Dear Johnny

Dear Johnny,

I know this is a little late in coming. We're nearly one month past your 3rd birthday and I feel awful for not doing this on time. I keep trying to remind myself that three weeks late is better than never and it's not like it will matter in the grand scheme of things. When you go back to read these one day, three weeks will seem like a trivial amount of time. At least I hope so. And if not... well, there's nothing I can do about it now anyway.

You are 3 years old, now, kid. Kid! You are definitely a kid now. Gone is my baby with the gurgling noises and spindly legs. Gone is my toddler on unsteady feet, barreling through space head first, usually into the ground. And now here you are, a child with your own personality and preferences and opinions.

You have always been independent, but this last year has been an even bigger exhibit of that on-my-own attitude than the previous two. On one hand, I love that you can enjoy your own company and have no problem filling your alone time. It has been vastly useful to me since I often have to leave you to your own devices to deal with Hank for nap time or bed time or to do something pressing like put groceries away. I'll tell you what I'm going to do and that I'll see you in a few minutes and you will nod and traipse off to the play room or your bedroom to spell words or play games that only you understand.

On the other hand, it's been hard to watch you grow away from me. You need me for so much less now than you did last year. You take your clothes off by yourself (whenever you want), you open your own snack containers (whenever you want) and can buckle yourself into your car seat (whenever you want, even if I'm in a hurry). It seems so silly because I want you to learn to do things on your own; I want you to be self-sufficient and learn to put on and take off your clothes and get your own snacks and operate safety devices. I want you to learn to cook one day and read on your own and ride a bike. But I also want you to need me. It's difficult to have such conflicting feelings about your growing independence. I'm so proud of you when I see you reading words from a book that you recently learned, but I also realize that every word you learn for yourself is one less word I will get to read to you in the future. Such is the burden of being a mother, I suppose.

To be honest, your independence and desire to be alone made me worry about you. A lot. Why do you want to spend all of your time in your room with the door closed when we host play dates? Why do you beg to leave when we're at someone else's home? Why don't you enjoy the company of other children your age? I wondered if something I was doing or not doing was making you antisocial, especially with so many people around me talking about sending their kids to day care or preschool a couple of days a week to "socialize" them. And then, snap! You made your first friend, Blake. I will never forget the day you retreated to your room, as usual, during a play date at our house for toddlers Hank's age. I was worried that you were going to go ballistic when Blake made to follow you up the stairs, but then I heard you say, "Do you want to go in my room, Blake?" And then you two went into your room and closed the door. When I checked on you, you were sharing sacred letters with your friend and reading books together. That was the day when I knew you were going to be okay. You were indeed social, but you were going to do things on your own terms.

And boy, do you do things on your own terms.

You have your own ideas about how to want to do things and where you want to go and for how long. I've learned not to touch any letters or numbers you're putting in order, not even to help. I've gotten over the fact that we're not going to see any animals at the zoo, but we are going to visit every guidance pole with a number at the top from 1 to 18. I've learned that at SeaWorld, you want to do the Bay of Play, lunch with the sea lions, and then running on the field, in that order. And when you say you want to go to the bumpy slide park, NO OTHER PARK WILL DO.

I've also learned, however, that while you prefer to stick with the familiar, you usually enjoy seeing something new, even though you won't ask for it. In fact, you usually fight with me about it. Like when I dragged you over to see Shamu underwater, you were not thrilled to be skipping out on the running in the field. But once we got there you were delighted by the killer whales and have asked to go there every time we've been back.

I hope that with time you will learn that I have your best interests at heart and will begin to trust me when I want you to try something new.

But I also hope that you don't forget how to assert your own opinion. I want you to have a voice in how your days go and a decision on what things you decide to do. The last thing I want for you is do something just because someone else says it's important/cool/necessary and no other reason. I want you to be the judge of what is important.

I may or may not regret saying that later.

The point is, Johnny, I love who you are. You are sweet to your family (even Hank), good at compromising, incredibly smart, and so much fun. Yes, sometimes you can be stubborn and completely unreasonable, but most of us can be that way sometimes. It just means you're human. A little human that can make me laugh one second and erupt with frustration the next. But I wouldn't have it any other way. Well, maybe I could do with a little less frustration, but I'll take the good with the bad.

Happy birthday, Johnny! I love you.

Love,
Mommy

Hello 2013!

Why hello. We're alive. Promise.

This is not going to be a real post because... well, it's just not.

You know that feeling you get when you realize you forgot a friend's birthday and never sent her a birthday card or called her? But you can't do it right this second because you're in the bathroom/you can't find a pen/your phone is dead, so you resolve to do it later.

And then four days later you're like, "Oh crap! I forgot her birthday. If my hands weren't covered in salmonella from dealing with raw chicken, I'd totally call her. I'm going to do it tonight." But your children decide that bed time is optional and you don't end up doing anything but tending to them and finally collapsing into bed at 11pm covered in your children's snot and smelling like you haven't showered in days. Probably because you haven't.

Then before you know it, after a series of unfortunate events involving crazy holidays, 4am wake ups, and toddler shenanigans, it's been two months and you STILL haven't gotten around to sending that note/making that call. So you think to yourself, What do I do now? You want to call her, but doing that would bring attention to the fact that you not only forgot her birthday, but you took two frigging months to make the effort to recognize it. Plus you haven't talked in forever and there's just so much catching up to do on top of groveling at her feet for being a terrible friend. And it just seems like too much to handle at the moment, so you put it off for tomorrow, when surely you'll have more energy to deal with it than you do right now.

That's kind of where I'm at with this blog. I have so many things to write about and catch up on, namely Johnny's letter from me for his 3rd birthday, but I haven't written in so long that the activation energy to get from not writing all to carefully cataloging everything we've been up to since the end of October just seems like a lot. Hence, the non-real post that is this post.

So, I figured I'd merely ramble to get back into the swing of writing. And also typing since it's been so long that my fingers are having issues with hitting the correct letters to form correctly spelled words. Hapoy Neq Uear! (<--- that was a joke... just so you know.)

Sea World's Spooktacular

Last year, my mom and I took the boys to Sea World's Spooktacular for a little Halloween fun, but it wasn't all that great since we went in the morning before nap time and none of the Halloween stuff started until the afternoon. So this year, we decided to go in the afternoon and John said he wanted to come with us. Well, this was quite the proclamation since John is not a fan of theme parks, nor is he a fan of crowds... but since I take the boys there so often, he said he wanted to come and see what we do when we're there.

Turns out a lot of people had the exact same idea we did. There were HOARDES of people going to Sea World at the same time as us and, unfortunately, a lot of them needed tickets like John did. So, we stood in line.

And stood in line some more.

And stood in line some more. We were there for about 30 minutes before John FINALLY got to purchase a ticket... and that's when we found out that they weren't doing the Fun Card thing anymore. We were thinking that if John bought a full price ticket it could be used for a full year since we're SoCal residents. Negative, ghost rider. But by that point, we were sick of standing in line in the sun with hundreds of other people, so we coughed up the $65 (even WITH my discount) and went inside.

There were a few highlights (as can be seen below), but mostly the boys were irritated with the sheer amount of people at the park. They are used to having the run of the place since we usually go on weekdays, but it was very different on the weekend for Spooktacular. There were lots of tears when John had to explain to Johnny that he had to wait in line for his favorite things. And then we had to keep them close to us since they could get lost in the crowd. There was a particularly harrowing moment when my mom, John and I lost sight of Johnny at the Bay of Play. He went up the nets, across the bridge, down the slide, up the stairs... and then we lost him. Luckily, John found him trying to go down the nets (which you aren't allowed to do) and brought him back down safely.

So here are the pictures!

Johnny is obviously not impressed with the time and effort these people put into their make up and costume.

Hello rubber ducky. Would you like to come home with me?

Look! We were there!

ELMO!!!! Hank loves Elmo. But that's a post for another day. Or something.

Turns out that the coolest place in the park was this stretch of green grass where the boys ran and ran and ran while I chased them and tickled them. It was totally worth the price of admission. That grass was seriously soft.

I KNOW. Dead of cute.

35 months!

I'm 35 months old today!

Hank is only 16 months old though, so don't get confused. This just happens to be a good picture of me, Johnny, therefore I want to use it. This is MY 35-month-birthday, not Hank's. Just to be clear.

Anyway.

I am only ONE MONTH AWAY from being 3 whole years old. Man, I'm getting old fast. In the past month I have exploded with correct grammar. I use complete sentences and use "I" and "me" correctly most of the time. I rarely talk in the third person anymore, much to Mommy's relief.

The biggest change in the past few weeks is how much I enjoy other kids now. I have come to appreciate Hank's company a little more and have even started asking him "Hank, do you wanna go upstairs and play with blocks, Hank?" in the morning after breakfast. It makes Mommy's heart melt.
I even have a couple of friends now that I enjoy seeing. One of them, Blake, likes to sing the ABC song with me, so we'll sit on chairs and sing together. I've even taken him up to my room to play with my coveted letters and numbers. When he goes, we give each other a big hug and the rest of the day I will tell Mommy about how much fun I had with Blake. I know, I'm adorable.

I'm still really into numbers and letters and am learning to spell and read more and more each day. My favorite game right now is having Mommy or Daddy make letters A to Z with my Duplo blocks. I tell them what color I want it to be and they make it for me. It's awesome. I even starting to write a little bit; I can write a "1" (and 11, 111, 1,111, etc) and am working on "7". To be honest, I'm not all that interested since I can just make Mommy write whatever number I need.

Halloween 2012

So.... October in San Diego was kind of mean this year. It was supposed to be all cool and crisp and kind of fall-like, but October decided that autumn wasn't going to happen on her watch and threw us some blazing sunshine, Santa Ana winds and some 100+ degree days just to watch us SUFFER.

What does this have to do with Halloween? Nothing, I just felt like ranting.

Anyway.

Hank and Johnny's costumes all revolved around a certain plastic hat that Johnny got from the Safari Park a couple of months ago. Up until that day, Johnny was not a hat guy. Not in the slightest. Then some random older kids give him a plastic safari hat and BAM! He won't take it off. So, I figured I'd make him a zookeeper/person on safari and Hank would be some kind of animal you would see on safari. So when I saw a lion costume at Costco two months ago, I grabbed it. Then I got an "explorer's" vest off Amazon and I was done.

It was the perfect plan. Johnny is REALLY particular about what he wears (more on that later), so I planned for him to wear some khakis and whatever shirt he wanted. Then I'd slip the vest on him and convince him to wear his beloved safari hat and we'd be done.

Turns out that my nearly-3-year-old is SO not into doing things that I want him to do. The whole day I talked up getting CANDY and wearing a COSTUME and getting CANDY and seeing Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Jana and OMG DID I SAY YOU'RE GETTING CANDY?!?!

Not fazed. Candy? Pish-posh. I guess that's what I get for not giving my child candy, right?

So Grandma stayed inside with Johnny while the rest of us took Hank around in his lion costume to get some candy. And he was SO STINKING CUTE. He'd ring the doorbell, stand there patiently, and when the host arrived at the door, he'd wave at them and say "Hi!" They'd (without fail) get down on his level and gush about adorable he is while showing him a bowl full of bright colored treats. At first, he hesitated about taking something, but by the end he had no problem grabbing something and putting it in his bag. He wouldn't say "trick or treat" since he's only 16 months old, but I would prompt him with "What does a lion say, Hank?" and he's say "Roar!!"

The lion without his hood

Not stoked about the hood.

Still not stoked about the hood.

Please don't mind my hip hair-do. It's called "mom-chic"... and also "I haven't looked in the mirror for three days"

YAY DOORBELLS!

He kept pointing at the jack o' lanterns saying "pumpkin!" Then he'd point to the fountain and say "FOUNTAIN!"

 My heart exploded a few times that evening at the sheer cuteness of it all.

After a few houses, Grandma had managed to get Johnny outside, but he required her to put his orange shirt on him. So this was Johnny's costume (from the back since he refused to slow down long enough for me to snap a shot of his face):

Then shortly after we got all excited about Johnny coming outside, he bolted down the block and John followed him to the park, where they stayed until Hank and I picked them up in the van after we were done seeing all of our neighbors.

I think Johnny may have seen his error in skipping out the trick or treating when Hank was digging into his spoils: