My three-year old boy

To my darling boy,

Happy birthday! I can’t believe that it has been three years since you arrived and changed my world forever.

I love your “superhugs” – a recent invention of yours where you wrap your legs around our waists and your arms around our necks really tight and squeeze. Nothing beats a superhug from you.

You still love all things construction-related – heavy machinery, cranes, bulldozers, backhoe loaders, asphalt, rollers, piles of gravel, etc. You can’t quite say “construction”; it comes out more like “conscrushin”. You love all of the road work near Carleton Place on Highway 7 and the big residential builds near our place – there is almost always a crane in action if we go by during the day.

You started preschool. When we ask you about what you are doing at school, you can never seem to remember anything but then you will break into song or tell us a story about something that happened at school at another totally random time of day. I think it is a good change for you.

You can make your own fun. You recently knocked my socks off by playing, reading, snacking, and keeping yourself happy for an entire three-hour van ride with no stops at all. I see some road trips in our future.

Your imagination is really active, from playing doctor and fixing everyone to raising dinosaurs on a farm.

I thought that your love of Bob the Builder was wavering but you still seem very interested in reading all of your Bob books. You love, love, LOVE books in general. Nothing makes me happier than curling up with you on the couch and reading and giggling together. Some of your favourite books right now are The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Go Dog Go and Big Dog, Little Dog.

You ask for dessert with your breakfast. You come by that one honestly.

You love the bath but you hate getting rained on. You've recently developed a fear of thunderstorms, although your fear of the tub drain seems to have subsided.

You love custard dessert tofu, egg sushi, marshmallows, udon noodles, cherry tomatoes, dim sum (especially BBQ pork buns and shrimp dumplings), olives, Nana’s jello creations, ground cherries, jelly beans, frozen blueberries, macaroni and cheese, and butterscotch chips. You actually said liver was "Yum". You don’t like potatoes. You don’t like things that you think are “spicy” but you like some things that I would consider spicy. You are willing to try new things.

You’re growing – I thought we were safe with 3T but you had a 3T shirt on the other day and it was too short for you. Sometimes I wish that I could keep you little forever.

Your response to almost every question these days is “I don’t know” but you aren’t fooling anyone. You are remembering stories and songs and little facts about the world around you. You surprise me every day with the things you are observing and taking in.

I love you, monkey. I hope your fourth year brings many more adventures.

Mum