So I actually meant to write this post for a three-year-old soon after his birthday in August, but then life got busy..... Anyway, better late than never, right?
Charlie is now about 3 1/2 years old and continues to be pretty darn adorable most of the time, and gosh darn adorable the rest of the time. To get ready for this blog, I went back read the posts I wrote about him as a 1 year old and a 2 year old and it brought back so many great memories, what fun!
Anyway, Charlie still loves balls. Small bouncy balls are his favorite. Our local YMCA has programs for kids starting at age 3, so we enrolled Charlie in a soccer skills clinic and right now he's finishing up a basketball skills clinic. I know, organized sports for 3 year olds? We were skeptical at first too, but thought it would be a good way for him to get some exercise each week (especially in the middle of winter) and since he loves balls so much, we thought he'd enjoy it. The programs for the little kids are done really well. The coach (the same man for both sports) and his assistants are very good working with the little kids. They provide structure for the group, but don't actually expect complete compliance from the unruly 3 and 4 year olds. Charlie enjoys about half of his lessons, depending on how he feels that day. Right now he gets frustrated because he wants to practice shooting the ball the entire time and doesn't want to waste his time with the dribbling and passing drills.
Charlie is officially a "picky eater." If you read the post from when he was 1 year old, you'll know that he started out as a great eater, but soon after his 2nd birthday, he started to get picky. Last year he stopped trying new foods, but would continue to eat the foods he was used too. Then gradually, he stopped eating many of the familiar foods that our family loves and now he has a very limited selection of edible foods. Our general approach to food from the beginning is to be relaxed and not pushy about eating. We follow our former pediatrician's mantra - that no child has ever starved themselves to death when food was available. So basically I feed them a breakfast and lunch that I know they like (which means Honey Nut Cheerioes and Peanut Butter Sandwiches about 95% of the time, with some fruit) and snacks that are as healthy as I can manage (usually granola bars, yogurt, fruit) and then dinner is dinner - no special substitutions for picky eaters. Very often he will go without any dinner at all and that's fine with us as long as he doesn't whine about being hungry. He used to do this pretty well, but lately he's been fussing a lot (probably because through the Christmas holidays we had a lot of goodies and candy to eat after dinner, but he wouldn't get any on nights when he wouldn't eat, and thus the fussing began...) Ketchup, as mentioned in his 1 year old post and in a previous post, continues to be very valuable - we can often get him to eat some of his former favorites by adding ketchup.
Experimenting with emotions and facial and verbal expressions is a new aspect of Charlie that has been very amusing to watch. He has a great pouting face and he has been trying out different tones of voice, usually negative - sassy, demanding, bossy, etc. I can easily tell that he's mimicking tones that he hears from this older brother, like he's trying them out for size, but sometimes the tone doesn't quite fit the situation and it's funny. The kind of funny that makes you want to laugh, but you know you can't let him see you laugh or smile at that behavior. But other times he's very sweet and charming. Most mornings when I'm getting him ready for preschool, he'll say that he doesn't want to go to preschool, but when he gets there, he's all hugs and smiles and giggles with his teacher (and we're pretty sure that he's got his teacher wrapped around his little finger, he's obviously her favorite little kid and he soaks that up!) He also has a lot of goofy expressions that I just can't describe. I don't think I would be able to capture them on camera, but I should probably try anyway.
Charlie is now about 3 1/2 years old and continues to be pretty darn adorable most of the time, and gosh darn adorable the rest of the time. To get ready for this blog, I went back read the posts I wrote about him as a 1 year old and a 2 year old and it brought back so many great memories, what fun!
Anyway, Charlie still loves balls. Small bouncy balls are his favorite. Our local YMCA has programs for kids starting at age 3, so we enrolled Charlie in a soccer skills clinic and right now he's finishing up a basketball skills clinic. I know, organized sports for 3 year olds? We were skeptical at first too, but thought it would be a good way for him to get some exercise each week (especially in the middle of winter) and since he loves balls so much, we thought he'd enjoy it. The programs for the little kids are done really well. The coach (the same man for both sports) and his assistants are very good working with the little kids. They provide structure for the group, but don't actually expect complete compliance from the unruly 3 and 4 year olds. Charlie enjoys about half of his lessons, depending on how he feels that day. Right now he gets frustrated because he wants to practice shooting the ball the entire time and doesn't want to waste his time with the dribbling and passing drills.
Charlie is officially a "picky eater." If you read the post from when he was 1 year old, you'll know that he started out as a great eater, but soon after his 2nd birthday, he started to get picky. Last year he stopped trying new foods, but would continue to eat the foods he was used too. Then gradually, he stopped eating many of the familiar foods that our family loves and now he has a very limited selection of edible foods. Our general approach to food from the beginning is to be relaxed and not pushy about eating. We follow our former pediatrician's mantra - that no child has ever starved themselves to death when food was available. So basically I feed them a breakfast and lunch that I know they like (which means Honey Nut Cheerioes and Peanut Butter Sandwiches about 95% of the time, with some fruit) and snacks that are as healthy as I can manage (usually granola bars, yogurt, fruit) and then dinner is dinner - no special substitutions for picky eaters. Very often he will go without any dinner at all and that's fine with us as long as he doesn't whine about being hungry. He used to do this pretty well, but lately he's been fussing a lot (probably because through the Christmas holidays we had a lot of goodies and candy to eat after dinner, but he wouldn't get any on nights when he wouldn't eat, and thus the fussing began...) Ketchup, as mentioned in his 1 year old post and in a previous post, continues to be very valuable - we can often get him to eat some of his former favorites by adding ketchup.
Experimenting with emotions and facial and verbal expressions is a new aspect of Charlie that has been very amusing to watch. He has a great pouting face and he has been trying out different tones of voice, usually negative - sassy, demanding, bossy, etc. I can easily tell that he's mimicking tones that he hears from this older brother, like he's trying them out for size, but sometimes the tone doesn't quite fit the situation and it's funny. The kind of funny that makes you want to laugh, but you know you can't let him see you laugh or smile at that behavior. But other times he's very sweet and charming. Most mornings when I'm getting him ready for preschool, he'll say that he doesn't want to go to preschool, but when he gets there, he's all hugs and smiles and giggles with his teacher (and we're pretty sure that he's got his teacher wrapped around his little finger, he's obviously her favorite little kid and he soaks that up!) He also has a lot of goofy expressions that I just can't describe. I don't think I would be able to capture them on camera, but I should probably try anyway.
We're working on potty training with him, but that's a whole other post for another day. He does wear underwear all the time, but we can't claim full success yet.
He likes to do puzzles, play Star Wars, play dress up with his brother and loves books. He especially loves to have one-on-one time with his Daddy. Apparently Casey makes for a very good jungle gym. He loves to cuddle. He favorite outfit right now is his birthday suit, although we have a rule to "Always wear underwear" (from the Latin, "Semper Ubi Sub Ubi.") His 2nd favorite outfit is jammies. So for nap time today, he promptly took off his clothes for nap and when he woke up, he immediately put on his jammies before coming downstairs. (Coulson also immediately changed into his jammies as soon as he came home from school today, so this isn't a new phenomenon.) Go Diego Go is his favorite TV show. He and Coulson are really good playmates now, when they aren't fighting. Coulson can be a bit bossy and likes to dictate how they play, but Charlie is learning to assert himself, so conflict sometimes arises, but they are learning (slowly) to work out these problems effectively. Coulson is learning to read and he will often read books to Charlie, sometimes at night after we've put them to bed - so sweet!
I love watching him grow up and I'm enjoying watching his unique self emerge a little more every day!
Santa brought Charlie a drum set for Christmas
Making cookies at Nanna's house
Playing in the snow
Darth Vader for Halloween
First day of 3-year-old preschool in September
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