Three! Three! Three is Thee!

(Okay, okay, I know it really ought to be "art thou" instead of "is thee," but I had to make it rhyme so that it would fit into the Count's song.)

Dear Zachary,

I know it's been a challenging couple of months, what with the arrival of Baby Eliza and starting full-time preschool. Growing up is hard, isn't it? I'm proud of how you've weathered the changes, though, and look forward to seeing how you continue learning your new roles as big brother and preschooler.

When you first met Baby Eliza, you were shyly pleased, especially when she opened her eyes to look at you. Unfortunately, you developed a bad cold the day after and it was rough going for all involved once she came home: you had a lot of big feelings and wanted to sit on Mommy's lap, but Eliza needed to nurse a lot, and you ended up with hours of screen time in order to pacify you and keep your wheezing at a minimum. After that inauspicious beginning, you've mostly alternated between ignoring her (easy to do since she spends a lot of time sleeping) and asking to have her watch you doing whatever you're doing. It's sweet that you want her company, especially since only a select group of people get requests to be your audience during dinner, bath time, etc. You are also genuinely helpful little person to have around when it comes to fetching her burp cloths! Sometimes, though, you are a little too helpful, like the time you tried to bicycle her legs for her when she was upset but didn't know your own strength. Even though you're at preschool most of the day/week, I do hope that as she gets older and more interactive you guys develop a close relationship.

Speaking of preschool...that has been an interesting journey as well. Every morning you say you don't want to go, but when you get home you say you liked it and that you had fun. You've had the opportunity to do lots more art and outside play, but the trade-off is that you get ridiculously hangry every evening when you come home and very attached to me until you go to sleep. It's nice to have you be more affectionate, but less nice when you insist it *has* to be Mommy who does bath, book-reading, and bedtime routine when there's also a baby to nurse. You're also a lot goofier and crazier in the evenings, probably because you're letting off steam from having to follow the school structure and rules all day. The other consequence of full-time preschool that's been hard is no more Sanity Club meet-ups with your little toddler friends. You miss Paigey a lot and ask about Cassidy and Gus Gus occasionally, and you specifically asked for the older kids (Paigey, Cassidy, and Wes) to be at your birthday party (but also adamantly specified that you didn't want any of the younger kids there).

It's been an adventure ushering you into threenagerhood, and while I'm admittedly scared about how I'm going to help you through all the big feelings, I trust that God will help us through. It's both funny and sad to see how my delight and exasperation at your toddler-ness must mirror His attitude toward me and my foibles, but oh so illuminating as well! If I, with my finite human patience, love you so much, how much more so our Creator; I pray that you come to know Him personally soon.

Happiest of birthdays, my darling boy!

Love,
Mommy

I made you a commemorative birthday poster of all your "friends" around a Daniel Tiger tiger cake.

Here's what they look like in real life: Buddy Bear, Mr. Harlo, Ice Cream Penguin, Pete/Pot the giraffe, Christmas Zebra, Piggy Wiggy, Mrs. Hippo, Baby Bear, Smiley, Mameshiba, Blue Rhino, Mssr. Bear, Lion King, Yellow Doggie, Baa Baa Black Sheep, The Cheese Stands Alone, Key-Cat, Pig Stuff, Cow Stuff, and Tiny Elephant.

And here you are with your actual tiger cake during your birthday party!

As you develop more verbal acuity, it's been fun to write down the silly things you say. You especially love making up nonsense words and giving them ridiculous definitions. A typical conversation:

You: I want to read a book about bip.
Mommy: What's a bip?
You: It's a kind of mouse. It's like a kannum.
Mommy: What's a kannum?
You: Ummmm...it's really big. It eats plants.
Mommy: Is it a dinosaur?
You: No, it's like a cat.

A further sampling of vocabulary-according-to-Zachary below:

• Pabbin: a dude that looks like a fireman gum 
• Baddum: a shirt that says URC on it  
• Bingbasso: a really tall tower that falls over so you have to be careful 
• S-------- (some really long bunch of nonsense syllables that I couldn't keep track of): a bunch of spiders all over you 
• P--------: a specialized red truck

You also like making up dinosaurs, such as Sowestodon, a dino that eats cereal, and Whale-stegosaurus, a kind of dino that lives in the sea and has an armored tail and bony plates and a really big mouth.

It's also hilarious seeing what kind of things you pick up by listening to us talk. For instance, we frequently spell out things to keep you from figuring out what we're talking about (although thanks to that habit, you now know how to spell zoo), and I guess that was happening pretty frequently since last weekend you asked, "Are we going to M-O-P?" Pretty sure you were just stringing random letters together, but it was still pretty great. And because of all this spelling, you've been trying to figure out how to spell other words: you named your giraffe Pete (but she's a girl giraffe) and then told me that it was spelled P O T. I guess it's got the right consonant sounds in there? Your ability to pick up on what we say also sadly helps to reveal how much of an impact social media has on our lives, as the other day you asked if you could have some "Instagram crackers" for snack, as opposed to graham crackers...

Usually in these updates I like writing about your current likes and dislikes, but now that you're old enough, I'll let you speak for yourself. 

What's your name? "Zachary!"
How do you spell your name? "Z A C C R H Y."

How old are you now? "Three!"

How old is Mommy? "Four."

How old is Daddy? "Uhhhh...one!" *giggling ensues*

Favorite color: (very emphatically) "RED!"
Favorite letter: "B."

Favorite stuffed animal friend: "My teddy bear."

Favorite song: "The Room Where it Happens!" 

Favorite Hamilton character: "Aaron Burr. Because he says AH! I like King George too. He laughs like a silly person."

Favorite marine animal: "Dugong! It's the cow of the sea!"

Favorite land animal(s): "Giraffe! And alligators and lions!" (not at all coincidentally, the three animals featured in his daily gummy multivitamin)

Favorite dinosaur: "T. Rex! It eats stegosauruses." (Ever since we watched the dinosaur bit on Fantasia, he's been obsessed with the diets of various dinosaurs.)

Favorite book: "Dino Dinner. It's at the San Lorenzo library." (We only borrowed it once a couple months ago and he wasn't particularly interested in it then. His real favorite books, based on frequency of reading requests, are probably the Maps children's atlas, the Mother Goose nursery rhyme collection, his children's Bible, Where the Wild Things Are, and The Lion's Share.)

Favorite food: "Big cheese!" (He hasn't actually liked big slices of cheese in at least four months. If I were to answer this I'd say frozen novelties of all sorts.)
Favorite fruit: "Fruit eyeball!!!" (That's what he calls longan, because that's what Go Go Grapes calls them.)

Favorite musical instrument: "Guitar. Because it's in classical music." (Not really, but okay. He also frequently pretends that long-ish objects are flutes.)
Favorite shirt: "My London shirt. It's from Auntie Candy."

It has a dinosaur riding a red double-decker bus, all three of which are extremely interesting to you.

Who's your best friend: "Paigey."

What do you like to do? "Read." (True. Earlier this week when Eric picked him up from preschool, he had brought a book with him to read on top of the frog structure.)
What does Daddy like to do? "Go to work."

What does Mommy like to do? "Hold hands with me! So we can go to Target."

What does Baby Eliza like to do? "Eat 奶奶. She likes to spit up! "

What makes you happy? "Giraffe blankie. Your piyo piyo." (Piyo piyo is the word he made up to describe all blankets that have a microfiber fleece texture.)

What makes you sad? "I don't know." (Whenever I ask him to wash his hands there is almost always a storm of tears.)

What makes you laugh? "The giraffe [from the Duplo game], because he laughed."
What makes you scared? "YOU!!!" *dissolve into maniacal laughter* (In reality, bugs.)

What does Daddy do for work? "I don't know. Pleasanton."

Where do you live? "San Lorenzo."

Where is your favorite place to go? "The ice cream store." (We have never gone to an ice cream store. But he will frequently request to go to Target, Costco, Trader Joe's, and the Lego store.)

What is something you are good at? *silence for several minutes as he lines up his cars* "Lining them up." (Which is actually pretty indicative of reality: he's good at staying focused on something when he cares about it, and he does like lining things up and sorting them.)

What do you want to be when you grow up? "I don't know. A giraffe. Because it has brown spots. Not black spots."

What is love? "Jesus." (I have never specifically taught him this, so it's a pretty great spontaneous answer...now he just needs to add in God and the Bible and he'll have the perfect Sunday School answer.)

Of course, even though you are capable of expressing yourself, you still have your little toddler pronunciation quirks (hostubble for hospital, paint-facing instead of face-painting), which I love and will be sad when you grow out of them. 

You have never really been into using writing implements, but ever since starting preschool you've gotten more into using markers and crayons. Here's your most recent drawing, with captions dictated to Mommy. The yeti cracks me up because it is actually a fair approximation of the drawing in one of your books. 

Your memory is pretty amazing to me; you can recite many of your favorite books with some minimal prompting (e.g. the whole of What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night). You'll also randomly remember inconsequential things like how Wes has a yellow bib with a bear on it (you've only seen it once, a month ago). 

You like spelling out the titles of books and announcing what you think they say. You also want to know what every single vaguely animal-looking thing is called, which resulted in me reading you a bunch of creature names from the Monster Manual. I tried to specify that the Otyugh, Rakshasa, Manticore, and Orcus were not real animals, but I'm not sure if you  understood. 

It's funny seeing how much language fascinates you, as you love singing songs with all the same tunes as classic children's songs, but with all the words replaced by rhyming nonsense syllables. You are also very curious about how words are spelled, and can do a decent job of guessing spellings with our help sounding words out; unfortunately words like "elephant" and "night" cause you trouble with the "ph" and "gh"...oh English, why must you be such a tricky language! 

Speaking of tricky English, you are a great example of universal grammar and the language acquisition device, with your grammatical-and-yet-not "mouses" and "antelopes." Other psych principles you exemplify are the yet-to-be-developed theory of mind, as you show me books by facing them toward yourself. I look forward to next year when we can try the marshmallow test!

On the Eve of Big Brotherhood

Because who knows when I'll find the time again to write down what you're like, here are some quick snapshots of what you're like at 2.75 years old and about to lose your only child status:

I've always been grateful that you are more like me than I could have anticipated or dared to hope, what with enjoying reading and all, but more and more it looks like you're turning out to be a little geek with all of my fandoms! Of course, that might be a function of spending most of your waking hours with me. Two of my first obsessions as an elementary schooler were Star Wars and dinosaurs, and you are into both! I didn't purposefully set out to make you so, but now that you are, more or less of your own volition, can I just say that I'm so incredibly glad that it wasn't trains or construction vehicles you decided to obsess over? I don't know anything about Thomas or dumptrucks, nor do I care, but I am happy to read my old Star Wars trilogy book with you and talk about Jabba and the rancor and X-wings and the Milennium Falcon. I love seeing you figure out the difference between diplodocus vs. brachiosaurus, stegosaurus vs. kentrosaurus, etc. I am also thrilled that your love of dinosaurs gave me a chance to make a whole bunch of plush dinosaur toys! We are now on month three of basically only checking out dinosaur books from the library, and you know the names of a good thirty or forty dinosaurs and what makes them unique and what kind of food they eat. When asked (and sometimes even when not asked), you are happy to explain to adults that triceratops has a bony frill and that ankylosaurus has a club on its tail and that dimetrodon has a sail on its back, etc. You are also still really into animals in general and we have graduated from talking about meat eaters vs. plant eaters to talking about the difference between mammals and reptiles and amphibians, types of habitats, continents, and inner organs. I love that you love learning!

You have recently gotten really into doing puzzles. You have a few big floor puzzles and some smaller Finding Dory ones, and it's been so interesting seeing you go from needing lots of help to being basically independent in figuring out new puzzles. The other week we hit the thrift store jackpot and found six new floor puzzles for 20% of the retail price, so let's hope you stay into puzzles for a while.

Rhyming is also a big thing. I think it started from singing silly made-up songs in the car with Daddy on the weekends when we drive back from Berkeley or the peninsula, but you've finally gotten the concept of switching out the first sound of a word and then you giggle like mad when you have a nonsense rhyme. Prime example: yell-singing "Room where it happens! Doom where it happens! Tomb where it happens! Boom where it happens!" or "A dot ham! A dot jam! A dot dam! A dot wham!" while laughing like a maniac.

Speaking of the room where it happens and A Dot Ham, you are super into Hamilton and I love it! You favorite songs most recently have progressed from the King George songs to the Room Where It Happens and Who Tells Your Story, although the Ten Duel Commandments remains a top request. With Room Where It Happens, you love pointing out that chess is a game, and that Aaron Burr goes "Iiiiiiiiiiiiii, I wannna be in the room where it happens..." Something about that drawn out I is hilarious to you. One time you came home after listening to it in the car and pretended to cook some sausage, and you said it was for Alexander Hamilton's dinner. You love when Eliza Hamilton sings in Who Tells Your Story, and you have to tell me she wears a blue dress every time. A little more disturbing is that you love pointing out that Aaron Burr is getting angry in The World Was Wide Enough, and then after the gunshot you gleefully pronounce Alexander Hamilton to be dead...

You are also a big fan of "I'm So Shiny" from the Moana soundtrack, although you are very quick to also point out that you don't actually like Tamatoa, although you like his song? It's all very confusing to me. Anyway, this also means you get really excited to see the big crabs in the tanks at Chinese restaurants like Fusion Delight. Other favorite songs currently include "the African animal song," aka "The Circle of Life," and "Hakuna Matata" ("Mom! They eating grubs!"). VeggieTales in general remains a hit as well.

Although screen time is slowly increasing, you are still a big reader. You still gravitate toward the books in new places, church childcare workers continue to tell us that you love reading, and the other day I wanted to laugh and kiss you when you told me you had to stop eating breakfast because you had to read something first. I insisted that you finish breakfast before reading, but inside I wanted to cheer! At night and before naps, you'll take all the books off your shelf and read them to your friends before sleeping.

Speaking of your friends, it's been so fun to see you develop your imagination and use your stuffed animals in creative reenactments of whatever you did that day. You've used Mssr. Bear, Ice Cream Penguin, Mr. Harlow, Piggy Wiggy, and Christmas Zebra to recreate trips to the bakery, to the park for picnics, to the restaurant (complete with menus and to go boxes!), to ride the bus, and all sorts of other situations. Christmas Zebra has been a surprising new addition to your inner circle, but you seriously love her and have been bringing her with you everywhere. She comes with us in the car, and you always check whether zebras are allowed at the library or Target or wherever we're going. Unfortunately, because she's so large and unwieldy, she always has to stay in the car. You also use her as a reason why you need to do something (e.g. eat ice cream, or listen to Moana), because she's never done it before or it's her favorite. Nice try, toddler, but you're still not getting random ice cream.

When you first received Christmas Zebra, I told you she was a gift from Evie and her parents, Auntie Jennilyn and Uncle Steve. You surprised me by stating that you like Uncle Steve a lot and that he was cooking at Paigey's house; we hadn't talked about that night in a long time! Your memory is so good for random things like that; the other day you kept asking what was "parkaking," but because of your toddler pronunciation we couldn't figure out what you were talking about, until suddenly you announced that you remembered it was pie. When we figured out you meant piecaken, we were astounded because we haven't mentioned it since last Thanksgiving.

You have been getting really into gardening, inasmuch as that's possible for a toddler. You always ask to go into the garden to water and pick tomatoes; when given a chance to play with our water table you'd rather use the water to pour on the plants instead of splashing around in it. When you pick tomatoes with Daddy you do a little stompy-jump dance and say "Yippee!" every time you pull one off the vine. You ask to read Secrets of the Vegetable Garden every time we're at Paigey's house, and that's where you learned that you're supposed to put a cloche over vegetables to protect them from snails. When you play at home in the bath you upend tupperware over your dinosaurs and tell me it's a cloche.

Now that you're older and better about playing with instead of alongside your friends at Sanity Club, it's been so fun seeing the friendship develop between you and Paigey (your "best favorite person"). You guys love your CFA dates and playing together in the playground area, as well as sharing animal crackers and reading and doing puzzles. You are so much more expressive with her and are a very appreciative audience for her singing and dancing.

Ever since finding out that Evie gave you Christmas Zebra, you've been talking about wanting to go to San Diego to see her. You also talk about going back to Seattle (all those buses made an impression on you), but we explain that that involves getting on a plane and that they're really far away. When I told you a couple weeks ago that your Auntie Emily was in Sacramento, you asked if we could get on a plane to go see her; you're turning into quite the little wannabe traveler! You also enjoy looking at maps and talking about South America especially. No idea why that continent appeals to you so much, especially considering we have the least animal figurines from that continent.

It's so hard to remember what you were like before you started talking, as you're such a funny personality. It's so cute to hear you try to talk like a grown-up, with words like similar, except, and actually. It's also a little scary to hear you talk to your stuffed animals, as the phrases you use with them are a reflection of what you hear most often from us. Whether it's putting Piggy Wiggy in time out for hitting, or telling Mssr. Bear that you can't read to him right now because you're washing dishes, or reminding them all to share and take turns, it's a good reminder that what you hear from us now will be your inner voice when you're older, so we need to be very careful about what we say. Even when we think you aren't paying attention, you'll randomly ask "What you talking about, Mom?" and then I have to try to explain in terms that you can understand.

Besides internalizing words that you hear, you also really take to heart what you read in books or see on Daniel Tiger. Some things are neutral and/or cute (e.g. carrying dinosaurs around in a bucket after reading all the Harry series of books, or having your unicorns eat cherries after reading Goodnight Unicorn), some things are great (e.g. being a "big helper" by carrying things for me, eating broccoli), and some things are not so great (e.g. having your cars and trains crash into each other after reading Dino Rescue, or making messes after reading What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night). Because of this, I've been really careful not to choose books that set up sibling rivalry as a foregone conclusion. Maybe you won't experience any (hah! I can only wish!) and if that's the case, I don't want to plant the idea of being mad at the baby in your head.

Which brings us to the biggest change on the horizon: your baby sister is due to make her appearance any day now! We've been reading Baby on the Way and What Baby Needs in preparation, and you seem to have finally wrapped your mind around the idea that it's a baby and not a zebra in Mommy's tummy. You regularly ask if Baby ____ is here yet, or ask if you can give her a kiss, and the other day you said we had to include her in our sing-about-all-our-family-members lullaby. She has a representative in our unicorn family, and we've talked about how Baby Kina and Baby Charlie are younger siblings of your playdate friends, so we'll soon see how all the preparation worked...or didn't work, as the case may be. In the meantime, I am trying to soak in all these last days with you as my bestest only bub.

Seattle Bedtime Monologue

I was surprised by how much you enjoyed playing in your crib/boat/train/bus/cozy nest during our hotel room downtime.  This is the last time you'll be able to use a roll-away crib in a hotel room, though, as you are definitely too tall for one now! 

On our last night in Seattle, Mommy and Daddy were especially eager for you to fall asleep quickly so that we could go out for a late dinner date. Now, at home it doesn't matter how long it takes you to fall asleep, but in a hotel room we can't just close the door to your room because you don't have a room to yourself! Instead, we put your crib into the tiny dark entry hallway and hang out on the bed around the corner so you can't see us. As we sat in the silent darkness, you started recapping your day, as is your wont, but this time because there was no door as a sound barrier, we were able to hear everything you said. I didn't have anything else to do, so here's a direct transcript, plus my commentary, of everything you said in the hour it took you to fall asleep.


***

"Sometimes I have a poop. And then we need to change. Oh! It's just pee. Why peoples have pee? Everybody has pee. Mommies, daddies, bebbers, and babies. When people has pee, it goes in the potty. See you later alligator."

[We've been talking a lot about pee/poop going into the potty because we're gearing up for toilet training. The day before we left for Seattle, you were wearing an alligator shirt so everyone said "see you later alligator!" to you.]

"Hello! Where's the baby? Where's your mom? Mommy not sleeping. Today we make a cake. Do you want some? Waah! A baby came out! You go back to sleep. Here's some water."

[Obviously this is because we've been talking about how you're going to have a baby sister.]

"Mommy right here. It's a hippo? It's red right here. Look! Where's the dinner? You can eat your dinner now! You can climb! He REALLY LIKES dinner. Do you wanna take a bath? Ok yeah! Ready to go back home. Eat your pizza! Don't lie down! Don't play African animals, not right now! Eat eat eat! Hey! Not your seat. You sit here and I will sit here. Where we going? Going to ride buses! Ice cream ice cream yummy yummy ice cream! Can we eat? Wait, where's your mom? Come here. Hi mom! Do you have a baby at home? I have a daddy and mommy."

[Because there's no dining room/table in the hotel room, trying to get you to stay in one place for meals has been a challenge. The first night, you tried to wander all around the room and lie down instead of eating your pizza, so I think you were just processing all that. And of course, people who see you wandering around school are always asking you where your mommy is.]

"I'm not sleeping. NO! Please have my pillow? Muffin! Muffin muffin muffin muffin muffin. Sing! It's so cold! But why is it so cold? You like to feel cold? Looks like you're cold. Cold cold cold you want to wear jacket? I want to wear red. Do you have red at your house? It looks like you're a velociraptor. Look! Velociraptors are velociraptor velociraptor velociraptor. Super duper."

[婆婆 is always asking you if you're cold, like grandmothers do, and you always say no. Red is your favorite color right now. We've been singing the muffin song a lot too, as well as talking about various dinosaurs.]

"I want my bears! They eating grass and hay. Do they even eat grass and hay? Elephant! What cows eat? Cows eat grass! Grass! What horses eat? Apples! That's what they eat? On trees? And pigs eat snap peas."

[We've also been talking a lot about the diets of various animals, and in an attempt to get you to eat more veggies, we told you that pigs eat snap peas. That piece of information unfortunately did nothing to change your eating habits.]

"That's all my stuff. Mine! Mine! That's my crib. Mine! After. After the treat is cap. What is cap? It means like ice cream. I understand."

[You've recently picked up the idea of possession, and that things can belong to you, to my dismay.]

"Ve. Lo. Ci. Rap. Tor! Dinosaurs, hey! I want some African animals. This one? Yeah! Please have a farm. Please have the dinosaurs. Besides the bear...do you know the farmer man? It's not the bebbers guy? *singing* Do you know the eating man, the eating man, the eating man? Do you know the eating man? It's not the bebbers guy! Do you know the dinosaur man, the dinosaur man, the dinosaur man? *back to talking* The owie man? I like the owie man. What happened to the owie man? Did he get out? And. He ate some cheese. And he want water."

[We've been singing variations on the "Do you know the muffin man" song, but the lyrics "who lives on Drury Lane" confuses you to no end, so we started substituting in "it's not the bebbers guy" instead. Then you added in all these additional verses. The owie man is what you call Jesus, because of how I told you the Easter story; I'm surprised you remember that Jesus proved he was alive by getting out of the tomb and sharing a meal with his disciples.]

*singing* "Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man? Do you know the muffin man, it's not the bebbers guy! Do you know the ice cream, ice cream man, the ice cream man? Do you know the ice cream man, it's not the bebbers guy! *continue singing, but about the fruit stand man and the  ocean animal man*

"Please have one cherry pie? And ummmmm this loaf of bread? And this one is...a bread with sour cream. What's this called?"

[You've watched us purchase a lot of baked goods over the last day or so in Seattle.]

*singing again, this time "Do you know the sleeping man?"*

"Get me all of them. I can't feed all of them! Cows on the bus. Number five. Oh it's a number four bus!"

[We spent a long time waiting for the bus to the zoo, so we passed the time by talking about what number buses were going by. After this you mumbled quietly to yourself for a little bit more, then finally fell silent. Phew!]


***

At the time, I was more than a little anxious that you wouldn't be able to fall asleep in time for us to sneak out for our 9PM reservation, but thankfully you finally knocked out at 8:45 and we were able to hustle over to Shaker+Spear in time! And now that we've had our nice dinner and made it back home safely, I can read over this monologue and laugh at it wholeheartedly.

I also had to resist interrupting your independent play with exclamations of how cute you were being after we got back from the zoo. You asked to get into your crib and then spent a long time arranging your blankets into caves and telling Mssr. Bear where chipmunks, Komodo dragons, and tiny tiny frogs were hiding, then made little "animal statues" for Mssr. Bear to ride on. I love that you process your day by recreating the adventures you had for your stuffed friends!

2.5 Years

Little snippets from our life together:

Somebody gave you a counting cookie jar for your first birthday, and you're finally old enough to use it properly now! You used to just try jamming random cookies in, but now you can recognize numbers and put in the appropriately numbered cookie when the jar prompts you. Except that sometimes you get into a contrary mood and start arguing with it.

"Hi! I'm Counting My Cookies Jar! Can you find the number 3?"
"NO. I don't want to find the number 3." *puts in the number 6*
"Oops, sorry, that's the number 6. Try again!"
"That not 6! That 9!"
"Let's play a game. Can you feed me four cookies?"
"I don't want to play a game."
"Let's play again real soon. Goodbye!"
"I don't want to say goodbye!"

There's also music video you like to watch called "Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?" Sometimes after watching it, you sit all your stuffed animal friends around the cookie jar and go around accusing them of taking the cookies.

There are two books at the school teacher's lounge that you particularly enjoy, The Rainbow Fish and Duck for President. I have never read them to you; each week when you finish your lunch early on Thursdays you pick random AP Chem students to read them to you. I am so grateful for their patience and willingness to humor you. One time you came home and looked at Mssr. Bear's fish and sadly said, "It not a rainbow fish." Another time you dropped Farmer Cow on the floor and said "Uh oh, he all dirty...like Duck for President." You are particularly attached to Jasper, to the point where when Jasper was gone for a field trip, you spent the whole day wandering around school asking "Where's Jasper?" And when you refuse to put on pants, the best way to induce cooperation is to remind you that Jasper wears pants to school, so you should too.

Daddy took out your IKEA tent from storage recently and you have been loving it. After watching the episode of Daniel Tiger where the rain sends them into the clock factory for an inside picnic, you love bringing all your blankets and friends and play food inside the tent and playing inside picnic. Occasionally I'll hear you singing "Turn it around and find something gooooood!" And when I peek inside the tent window, you are actually turning around in a circle inside.


Daniel Tiger has made a huge impression on you, maybe because he loves playing with his farm animals too? Besides playing inside picnic, you also enjoy playing splat-ball with my round mousepad at school, building fences with your blocks, and going to an imaginary bakery for birthday cake. You sing the clean up song whenever you pick up your toys, which I am forever grateful to Daniel Tiger for. When the U of Chicago college recruiter came to make a presentation at school during your naptime, you spent the whole assembly singing "Won't you ride along with me? RIDE ALONG!" over and over and over at the top of your lungs inside your nap closet while the poor lady tried to interest students in Chicago.


You've now reached the stage where we really can't just stay home anymore; every morning during breakfast you ask "Where we going today?" Usually it's just school, sometimes Paigey's house (inevitable response: "I wanna eat animal crackers!"), sometimes Cassidy's house ("No Gus Gus!"), but if I don't have a ready response you are happy to make suggestions (usually library, Target, or Costco). You have gotten really good at remembering when I say we're going somewhere, and you'll keep reminding me in case I forget. "After school we go library?" And if after school I tell you a student needs to make up a test first, you'll keep going to the office to check if the student is done yet, all the while reminding me that we are going to the library.

It is so gratifying, though, to see you race through the library yelling "NEW BOOKS! NEW BOOKS! NEW BOOKS!" with such obvious glee. The reader in me is so thrilled that what you remember about places is what books you read there: school has all of Baby Josiah's books, Paigey's house has Panda Bear Panda Bear, Cassidy's house has Pout-Pout Fish, Costco has the book that sings Old MacDonald, etc. And the other night instead of going to sleep, you just kept chanting "I wanna read books! I wanna read books! I wanna read books!" When you wake up in the morning, you bring your books over to the IKEA stove to read by the light of the burners and my heart just wants to burst. Besides the cows everywhere, the other major appeal of Chick-Fil-A is that you get a new book, and when you get your kids' meal you inevitably look for the book first. Then when you get home you have to take out all your other "Chiffy" books and line them up and examine your collection and talk about which books you still need to collect.


We went on a picnic (outdoors) at the park by Paigey's house and instead of eating, you wanted to read your book first. And then after you read your book, you still didn't want to eat; you ran over to the playground area and bravely climbed the structure by yourself and slid down (to Paigey's cheers). Then you cruelly abandoned Paigey to befriend an older girl who was pouring water with her toy teapot. I had to laugh at how slyly you sidled up to her at the ledge and leaned over on your elbows and smiled at her. I was too far away to hear what you two talked about, but in no time at all you were playing on the structure together and sharing her teapot. When it was time to go, you held out your arms and gave her a big hug and all of us Sanity Club mamas laughed at how you just picked up an older girl. Maybe you have your daddy's WOO...

Ever since we took you to the ultrasound appointment to find out the coming baby's gender, you've been convinced there's a zebra growing in Mommy's tummy. Since the ultrasound was black and white and stripy, and the heartbeat sounded like galloping hoofbeats, I guess it makes sense? Now every time you come with me to my OBGYN appointments you ask if we're going to listen to the zebra. I'm not sure how you'll react to a baby instead of a zebra, especially considering your penchant for yelling "No Gus Gus! No Tommy!" I do get glimpses of your sweet heart, though; we went to Souplantation with Paigey's family and you tried to share your precious raisins with Baby Kina when she was crying.

Your collection of things you require in order to sleep just keeps growing. For some reason you've latched onto my fuzzy white bathrobe and named it "Pyo Pyo," so when we tuck you in at night the order is Yellow Blankie (alphabet side up so that you can see the letter Z), then Bo Blankie (animal side up of course), and then Pyo Pyo. During the day you like wearing Pyo Pyo as a cape but it's so huge it swallows you up and you look like a tiny white Jawa, or maybe Princess Leia in her hooded dress. I asked if you would like to wear your Quidditch robe (which is actually your size, that I painstakingly sewed for you to wear last Halloween for all of twenty minutes), but you vehemently declined. Of course.


You get panicked whenever you see "tiny buggies" and insist that "Mommy kill it!" The funny thing is that you always want to see the dead spider, fly, carpet beetle, etc. If I vacuum it up you are extremely disappointed to not be able to see it. One time a gnat started flying around the window when you were eating breakfast; after the inevitable panic, you remembered that frogs eat flies, so you asked me to draw you a frog on the dry erase board. Then you wanted a fly for the frog to eat. Then you got upset that there was a fly on the board and asked me to erase both the fly and frog.


You are always watching and absorbing, even when we think you aren't. After many, many mornings quietly observing Daddy making coffee with the Aeropress, one day during lunch you spontaneously put your water bottle on top of your water cup and announced "I making coffee! It come out the bottom! I bring it to work like Daddy!" Another time, two weeks after Auntie Elaine's birthday, for which I made two cakes, you stacked some blocks together and announced that you were making a birthday cake for Auntie Elaine. One day during breakfast you rolled up your pancake and said it was a burrito. Scary, all the things you remember that we don't realize you know!

Now that you're front-facing when riding in Daddy's car, you can see a lot more, namely billboards. You love pointing out Chewbacca and Darth Vader and the caveman and The Man, the latter being a random dude in a suit advertising an attorney specializing in car accidents. You remember that you're supposed to see them on the way to church and daycare, and even though they switched out Chewie and Vader for beer ads, you still have to remind us that "it not a Chewbacca. It a bottle now." When we went to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose and ate a picnic lunch outside, several lightrails went by with the same accident attorney advertised on the side, and you started jumping up and down screaming delightedly, "It the man! It the man! On the train! The same man!"


You know so many songs now! There are so many common themes in kids' songs that you do get them mixed up sometimes, e.g. "Old MacDonald had a farm...and Bingo was his name-oh! B-I-N-G-O! B-I-N-G-O! B-I-N-G-O...B is for ball, B for bus, B for baby shark...Baby shark doot doo doo..." You love singing the phonics song to yourself and while some letters have fairly consistent examples (C is always for cow and cat, D is for dog, etc.), sometimes you surprise us by making a connection with a word we haven't explicitly taught you. Today you said that U is for unicorn...and universe. You love spelling out the words you see and making guesses about what they might say based on your assumptions. At school you have a Chinese/English picture book and you painstakingly spelled out "O-X-F-O-R-D-P-I-C-T-U-R-E-D-I-C-T-I-O-N-A-R-Y," and thought about it for a bit...then triumphantly announced "That spells magazine!"


Lastly, here's a comparison shot of you at five months, and again two years later, at the same Korean restaurant, in the same booth, sitting on Daddy's lap. You used to be mesmerized by the TVs there because you never saw screens at home, but now you're much more interested in playing find-the-vegetable with the placemats.

Because I Don't Want to Forget

You refused to take a picture with the lobster, so Walnut will have to suffice.
Also, you used to be scared of this monster outfit, but now you suddenly like it.

Dear Zachary,

Before I had a kid, all I really knew about the under-five set was that you had to beware of the Terrible Twos. Of course, now that I'm more intimately acquainted with this population, I hear that the real problem is the Threenager. I don't know if that's just in addition to the Terrible Twos or if three is the new two, but let me just say that ever since you've turned two, you have been especially delightful. I can say I genuinely enjoy you and the time we spend together and I love hearing what you have to say now that your language has exploded!

I used to worry because you weren't talking much prior to two, and what you did say was mostly foods and animals, but I needn't have bothered. Other parents warned me that once you really started talking I would rue the day because you would never shut up, but I seriously can't get enough of your little voice and your little monologues. It's not any kind of month milestone, but I need to write all this cuteness down now before you turn into a threenager. Although maybe you'll pleasantly surprise me and be an amazing three year old too?

Of course, I'll still love you regardless of what kind of three year old you are,
Mommy


In no particular order, here's what I want to remember forever:

• You seriously love reading. Your daycare teacher said that she's never seen a kid get so absorbed in "reading" and looking at all the details in books. A couple weeks ago she told me you were in the middle of reading a book when it was time to go outside, so you tucked the book under your arm and brought it outside with you. Are you my child or are you my child? I used to do the same thing and it warms my heart to think of you loving books so much. Even the church nursery workers, who only see you once a month because of the rotation schedule, comment on how much you love books. Today, you had your first real tantrum; you cried and yelled for thirty minutes because you really wanted to go to the library but it was closed. 
• When you have independent play time, your favorite activities are reading animal books, playing with your animals and feeding them toy food, or playing with your Duplos. I heartily approve of all of these pasttimes. Also because you get so absorbed, I can actually get work done now! On an average day, you'll spend at least an hour and half playing on your own in the morning before school and another hour reading and talking to yourself after school. On an amazing day, you'll spend up to four hours (spread out over the course of the day, of course) entertaining yourself. Your introvert mommy is so thankful. 
• Your fascination with animals is incredible. Besides the typical two year old farm animals and African savannal animals, you can recognize and name all sorts of other, more exotic animals (a sampling: tapir, okapi, cows vs. bulls. vs. buffalo vs. bison vs. water buffalo, bowhead whales vs. beluga whales vs. killer whales vs. narwhals, horned frogs vs. tree frogs vs. poison dart frogs vs. bullfrogs vs. toads, octopus vs. cuttlefish vs. squid vs. jellyfish, clownfish vs. zebrafish vs. puffer fish vs. barracuda, "regular" leopard vs. snow leopard vs. cheetah vs. jaguar vs. ocelot, and so on). You delight in giving explanations about what these animals eat, where they live/originate, and how they are different from other animals ("The lion eats [sic] envelopes. [read: antelope]" "The bear eats fish. Also the penguin."  "That's a donkey. It's a fake horse." "That's a Siberian tiger. This is a Bengal tiger." "The cow udder makes milk. But not the bull.") You are so into animals, you can spot even the tiniest 3-mm picture of an animal as part of a logo (the tiny macaw on the Arnott's TimTams package, the tiny butterfly on the non-GMO symbol in the corner of the cereal box, the tiny cow next to the tiny barn on some dairy porduct). 
• Because of your love of herbivorous animals, it's easy to trick you into eating your vegetables. All you need is the reminder that cows, giraffes, and elephants love eating their greens, and you'll gobble it all up. Meat is still hard though, probably because you are disturbed by the notion of lions eating your beloved zebras or polar bears eating penguins. You still love sour things (re: lemons -- "It's sweet! I like it!" and your love for grapefruit, aka pamplemousse, is so powerful that you now like moose) and cold drinks ("I want some ice! It's spicy. But it tastes good!"), and you are now aware of the existence of chocolate, cookies, ice cream, and brownies. Thankfully, you are also pretty good about accepting boundaries around sweets and the coffee you see Mommy and Daddy drinking every morning ("That's for big people. It's not for little boys."). 
• It's really thanks to Costco that you know about sweet things. You've gotten so used to trying all the samples that when we see a sample stall, you get really excited and so I feel guilted into letting you try a bit of chocolate-covered almond or coconut cookie or juice. As a result, you love going to Costco. Also commonly requested for outings: Trader Joe's (because of all the cows on the dairy products), Target (because of the animals in the toy section, of course), "Chiffy" (aka Chick Fil A, because of the cows again), and the Inside Zoo (aka the California Academy of Sciences, because of all the guess what, animals). 
• Back when it was Christmastime, you loved hearing "Away in a Manger," "The Little Drummer Boy," and "The Friendly Beasts." Common thread? They all have animals/barns featured. You even wanted me to add more verses with more animals to that last song, so I had to figure out what a cat might have contributed to the birth of Jesus. I was, of course, reminded of the scene from Love Actually where it is revealed that there was more than one lobster present on Christmas night. We didn't have a real Nativity set, so we got creative with your pirates, barn, and assorted animal figurines. Your favorite Christmas book was (and still is) Who Is Coming to Our House? Because again, animals. 
• You really like the Hamilton soundtrack, but really only three of the themes: the King George songs (cue clapping and yelling "OCEANS RISE!!!"), the Ten Duel Commandments (this song seriously taught you to count...and now we can almost sing it as a duet, with you singing all the number parts!), and Dear Theodosia (most recent lullaby request: "Mommy, sing the Dosia"). 
• You still love the toddler music videos on YouTube during teethbrushing, but not every song is created equal. Animals are generally preferred, but the Hickory Dickory Dock with the elephant crushing the clock made you very upset, Daniel Tiger is a favorite of course, but not the theme song for some reason, and Silly Songs with Larry's Water Buffalo song and Weebls' Dugong Song are constant requests. Oddly enough, you really enjoy the phonics and alphabet songs, and I credit the constant repetition of those songs with how well you know your letters (all the upper case and most of the lower case with the exception of b/d/p/q) and what letter words start with (worth it, for the fifty million times we've sung A-a-apple, B-b-bear, etc. in the car). 
• Lest all this talk about reading and animals and letters make you sound too much like you are your mother's child, you are equally interested in bodily humor and functions. When you fart or burp you yell "EXCUSE ME!" with alacrity; when Daddy taught you your body parts you went around chanting "my nipples, my penis, my testicles, oh beedeedah [bellybutton]!" During diaper changes you always want to see what the poop looks like and you'll comment if it's especially big. Today you ran through the halls at school yelling BOOGER BOOGER BOOGER, and when I asked you what you wanted for snack you said lion boogers. Sigh.
• It's scary and amazing how much you pick up from observing us. When I inobtrusively listen to your monologues while you play in your room, I am relieved and gratified to hear you having Mr. Harlo, Mssr. Bear, Ice Cream Penguin, and Piggy Wiggy use thank you and you're welcome, and you even instruct them to share your lap! You tell yourself to clean up when there are too many things out on the floor, and you are very conscientious about putting things back where you found them. It's nice to know that all the training to be a good citizen is working...for now!
• Speaking of being a citizen, a crucial part of parenting during this scary Trump presidency is teaching you compassion and empathy. Sometimes this works a little too well; when you learned that the last verse of The Farmer in the Dell goes "the cheese stands alone," you got really sad about the poor lonely cheese. We had to find a cheese friend to accompany your lonely IKEA cheese so that you would feel okay. Then the other day I was singing Humpty Dumpty to you and at the end, you spontaneously said "Humpty sad." I was exceedingly pleased at your sensitivity asked what you could do to make Humpty feel better, and you said "Give him a cheese." Okay, so maybe a cheese friend doesn't solve all problems, but it's a start? 
• And speaking of the lonely cheese, here's an incomplete list of reasons you've woken up crying in that terrible 2-4 am time slot in the last couple of weeks: 1) you could only find one of your cheeses, so we had to dig through your twenty stuffed animals to find the other cheese; 2) you wanted to read the new animal storybook that 舅父 got you; and 3) you wanted to wear your new animal shirt.
• You still love going to school with me, thank goodness, because it's not like you have much of a choice about that. You've got the routine down pat, you know where Mommy's classroom and cubicle are, you know which buttons to press for the elevator, and where to go to listen to the choir sing or find the badminton team at practice. You've gotten a little too comfortable with everyone there, enough so that you wandered off to another classroom and didn't realize you were lost until they paged you over the intercom. Your favorite thing to do after school is wander around looking for Jasper or Elijah or Lester, but when you actually find them you are usually seized with a sudden shyness and just want to stare and smile. 
• A month ago I did a little "interview" with you and I never posted the results on the blog, so here is a record of your answers:

A month later, you have now mastered the consistent use of the number four, and your revised answer to
what Daddy does for work is "he holds the coffee and go to work and drink the coffee and bring pasta."
Which sounds significantly better to me than killing spiders. 

TL; DR summary: it's all about animals. To the point where when other little boys come over for playdates, they want to know where all the cars are, and how come you only have animals. But hey, you like what you like even if it's not mainstream, and I love that you're firm about it and unabashedly passionate. You've got the makings of a geek, my boy, and I couldn't be more pleased!