Charlie - 3.5

I'm already kicking myself for taking so long to jot down some notes on Charlie. I didn't do it around his 3rd birthday and so much has changed in 6 months. But, it's just so hard to put it all into words and make it make a little bit of sense.Charlie is type A. He continues to like structure and routine and he is a little sponge, nothing gets by him! He is always saying all kind of ridiculous things that catch us off guard or make us laugh. He remembers things for eternity (like how dad threw away his cars plate when it broke which was at least 6 months ago or how we threw away a puzzle piece that got broken forever ago). He is particular and loves things to be done a certain way.

Random thing I want to make sure to note - he started getting freckles this summer!

Favorite things to do:
Read books (we went from reading the same 6 for almost a year, then switched it up a bit. His book fads since then have been Thump & The Lost Egg (Cat in the Hat books), Follow that Sound (Jake & the Neverland Pirates) and now The Little Red Caboose. I have been encouraging him to pick out a few different ones to mix it up and he's a little more open to that now which is nice. He has all of our regulars memorized so there's no need to try to skip anything anyways. One night he started asking me why in "The Little Red Caboose" the yellow & orange car were switched around on one page. I have no idea how he noticed that. Sometimes his attention to detail is exhausting but hopefully it will serve him well in the future :)

Still pretty obsessed with all things Jake.

 



 

Anything outside. He loves driving tractors, playing with lawnmowers, driving the Barbie Jeep, working with dad in the shed, playing catch or kicking the soccer ball and much, much more. Driving skidloader is probably his absolute favorite thing ever. He also loves swimming & is quite the little swimmer. He loves jumping in, going down slides, putting his head under and swimming around with his swimmers on. We have also spent a lot of time checking out parks this summer.Any time we drive by a playground he asks to stop & asks if it's behind a gate.

His sense of direction is probably better than mine & he remembers which way things are. I took him with to a church one night to drop some things off & now every time we go by that road he tells me that's the way to that church. Just one trip by a particular land mark (windmills, "poop containers", silos, farms, churches, etc) and it will be burned into his memory.

He continues to be an early riser. He is usually up between 6:10-6:15. I'm not kidding when I say that probably 5/7 days of the week he comes down between those 5 minutes. He is always in bed between 7:30-8:00 at night and goes to bed pretty well. Of course there are always instances of stalling but for the most part we read books and he goes to bed.  In the mornings he has been getting up, going to the bathroom, getting dressed & sometimes even letting Daisy out before coming to us. It's a much better wake up call than him flipping the lights on! Just within the last week he has decided he needs to go pee "like a big boy" so he has stopped using the seat at home. I like how he just makes these decisions and goes with it. He still takes a long nap every day he's at home. He out-naps Levi every time :) Occasionally he will not nap at daycare and yeah....he still definitely needs a nap.


Big brother of the year

He's a pretty good eater. He loves sandwiches, pizza, noodles, yogurt and fruit but he is quite a bit more adventurous in his eating than Levi is. Sometimes he will try to convince us he doesn't like something but we can usually convince him to at least try it. A lot of times he tells me that he "only likes that at Cheri's" and she said he will eat whatever she puts on his plate.

He is always talking about his little daycare friends. Danika is his BFF of the moment. The poor guy gets fluttery eyes whenever he talks about her. She was at the pool one day when we were there and he just followed her around like a puppy the whole time. He also talks about his cousins a lot & he's always talking about "when I get big like Ryan (or Tyler) I will be able to _____."


One of his favorite people

For some reason, he likes to call us "Mother" & "Father". I have no idea where he picked up on this but he refers to us as that probably half of the time. We get some funny looks when he does it when we're out and about.

Probably 90% of the time he is a great listener and has no behavior issues. When he is having a moment though, it can be an experience. We very rarely give him time outs (which are not effective for us anyways). The one thing he gets in trouble for most frequently is pushing Levi. Otherwise, it's just normal threenager drama around here. The smallest things can set him off sometimes. Right now he's into his "why" stage. Sometimes I think it's a bad habit because he will ask "why" for essentially every single thing I ask him, even when he knows the answer.

He's always pulling out little sayings he's heard. Some of my recent favorites:
"You have a baby in your tummy, right Mom?" -- at supper. No. No. No.
"That sink is beautiful, isn't it?" -- at preschool
"Levi! What did mom & Charlie just tell you yesterday?"
"Mother! Why did you make that mess? Now I'm going to have to tell my Father what you did!"

Oh Charlie, he's the best!