Nah. Not tired.
Although an “overnight” sleep of 3 1/2 hours is prob not going to cut it (note he looks just a tad tired in the second photo). Now 3 1/2 hrs in the Frankfurt airport, then on to Thessaloniki… where I’m sure we won’t be even a bit tired. Ha!
One flight down, two to go. At the moment we don’t have seats together on the flight to Germany. That works for me, but maybe not for the person so much for the person sitting next to him though…
We just had AJ’s school conference last night.
While we weren’t told anything unexpected, it was fun to hear how he acts at school and what his teachers think of how he’s doing.
Not surprisingly, he is a happy, active kid who loves words, reading, writing, math, science, creative play, social interaction and talking. He’s apparently really started to blossom as he’s gotten more comfortable and they’ve been happy with his progress. He’s working on sitting still, being a good listener, not interrupting friends, making good choices, following the rules and not spending so long in the bathroom (apparently they’ve caught him singing and dancing – the Frank Sinatra of the Powder Room).
According to Montessori vernacular he’s experiencing an “explosion into reading” (no gunpowder required) which means he’s reading anything and everything possible. It’s been very noticeable at home as well as he’s started reading books and sounding out words and asking how to spell things.
In addition to the reading, he’s also been really interested in writing and creating pictures to go with his words and stories. We have found that while his stories tend not to have a complex plot, they do score points for logic and clarity.
Pig story: “The pig ate a piece of bread. He was full.”
Words: “bell, cat, nut, lid, cub, mitt, box, can, pot” (Note that drawings of all of the objects are above. If you look closely at the words you’ll see that “nut” and “lid” are very close together and look like “nutlid” When I first read it, I asked him what a “nutlid” was- he told me that no, they are two separate words, they’re just close together because “they’re friends.”)
Aha.
So, if you keep your excess nuts next to your lid collection, you may want to rethink your organization – given that they are very good friends you might awaken one morning and find a disorganized cupboard full of “nutlid.”
Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
Yes, it’s true! Our boy reached the 3 year mark on August 28th and he’s been zooming past it ever since. We frequently hear: “Well, when I was two I couldn’t do this, but now that I’m three, I can!” Indeed. the world is a new place when you cross that barrier. He now tells us by the time he’s 50 he’s going to be so big and sophisticated that “I’ll be able to touch the sky!”
His 3-year check up went well. His doctor was impressed with his (constant) language skills, checked his hearing (normal- though his speaking volume always seems to be AT MAXIMUM) and his vision (see Ray Charles photo) and commented that he had ‘well defined muscles’ as he hopped around the room. That’s our chatty mobile boy!
His stats are as follows:
Weight: 35 lbs (75th %)
Height: 38.5 inches (75th %)
BMI: 16.6 (50- 75th %)
Our boy continues to acquire new skills. After dropping off a friend at the airport, we practiced going up and down escalators. Highly entertaining, and the airport has a lot of escalators.
“Let’s, let’s, let’s do more.”
They say that small kids change constantly- physically, emotionally, preferences, the whole shebang. I would agree with that. One day, we love eating pasta. The next day, “I DON’T WANT THAT” as though we’re serving old slugs in sweaty gym sock sauce. I want to read a book, no I WANT to play. No, I WANT to read a BOOK! NO I WANT TO PLAY!!
Sigh.
But one thing is always the same with our boy: ‘BATOS! I want BATOS!’ The tomato obsession endures.
We have a tradition in our house. Jackson wakes up, yells for us to come get him “Mama……Daddy….Mama….Daddy….”, we drag our tired butts outta bed, go get him, change him (PU stinky diaper!) and then it’s time for a refreshing beverage. Which beverage you ask? ‘Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk!’ We bring the sippy cup of milk into Mommydaddybed and we drink and snuggle.
For the past week when he comes to bed with us, I’ve asked him did he sleep well, “yeah,” and what did you dream about? He always says the same thing with a wistful look on his face “elephants.”
Yesterday while lying on his back between me and Mike, AJ announces “‘Bato! I see ‘Bato!” Now unless he can see with his feet, through the wall and then sharply angle his vision down one floor- and while he’s a talented kid, he’s not *that* talented- no he can’t. But maybe, I’m wrong, maybe he is seeing tomatoes. I can believe that in his mind’s eye, he’s hurling himself through endless fields of delicious cherry tomatoes, hands plucking them as fast as his fingers can move, tomato seeds running down his face, cheeks stuffed to capacity, jaw pounding as he bursts more fruits.
We cannot leave the house without him running over to the potted tomato plant, fingers pointing and proclaming: “Batos! I see ‘batos! I see one there!” Now that there are more ripe fruits, I’ve had to limit him to six per outing (though not always successfully) in hopes of keeping his little stomach from a total nuclear meltdown.
Last night after he’d had his quota he kept pointing to other ripe fruits and alerting me to the fact that, in case I had suddenly become color blind and confused as to how to determine whether or not a cherry tomato is ready for toddler picking, he could see more ripe tomatoes. I told him no more. That we had to wait until tomorrow. He glowered up at me with just a hint of pouty lip, put his hands on his hips and announced “I’m upset!”
I like tomatoes. I think they’re tasty, and I admit that I once ate way too many of them while in grad school. Our Sun Gold cherry tomato plant was laden with delicious, bite-sized golden fruits. They had that warm tomato smell as they basked in the afternoon sun, and I picked and ate and ate and ate them. They were so delicious that I felt blessed … until later that night, when my stomach reminded me about the whole 
moderation thing. Turns out it’s true for tomatoes too.
I’m not sure if it’s genetic, but our boy is also a tomato fiend. I’ve never seen a toddler plow through so many of them at one sitting, much less beg for more. Given this propensity for the fruit, and their high cost in the grocery store, I planted 4 cherry tomato plants in the garden this spring AND, just in case, my parents got us an extra one in a pot. Joy upon joys, they are starting to produce ripe fruit.
The potted plant is on our porch and is visible to certain tomato-focused people from inside the house. Every morning he looks out and says “Mato? I want ‘matos!” We have a ritual where we go out to the plant to see if any are ripe. After some training, and some premature pickings, he now knows which ones are ripe – the orange ones – points to them and announces “I pick it!” Note that this is a statement and not a question. This is my cue to make a snap decision as to whether they are actually ripe and whether they should be picked, as every millisecond counts. Upon seeing a ripe fruit, AJ magically develops lightning-fast fingers and can pick and pop tomatoes into his mouth – pausing only to give a look of satisfaction – before a normal adult brain has managed to send the signal to the arm that it best move as there’s a trouble comin’ down the pike.
Life is not so good where there are no ripe tomatoes and I am forced to say “No picking, they are not ready,” while madly flinging my arms out to grab him before a tomato is taken before its time. This is not the end of the struggle, however. He will beg “Pleeeeeease?!? Pleeeeeease?!?!? Pleeeeeease?!?!?!?!” as he circles around the pot to try to escape my reach and get them from another angle. Not 
infrequently, we have to carry him inside screaming and kicking to stop the sneak-attacks as he wails ” ‘Mato!! I want ‘MATO!!!!”
Action Jackson: Tomato Ninja
The word on the street is that each kid is born with his or her own personality. There are of course the genetics vs. environment debates, but given my background in biology, I tend to agree with the genetics folks.
Regardless of which side you’re on, whether you believe it’s in the DNA or the the way we’re raising him, there’s one thing we can all agree on… personality: Jackson’s got it.
On the car ride home from daycare today, I heard the following conversation between himself:
“Thank you.”
“I welcome.”
And then there are the people. The boy is obsessed with people – playing with them, speaking for them, moving them about the house, leaving them in creative places for us to stumble over or get a joyous surprise when we sit on them, and holding them up and asking “who’s that?”
Fortunately for Mr. People Person, his universe is full of them. (Okay, the planet is full of them, but I digress.) My parents saved my brother’s and my old Fisher-Price people, and farm animals and barn, boat, cars, etc., to play with at their house, and I just got a whole bunch of people off of Craigslist. He no longer wants to eat, to go to bed, to do anything with us. He wakes up and says “People. Play with people.”
We went on a walk to the lake this afternoon – despite his request to stay home with his people. In anticipation of our arrival (and to distract him from his lack of a personal populace), we talked about what we might see when we got there. He came up with some ideas: Ducks! Fish! Boats! And since it’s a core competency, we talked the whole way to the lake where we saw … Ducks! Boats! (Sadly, no fish.)
We were recapping our visual feast on the way home Ducks! Boats! when he suddenly announced “I see people!” I wasn’t sure what he was referring to, as we had seen people at the lake, but we didn’t see any people where we were walking at that moment. To clarify, I asked him, “where do you see people”, to which he responded “Bucket.” – where we keep his people at home when they’re cleaned-up. Sigh.
When they say “It takes a village,” I didn’t realize they’d be made in China.
I would like to make a statement for the record: our boy is not the strong silent type. I have no idea how strong he is, but I can tell you with 100% confidence he is not silent. The boy talks and talks and talks, then he chats for awhile and then, he has something to say. He narrates his life. On the downside, it’s rarely quiet, on the upside, we know what he’s up to “Oh, I found it, hi bear, HI! Uh Oh, ripped it. No ripping. Hide it’
And then we know we need to find the tape, the bear book, and make some magic.
There were two verbal gems today:
This morning as we were in the kitchen and I told him that I would make him some oatmeal he looked up at me and said with complete seriousness ‘I want coffee’.
He also pulled his first prank today. When he was ~ 1, Mike got a very large teddy bear from his uncle. The bear was in storage while were in in DC, so this is the first place AJ has seen it. He has become friends with it and frequently talks about ‘Big Bear’- who currently resides on a bench in our hallway. He came running into the room tonight and declared ‘Bear fall down!’ so I asked him ‘Did the big bear fall down? Do you want mama to pick it up?’ and he replied ‘yeah’. We went together to rescue the bear, and lo and behold, it had not fallen down. I asked him ‘did you play a trick on mama?’ and he smiled and said with pride ‘yeah’.
