stuck zipper or slipping on some water or ice will be very upsetting for him. He is cool as a cucumber though when we are setting a limit or boundary with him. I can only hope that this sheds light on our parenting and that he knows we mean what we say but he doesn't cry or whine in protest.
15. And speaking of falling down the stairs.... I can't forget the time that he took off all his clothes, packed up his tools into his bike basket and rode his bike down the basement stairs! I found a naked boy screaming at the bottom of the stairs surrounded by all his tools! I also cannot forget the time that he and Chloe were playing on the little footbridge over the slough and I turned around to find him neck deep in sludge just calmly calling for me as he sunk deeper and deeper into the thickest blackest mud you could imagine! It took two of us to pull him out!
16. I think he is a bedwetter or at least, I suspect that we will be dealing with this for awhile. From early on he was dry during naptime and while we never had longer than a week of dry nights those first two years, now at three years old, we hardly ever have a dry night. Nothing we've tried seems to work so as a family we just embrace the wet underwear that we find in the bathroom each morning. Typically he will wake up in the wee hours of the morning to change himself and then get back to bed.
17. Just around his third birthday we started to notice that he seemed afraid to go into a dark room by himself. It isn't extreme and our response tends to be pretty neutral about it but for the first time I think he is starting to understand and feel fear and has actually started to use the word, "scary".
