As of the time this posts, 2013-03-14 00:59 UTC, Alex will be exactly three and a half years old. Yay! Such a big boy! In the home video above (from the 13th), Alex recreates the tractor tipping scene from Cars and sings with Roscoe.
[Note added 2013 Mar 17 14:58 – Since at least one person contacted Brandy with concern, 2 things… First, Roscoe is not mad, growling, or threatening Alex in any way. As you can see in the video, Roscoe licks Alex several times. The noises being made are ones that Roscoe makes regularly when “singing” with Alex, myself, or other family members. Roscoe sometimes does get impatient or upset with Alex, but this was not one of those times. Second… yes, I know what it looks like when Alex lies down, but he is three and a half, Alex was not doing anything inappropriate, and it is all completely innocent, so get your minds out of the gutter! Thanks!]
Some random notes on some things from the past six months:
Six months ago, Alex was regularly dreading going to pre-school, and was telling us how bad it was. These days, on the worst days he goes with a grudging acceptance, and on the best days, he seems to actually look forward to it. There was a phase where every day he was telling us he didn’t want to go because the other kids were being mean to him (including hitting him), but he hasn’t mentioned that in quite a long time now, so hopefully all that is under control. (We talked to the teachers about it several times.)
Although he did it longer than most kids do these days, Alex stopped nursing in October when Brandy had to go to Pennsylvania for a couple weeks when her mom had surgery. The day after Brandy gets back, Alex wakes up in the morning groggy and not to happy to be awake. I ask him if he wants to go see Mommy. He looks really sad, like he is about to cry, and slowly says “Mommy no ning. Ning all gone.”
Since then he has talked about this a few times as a way to reference time. He was telling the story of when we took Roscoe to the vet for some surgery. He described when it happened as when he was still a baby and drank Mommy’s ning.
He talks a lot these days about how he used to be a baby, and the things that were different when he was a baby. Like diapers. And the ning. And other things too. He likes to pretend to still be a baby a lot too.
In September, Alex and Brandy went with me to a doctor appointment (this was during one of my kidney stone episodes). For almost two months after that he would tell us all that I was a new Daddy, and we had left the old Daddy at the doctor. This was most disturbing, because until then I did not know I had been replicated, and now I wonder what happened to the old daddy.
He is very aware of growing bigger, and that he is getting bigger every day. He also has noticed that I am getting smaller (well, it must seem that way, right?) So he has told me that when he grows very big, and I grow very small, then he will be the one to carry me on his shoulders.
Despite having tons of trains at home, he still likes to go to the bookstore to play with the trains there… because usually he gets to pick a new train to take home… I will give him my card and he will take the train and the card to the counter at the front of the store to check out.
Alex and Roscoe continue to be best buddies. Sometimes Roscoe gets frustrated by Alex’s attentions, but usually his patience is incredible. They are good together.
Meanwhile, Alex is just getting to know my Mom’s dog Sara, and they don’t get along quite as well so far. Sara is still getting used to Alex. Alex is very upset by this, after the second time we visited my mom and Sara in their new apartment, Alex burst into tears “Grandma Ruth’s dog Sara doesn’t like me!!!”. They are getting better with each other, but it will probably take some time.
Alex got a small couch from his Grandmother Leslie for Christmas. He uses it ALL the time, including as a booster seat at the dinner table. He uses it along with a little tray table thing he got from his mom. He loves those things.
Just in the last month or so, Alex has stopped fighting bedtime. I’ll say it is time to go upstairs, and he’ll say “OK” and follow me up. Then he will help turn out all the lights and lie down. Of course, this is him curling up in bed with me, not him going to his own bed, and I let him use my iPad in bed while I go to sleep… I have no idea how late he is up watching YouTube after I fall asleep. So… maybe that isn’t really a big thing after all. :-)
Alex may not be quite “reading” yet, but he recognizes many words. The titles of his favorite shows, Mommy, Daddy, Alex, Amy, Dog, etc… I suspect he knows even more than he lets on. He also knows when shopping for trains he needs to get the ones that say “wooden” or they won’t fit on his tracks.
He has friends at school that he talks about by name. His best friend’s name is Apollo. One time Apollo said he WASN’T Alex’s friend. Alex was upset and talked about that for WEEKS until one of the teachers said that Apollo WAS his friend. Then everything was OK again.
“No! Teacher said!” is often heard, as we find out we are doing one thing or another wrong and the teacher said to do it a different way.
He met Santa! And was very into Christmas. Was on us for WEEKS about getting up the tree and decorations before we actually got it done.
He clogged the toilet! And similar things. Like pouring water into the air conditioner because “doggy needs it” only to have water spray out all over the room. Which was quite amusing.
For awhile he decided “trains like dark” so he would always turn out all the lights before playing with his trains. That lasted maybe a month.
He is very proficient playing with the iPad, figuring out new games without very much prompting from me, including some games that actually aren’t geared to kids his age. And just a couple weeks ago, I think I made a big mistake… he now knows how to use the App Store! He’ll browse through there looking for new games then ask me to get one for him. He still can’t type my password to do it completely by himself, but I’m sure that is coming soon…
He remembered walking his dog in the snow LAST winter and really wanted to do it again, but there was never snow that really lasted. I may try to take him up to the mountains soon to see some snow. Maybe Roscoe too.
There are several of Amy’s friends that Alex REALLY likes when they come over to visit. He loves to play with her friends.
He makes important observations: “Daddy… fish… they have no feet! They swish their tails. Swim under the water. Ducks have feet. They swim on top of the water.”
He can’t type, but he is starting to try to use the voice recognition in iOS to fill out search fields and the like. So far, it isn’t very good at understanding what he actually said, but give it time.
A couple of fish have died in the last six months, so Alex and I have had a few conversations about death. One fish died and he asked where it went. I told him mommy took it away after it died. He asked if mommy took it to fix it and make it all better. I told him that no, when fish die you can’t put in new batteries or fix them, they are just gone. He doesn’t entirely get it, but knew what to expect when his own fish Hush got sick and died more recently.
He has moved from Thomas to Chuggington to Dinosaur Train to Choo Choo Soul, to some videos with Micky Mouse and a train. Then back to just plain train videos on YouTube. HIs favorite things to watch have kept changing, but it has been all about trains for a year and a half now.
And that is more than enough for now. Happy three and a half Alex!
[Edit 2013 Mar 14 14:33 to add the first of the two parenthetical comments in the first bullet.]
[Edit 2013 Mar 20 21:24 to slightly change the wording of the note added 2013 Mar 17.]
As of the time this is scheduled to post… October 20th at 08:18 UTC (1:18 AM Pacific, 4:18 AM Eastern)… Amy will be exactly seventeen years old according to my calculations.
As of when this posts at 19:17 UTC (12:17 PM Pacific, 3:17 PM Eastern) I will be exactly 41 years old. Woo!?
Now, nominally my birthday is the 16th, not the 15th, but with properly taking into account leap days and the exact proper length of a year, etc, this is where it ends up. So I get to celebrate a day earlier than folks would perhaps normally think. Exciting, huh?
As of the moment this posts, at 10:05 UTC (3:05 AM Pacific, 6:05 AM Eastern) Alex will be exactly three years old!
Once again it is amazing just how the time has flown by, and all the new things he is doing every day. I last did a post like this six months ago. Since then, here are some of the new developments…
It has been a long time since I tried to do one of these “You are about to turn X” interviews with Alex… I think the last time may have been at 12 months, but hey, for the first time he actually did have a little conversation with me about it. (If you haven’t hit play on the video above, do so now, K?)
No more diapers!!! In order to start preschool this fall, Alex needed to be potty trained. So in August Brandy started potty training boot camp. The first few days there was quite a bit of protesting and a number of accidents, but after that Alex gave in. He is now very proficient at all things potty. (Well, mostly. :-) )
Because he mastered that, he is indeed now in preschool. He’s only been there two days so far, and is still adjusting. But unlike last year’s day care, he is not so clingy when we leave him in the morning. He came into school the first day knowing and understanding what was going to happen.
I mentioned six months ago that he was really into trains. He is still really into trains. Over the last six months the track setups got more and more elaborate, taking up more and more space. Lots of branches, bridges, etc. Until about a month ago. After one of the times the tracks got cleaned up, when he got them out again he didn’t build another big layout. Instead he started building circles. Little circles, big circles, nested circles, etc. Just yesterday he built an elevated circle. Fun stuff.
He tells elaborate stories about things that happened to him, or just stories he has made up. For instance, he told a story about some ducks who were running away from a frog who was ribbiting at them (while acting out a really scary ribbit). Or just telling us about how he went to the fireworks on the 4th of July. Or how he went to the zoo with Papa Bill and Grandma Cathy.
Brandy said that over the summer when he was staying home instead of going to school all day long he would talk about how Daddy was at work, but when Daddy got home Daddy would play trains and cars with him. Awww…. (Makes me feel awful for the times I got home and didn’t play trains and cars… although usually I did. :-) )
He still likes his train videos and YouTube, and still has TV shows and movies that he likes, and games he likes on the iPhone, but he is less into those things than he was six months ago. Much more into the running around playing with physical things.
He has continued to work hard on the alphabet. (See Day 6 of Grandma Leslie’s Visit.) He’s getting better. But more to the point he is super excited about it. The alphabet song is the song of choice in almost all occasions. More recently, he has started working on actually “building” letters. Mainly “A”. He’ll make A’s out of trains and other things as well as trying to draw it. And he describes it: “Build A! Down, down, corner!”
He lies! Yeah, yeah, supposedly not a good thing, but shows imagination. For instance, as he drags his rug with roads and such out of his room and starts taking it down the stairs, and I say “Alex, your rug needs to stay in your room.” he says “No! Amy said! Amy said rug downstairs!”. Often his lies take this form, telling one of us that one of the others told him to do something, or it was OK to do something, when in fact none of us had… especially when the most recent person has told him no.
Along the lines of lying, there is more general acting. He has this fake laugh he uses sometimes. The first time I heard it was when he had just accidentally knocked over one of his elaborate train track creations. His face started to scrunch up like he was about to cry. But then out came this really disturbing fake laugh. Then he said it was funny. He still looked really upset like he was about to cry. I asked him if he was sad. He said “NO! Funny!!!” And then the disturbing fake laugh again. He later has also used the same laugh when the rest of us are laughing and he doesn’t quite know why, but thinks he should join in.
Amy says another new thing in the last six months is that he has turned into a cat. By this she means he has become fond of meowing and pretending he is a cat. And indeed, he does this not infrequently.
He will also pretend he is a dog. More specifically, although he did this before the last six months, he is more frequently greeting his special friends by licking them. He learned this from Roscoe. We tell his that this isn’t how people do it, but it is too cute to really be too insistent about stopping him. The most amusing of course is when he and Roscoe both are licking each other.
He has strong opinions about what he wants to eat, what he wants to do, etc and is now able to express himself clearly about these sorts of things. So when asked what he wanted for his birthday, he was very specific that he did NOT want a regular cake, he wanted cupcakes, and more specifically he wanted race car cupcakes. And after the last time we went swimming, he was very specific that after swim he wanted to go to the bookstore (to play with trains, not books) and then after that he wanted to go to the playground.
Amy says in the last six months he also got cuter… and eviler. By that she means that when he gets into the right mood, he can be an absolute hyper demon. Running all over the place, knocking things over, pulling on things, and generally being a “poop” (Amy’s word). He can run us all ragged. Luckily, this is not all the time. But when it hits… watch out! I believe these are the terrible two’s, right? Although I have heard from some others that the three’s can be even worse!
Anyway, as usual there is tons more, but I figure that it enough for now. Alex is three! Wow!
At first it was scary and there were tears, because he had never ridden front facing before. He had always riden rear facing. Then he realized how much he could see. Truck! Ambulance! Red Light! It was a thrilling ride to school facing forward!
(Yeah, the picture is blurred because he was moving, but it was the one that best showed his joy after the trip. :-) )
As of the moment this posts, at 19:11 UTC (12:11 PM Pacific, 3:11 PM Eastern) Alex will be exactly 2.5 years old. I haven’t posted one of the “things Alex is doing now” kind of posts since he turned two, so here is another one of them, with just a few things I can think of off the top of my head. It is of course nowhere near complete.
TRAINS! He liked trains before, and would play with them when there were sets in bookstores or toy stores or whatever, but he got a set of wooden trains and tracks for his birthday. Then he discovered he didn’t have to be limited to the table, and could build out his tracks on the floor. The track setups became more and more elaborate and sprawling. At the moment we essentially have a whole room where the floor is nothing but a train track set up, and he spends hours playing with the trains. Which lead to train videos of course. Which in turn led to…
YouTube! In the last couple months he has become a major fan of YouTube. It started with the trains, but expands from there. If you give him the iPhone YouTube app, he is completely and totally proficient in navigating around, going from video to video to video, following his interests. (Where he ends up can be interesting sometimes.) He has even been known to save videos he likes as favorites. The only thing he can’t do is spell and type, so he’ll tell you what he wants to search for as a starting point. On a laptop, he hasn’t mastered the trackpad yet, so he points at what he wants to watch next. Of course there are trains. Then there is a whole genre of people using toy trains and cars and such to act out stories. Then there are adults reviewing children’s toys. Then there are a wide variety of children’s videos from kids songs to full episodes of TV shows… in many languages! And all sorts of other things. Very entertaining!
He loves walking Roscoe! He will bring the leash and say he wants to walk the dog. I attach a second leash for safety, but he holds his leash and runs with the dog and loves it. In general, he and Roscoe play and chase and have a great time. Roscoe usually tires of it and wants to be left alone before Alex is done, so then we have to separate them, but until then Alex has fun. :-)
He has friends at school! He now has friends at school that he plays with regularly and calls by name when he arrives or leaves. “Bye Zoe! Bye Zoe!” And they call “Alex!” when he arrives as well. They run around and play and talk to each other. They are definitely little kids now, not babies any more for sure, and barely “toddler”. Hitting that “Preschool” phase instead now.
I mentioned YouTube, but in general he is a master of the iPhone. He navigates effortlessly from game to game. Within games he quickly figures out what you are supposed to do and can navigate through multiple levels of menus to get to things if needed (although he prefers the ones where that isn’t needed). He can also open up his movies on there and choose which he wants to watch, etc.
He will talk to various people on video conference over Skype and the like. We’ve done this with him since he was a newborn, but now he actually actively interacts with the people on the other end, talking to them, showing them things, etc. To quote my mother’s Facebook post after one of these sessions: “Two year old grandson was on Skype with me quite awhile tonight – I was on a phone picture and he lay me on the floor in the middle of his wooden train set to show me cars so it was like I was lying on my back looking up at him doing things! But when the dog came and sat on the phone he was all upset – and had to be reassured that ‘grandma’s okay see here she is!’ Very interactive tonight but imagine! He is worried about the disappearance of my talking and watching head and carried me around to play with him – and sees that as ME! and cried that I was saying goodbye when I did! As if I were really there! Sigh!”
He likes the karaoke machine and will turn it on and start making noises into it himself. More recently he realized it can actually play songs he knows (like Old MacDonald) and he can sing along.
When he plays with his cars or trains, they actually play out stories. Sometimes he reenacts scenes from the movies or TV shows the toys come from, sometimes he makes up his own. But they have conversations and have adventures. They aren’t just being pushed around. We’ll hear him talking thinking he is calling us, but then realize that it is actually two of his cars having a conversation.
He can open the refrigerator and freezer on his own, and does so almost every day to get popsicles. But he can’t open the popsicle by himself yet, so he’s no sneaking anything past us… yet.
He is very good at articulating what he wants most of the time, and uses words to describe it. This includes things like saying what he wants for dinner, what drinks he wants, what toy he is looking for, etc, etc, etc. We don’t ALWAYS get exactly what he wants, but more often than not, he is pretty clear. He will sometimes even order his own meal when we are out at a restaurant. What do you want? FRIES! CHEESESTICK!!!
When we tell him it is time for bed, he protests and asks for more time. But when time is up, he’ll come to one of us and go to sleep. He still wants to be near us to go to sleep, not just left in his bed or whatnot, but when it is bedtime, he knows, and he may not like it, but he stops what he is doing and goes to sleep.
He will follow complex sets of instructions, like “Alex, would you please take this upstairs, knock on your sister’s door and give it to her, then come back?”.
He’ll also fill in the gaps on his own and take the needed action. For instance, if he indicates he wants to go outside, and we say “Sure, but you need your shoes and coat” he’ll go off and find them and bring them back to get ready to go out.
Most of the time when we are out at a restaurant and sit at a booth, he sits with me on the regular booth seat, rather than using a high chair. (He still needs a high chair when it isn’t a booth though.)
He says his own name! He won’t answer “What is your name?” when asked yet (at least I haven’t seen it), but when he sees himself in a mirror or on video or whatnot, he will say “Alex!”.
Most of the time he isn’t crying when we drop him off at school any more, although he still usually lets us know he really would rather stay with us and is unhappy with being dropped off. Except when everybody is playing on the playground. Then sometimes it is OK if we leave.
He tells stories about us. At school the teachers tell us he tells them about how Mommy and Daddy are at work. When I am driving him home after school he talks about what Mommy and Amy are doing.
He is very deliberate about his art, drawing very frequently, and telling us what it is that he is drawing (“train!”) and who it is for “Grandma!”.
We have “parent/tot” swim lessons every week and have had them for more than a year, but in the last couple months he is really getting comfortable and having more and more fun, participating with all the activities and getting more adventurous and brave every week. He had been starting to get that way last summer, but between the move and and people being sick and such over the winter, we had missed a bunch of classes and we switched to a new pool because of the move, so he had regressed a bit over the winter, but he’s completely come out of that now and is back to being super excited and enthusiastic about swim each week.
He tries to share things he is really excited about with the dog, but the dog doesn’t always appreciate it, and that makes him sad. “Look Dog, train videos!!!” (Dog looks blankly). “Look Dog, train videos!!!” (Waves iPhone around, holds it to Roscoe’s face to show him. Dog looks unimpressed. Alex gets sad.)
He likes to ride on my back, and will insist on climbing up and being carried that way from room to room.
He loves to wrestle and roughhouse.
He is still working on catching, but he is now pretty good at throwing a ball right to me for me to catch!
Alphabet! He is very excited about letters and numbers and learning to identify them. His favorite games right now are all games that involve letters and numbers. He doesn’t know them all yet, but he knows some of them, and is eager to learn the rest.
Well, there is probably a bunch more. There is definitely a lot more. Every day there are awesome moments and new things. But it is impossible to capture them all. Those are just a few that came to mind with a few moments of thinking. This is a great age. Lots of fun. But also exhausting. :-)
As of very close to right now, 2011 Oct 21 at 02:29 UTC (7:29 PM on the 20th Pacific time) Amy is officially exactly 16 years old. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMY!!
Drove under its own power for the last time on Saturday. Confirmed permanently dead by the mechanic this morning. 15 years and 9 months old. It is a sad day! Sniff. :-(
