Three

Oh, how I delight in our little guy. Three is such a charming age.

As we make our way through errands around town, I hold his hand in the parking lot (the only place left where I'm allowed to hold his hand) and we swing hands while we sing, "When David holds your hand, you feel so grand, your heart starts beating like a big brass band!" 

Or sometimes I'll look over at him and say, "I love my boy." And he comes back with "I love my girl."

Today we were super hungry coming home from 1 pm church--and Daddy was still in meetings, so dinner was on hold. David ate a piece of cantaloupe while I sang him a song about "Hungry hungry I am hungry, table table, here I come. I could eat a goosemoose burger, fifteen pickles and a purple plum." It's the perfect storm of words, and I hammed it up for him in opera style. David turned on the belly laughter for me, and my silly antics were well rewarded. (Although probably not something that will be repeated for any other audience.) We were having a great time, and all smiles after that about waiting for dinner.

Yes, he's still a little mischievous. I think the examples are funny, so here's a few to document. He took a knife to all of the bags in my chest freezer. So now when I move things around, I get things falling out from their proper bags. When I clean out the freezer, I'll have quite the concoction of berries, green peas, corn and green beans at the bottom. That happened about three weeks after David proudly announced that he had turned off the heater. Thus the mystery was solved as to why our freezer occasionally seems to "go out" on us. The dial was being turned up and down by little hands.

And this morning he dug in the pantry to find a hand-crank food chopper still in its box. He took it out, properly assembled it, and promptly put a loaf of freshly baked zucchini bread in it to see what it would do. Tomorrow for breakfast he'll get zucchini bread crumbs in a bowl. I'm sure it's still yummy--especially because David takes after his Daddy in putting milk on anything that can get soggy.

But for the most part, I hear his sweet voice or see his efforts to help clean, or his realization that he made a mistake, and his desire to make it right--and my heart just melts. He is very imaginative. Most of the day, he insists on being called "Peanut." Because "I'm not a boy, mom. I'm a dog." The hard and fast line is that Peanut has to come to the table as a boy so he can use his little boy manners. Oh, and Peanut doesn't leave the house with us--or else David's knees and hands would be sweeping every floor in this town.

David has his cards that he does every morning for a ticket. He brushes his own teeth in the morning, and he makes his own bed, brushes his hair, takes his vitamins, then he brings me the scripture story picture book and says, "It's time for scriptures and prayer, mom." And the whole world stops while we read his version of the scriptures.

Doesn't this sight make you smile, too? It gets me every time.

I recently picked up a(nother!) parenting book called Your Three Year Old by Louise Bates Ames. In her opening pages, she says this, "Three now enjoys other children, but most of all he enjoys his mother. He loves to do things with her--go for a walk, go to the store, "help" with housework, and above all, play. He is happiest when his mother finds it possible to give up other activities and concentrate on him. Almost anything the two of you do together brings him joy. It is bliss to have Mother read to him, play games with him, talk to him, just be near him."

Yes, that is where we are at. And I am soaking up every minute I can from this delightful little three year old. Some people ask me where I'm going to send him to preschool. And I think "Send him? I'm keeping him! I am the stay at home mom of one little boy. Don't take these moments from me. I will be his teacher. And I will reap all the delight from that."

So I am trying to establish more of the structure and predictability in his day to help him thrive. And I'm doing my best to give him time to learn social skills with friends. I love it when his playmates treat him more like a sibling, less like a special guest who gets served up whatever toy he wants in the moment "because he is our guest." Too much of that, and the social scene backfires. I want David to learn to share, and in the trenches at friends' houses is the only place I can do that.

Oh, how I love my three year old. I want to bottle him up with all of his enthusiasm for life.

I love this little guy of mine!