A Snapshot of a Three Year Old

My Dear Wesley,

You are three years old now, and the older you get, the more I find that baby books do not do you justice.  These books have small lines with specific milestones listed to help mothers roughly sketch together memories to remember once their children are grown.

However, you, my dear child, do not follow the guidelines necessary for filling out these books. You skip around, allowing me to fill in information for some milestones while leaving other spots empty for years.

On the other hand, you meet many small milestones that are so important and special to us that there isn't nearly enough room to document in a baby book.

So I want to take the opportunity this afternoon to remember where you are to today - to freeze this moment in time so I can someday remember you as you are at three years and one month.

On an average morning, you wake up somewhere between six and six-thirty and babble to yourself until seven when I come in to get you.  Lately you have started pulling the curtains open as well, to let the sun shine in.  This is a great source of entertainment to you, and we often hear you laughing as you pull the curtains into your bed and swish them around.

You are starting to help with the dressing process.  Now, after I change your diaper and put on your SPIO vest, you put your legs into your pants and pull them up (with a little help from mama).  You put your arms into your sleeves after I've pulled your shirt over your head, and you give me your feet so I can put on your socks, SureStep braces, and shoes.  Then, you put out your wrists and ankles for me as I put on your weighted vest, ankle, and wrist weights to help calm your sensory system in preparation for the day ahead.  Last of all, you laugh as I pull out your hair gel.  Letting mama make your hair all spiky is one of your favorites!

You now understand safety when going up and down the stairs, so we are able to let you go up and down them by yourself without close supervision.  When going up, you climb on all fours, and when going down, you sit facing forward and scoot down step by step.  Under VERY close supervision, you can also walk up the stairs with one hand on the wall and go down the stairs with one hand on the wall and the other holding our hand.

We are so proud of how far you've come with eating.  You now drink exclusively from a straw. You were learning how to drink from an open cup with your feeding therapist, but you have never wanted to do this at home.  So now that you don't see her any more, all progress has stopped in this area.  As well, you are getting pretty good at eating with a spoon.  You love to eat oatmeal, apple sauce and yogurt all by yourself each morning for Mama, but you've proven yourself to be a little stinker.  Each weekend, you refuse to eat anything unless Daddy feeds it to you.  I think he's fairly confident that Mama is making up the fact that you're doing so well when he's not around.  You are also slowly learning to use a fork, but since you have difficulty with poking, this is going a bit more slowly.

You really are a great eater now, which is just another evidence of the work that God is doing in you.  You eat almost everything that Mama makes, although you still struggle with and gag on some textures. (We stay away from things like mashed potatoes and beans around here.) Your favorite things to eat are bananas, oatmeal, yogurt, apple sauce, chicken nuggets, spaghetti, peas, oranges, french fries, hot dogs and pretzels.  In the past two months, we also added milk back into your diet, and you love it!  Every day we thank God for healing your little tummy so that you can enjoy yummy things like milk and yogurt.

In the past two months we have also seen a big change in your play skills.  When you have time for free play, you still enjoy running off to spin something or pretending to eat with your spoon and cup, but now we often see you seeking out other things to do as well.  You enjoy pulling out your Lauri shape stacker, putting it together, sorting the shapes by color, and then stacking them.  You also regularly pull out your puzzles and your picture pegs to play with.  But what has touched Mama's heart the most is your newfound love of trains and books.  Zach set up his wooden train track again a few weeks ago, and for the first time, you noticed it! And you knew just exactly what to do.  You love pushing Percy and Thomas along the track and through the tunnel.  And when you're not playing with trains, you are happy to snuggle next to Mama and listen to some books.  Goodnight Moon has become your new favorite, and Mama and Daddy have found that twenty-five times is about the right number of times to read that book in one sitting.  You also enjoy your new Richard Scary book about colors.  Your favorite thing to do is point to all of the paint cans while Mama  names their colors.

We are so proud of how well you are adjusting to school.  You have surpassed all of your teacher's expectations, and we are now in the process of writing new goals for you as you have already met four of your initial goals for this year.  We initially wanted to put in a goal for helping you to learn your letters but were informed that we can only write goals on deficits and you have already surpassed the target skill of how many letters a three year old should know by the end of the first year of preschool.  At this point you accurately identify between 10 and 20 capital letters on any given day.  You are also learning how to use your new communication device much faster than any of us thought possible and can now maneuver through it quite easily to tell us what you want.  It still amazes me how fast you can maneuver through screens of pictures and words to find exactly what you want to say.

You are talking more and more, and just this week you started pointing too.  I can't tell you how very long we have been working with you to get you to point at what you want, so your little voice saying "this" as you point at those desired items is music to our ears.  You say "I want..." all the time and have started imitating "I love you" as well.  Your vocabulary is increasing by the day, but here is a list of the words I can remember that you are currently saying:  in, on, up, down (dah), out, eat, Mama, Dada, I, want (wa), this, that, car (cah), ball (bah), fish (f), more (m), help (h), all done (a da), night night (nah nah), hi, bye, bus (bah), open (up), off, yes, coke (guk), set (s), go (gah), cup (cah), bowl (bah), no (uh - with a head shake).  Wow, Wesley!  That's over thirty words!  I don't think I even realized you said quite so many.  We are so proud of you and how well you are talking these days.

You have impressed us with how quickly you are learning things lately.  You now know your six basic colors and shapes, along with most of your capital letters.  You are understanding instructions like "that sip was too small; take a bigger sip", or "bring your glasses to Daddy so he can clean them".  We are also impressed with how quickly you are picking up positional words such as under, behind, on top of, and next to.  Body parts are not something we have worked on very much, but you know some of the basics (hair, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hands, feet, tummy).  You have recently become interested in counting, so that is what we will start working on next.  You are also doing a great job of stringing beads on a string with a dowel rod tip on the end, and you have started learning how to do puzzles with pieces that fit together rather than just puzzles where each piece goes into its individual slot.  You received a set of stringing beads with farm animals on them for your birthday, and we were surprised to find out that you recognize and can correctly identify all of them (even though they are painted with random colors).

This spring has been exciting for us as you have delighted in being outdoors.  You now maneuver through playgrounds all by yourself, going up the steps and down the slides with a big smile on your face.  When we go to a park with baby swings, you would be happy to let us push you for hours at a time.  You also love to color with chalk, kick a ball around the yard, blow bubbles, and watch Zach ride his bike.

Since starting school, you have started to notice other children.  Unfortunately, this means that you have also noticed Liam.  Hitting him on the head has become a favorite pastime of yours, which means training you to be gentle with him has become a full time job for us.  Thankfully you get along much better with your big brother.  You love to run around with Zach, and you adore his every move.  Anything he does, you try to imitate; every time he laughs, you join right in.

Your laugh is delightful, and you daily show us what it means to live life to the fullest, enjoying every moment.  As you run from spot to spot, engaging with the world around you, I love to sit back and watch you, capturing each moment in picture memories.

I love you so much, my sweet Wesley, and I thank God for the amazing work that He is doing in you.  I am so very proud of you and of how hard you work each and every day to learn all that we strive to teach you.  Your diligence and perseverance even when things are hard set an example for all those who know you!  And your delight in learning is so God-glorifying.  As you learn, you are soaking up more and more of the way God created the world to show us the beauty of Himself.  I pray that as you learn your colors and letters and numbers and explore the world around you, you will see God and grow up to love Him with all of your heart, soul and might.

Love,
Mama