Dear Sam,

You turned three just over a month ago. I haven’t written this post yet, in part because I’ve been busy and in part because I don’t know where to begin! How can our little baby be three already? Where did the time go? Your daddy and I could not be more proud of what a sweet, funny, and smart child you are. It feels like overnight you went from being a little baby to a little boy. Sometimes I look at you and think, how did we end up living with this funny little man? You make every day brighter and constantly put a smile on my face. I truly cannot imagine a life without you. Happy belated birthday, sweet Sam! We love you!

On the day you were born

Our sweet, smart, funny, and handsome little boy

Sam’s 3-year Stats:

• Height: 39.5 inches (90th percentile)
• Weight: 32.5 lbs (50th percentile)
• Bedtime: Goes to bed at about 8 or 8:30 every night. He likes to sleep but he sure has learned how to milk every last second out of his bedtime routine. Ben is in charge of putting him to bed and there is a very exact number of things that have to happen. He needs to read a certain number of books, sing a certain number of songs, and drink a certain number of sips of water. He and Campbell are sharing a room and Campbell usually wakes up a good 30-45 minutes earlier than Sam would like. When I go in to get Campbell, I usually ask Sam if he would like to keep sleeping and he almost always says yes!

Two cuties

• Naps: For awhile Sam was fighting his afternoon nap but he is going strong once again! For awhile I would put him down for his nap and he would just talk to himself and sing for hours (literally)–sometimes eventually falling asleep and other times not sleeping at all. I started telling him to not sing and talk when he went to sleep and miraculously that seemed to work. He now falls asleep very quickly and almost always sleeps for 3 hours.

Sam in his big boy bed

• Eating: Sam is still a pretty good eater and loves foods a lot of kids might not (big fan of tofu and brussels sprouts). But he does sometimes tell us that he doesn’t like something new, when he hasn’t even tried it. We have a rule of at least two bites of anything we serve, and unless he is in a mood, he is pretty good about that. A lot of times when he tries something on our insistence, he’ll exclaim, “delicious!” and then politely decline any more. He loooves candy, goldfish, and any other processed junk! But he also loves fruit and I think would be quite happy to be a fruititarian.

Corn on the cob at the Carlyle

Hooray for PB&J!

• Sam has turned in to such a big talker. He is constantly picking up phrases that he hears adults say and fitting them into conversations. For example, if we tell him he gets to have a cookie, go to the playground, etc., he’ll say, “that sounds like a GREAT idea!” Or he’ll tell us “you keep forgetting!” when we don’t immediately do something he has asked us to do. Or if he wants another piece of candy, he’ll say, “maybe just oooone more. Maybe just twoooo more.” When Campbell is crying, he puts on his highest pitched, most mothering sounding voice, pats her back and says, “It’s okaaaaay. It’s  okaaay, Campbell.” Or anytime someone makes a joke (he’s really good at picking out the tone of jokes, even when the content is way over his head), he says, “goooood one!” nodding and pointing at the joke teller.

Crazy Eyed Sam

• Lately Sam has been really into having us retell stories. If he hears us talking about something, even when it’s not much of a story (e.g. telling Ben I picked up the library books today), he tells us to tell him the whole story from the beginning.
• Sam loves to laugh at Campbell or get her to laugh. They really feed off each other. He will run a joke into the ground if it got Campbell to laugh the first time. He’ll just do it over and over and over until she stops laughing and then he’ll try something else. Campbell likes to make fart noises, which cracks Sam up.

Haaaaa!

• Sam is very into music. One of his favorite outings is going to Guitar Center with Daddy. They go and play the drums, test out the guitars, and pound on the keyboards. Sam also loves listening to our iPod with the headphones (the headphones are just for show though, the iPod is always docked and the music comes out through the speakers). Ben has done his best to get Sam hooked on grown-up music, not kid music and so far it seems to have worked. His favorite songs are Sabotage, Intergalactic, Tighten Up, Midnight City, Pumped Up Kicks, Cecelia, and Help.

Father-son jam session

Sam and his headphones

• Sam knows some of his letters (especially S, A, and M). He has recently started asking me if something says Sam every time he sees an S printed somewhere. He loves to be read to and to pretend read by himself.

Family Story Time

• He is good at counting and can show you how many on his fingers. I made these videos for a human development class I took over the summer. It shows how Sam is developing one to one correspondence when counting.

http://youtu.be/d9MwgxeyaJ4 Sam Trains
http://youtu.be/M7qH8ZetzNc Sam blocks

• He is obsessed with garbage men, trucks, construction sites, buses, airplanes, and trains.

Just one of the many times sitting in a fire truck

Construction Man Sam

• He has a vivid imagination and likes to pretend to be different community helpers. For a while, the only game he played was garbage man. He would stand on the landing and pretend it was the back of the garbage truck, holding onto the wall like the garbage men hold on to the back of the truck. Then he would dump everything in our house that wasn’t nailed down into the “back of the truck”. Lately he has been playing construction man and goes around hammering and fixing all kinds of things. The other day, he helped me deliver some orders and insisted on wearing a rain coat and carrying a bag so he could be like Keith, our very friendly mailman. His other favorite game right now is pretending to be a “restaurant man.” He takes everybody’s order, cooks it up on his grill, and then calls out, “Nuumber threeeee! Number threee!!!” just like they do at District Taco.

Restaurant Man Sam

Fireman Sam

Sam decided this dollar store mask made him an alien

 

• He is really into friends lately and asks to go over to his friends’ houses or have his friends over. If we are going somewhere (lunch, park, etc.) he wants to know who else is going to be there. He also loves playing with our neighbors Beatrice and Jack. He always asks if we can go play outside with them and they all like knocking on each other’s doors to see if they are free to play outside.

Sam and Evie

Sam and his heroes, the big boys in the neighborhood

• Two and a half was a little rough for a while, with lots of tantrums, lashing out, and hitting. But the last few months have been very smooth. He still gets mad at times, but is quicker to calm down. He is generally very happy and pleasant to be around, unless he is overly hungry or tired. He is a great listener most of the time and usually does what you ask him to do. If he doesn’t do something, I just start counting to 3 and almost never get past 1 (usually the consequence of getting to three is me forcibly making him do whatever it was. Like if I ask him to come upstairs and he still doesn’t do it once I get to 3, I pick him up and bring him upstairs. He is very independent and would much rather do it on his own). He loves to help out, especially with Campbell.

Helpful big brother

 

• Sam started a new school this year and it is going great. He sometimes says he doesn’t want to go but is always happy once we get there and seems to have a fun time. He likes his teachers and his friends in class. He is a real minimalist when it comes to art projects and usually just scribbles the bare minimum (which is kind of funny because he usually loves doing craft projects at home).

Playing at school

Crafting at home

 

We can’t wait to see what the next year brings!!