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!