Random thoughts on almost three

This morning, my child woke up at the usual 6am. When I told him to go either get up and stop cuddling with me (get up with Daddy) or go back to sleep with me, he chose to sleep in. And we slept until almost nine. 

(Of course it took almost an hour to convince him to go back to sleep, but still.)

Almost-three is turning out to be a great age. He is slowly coming out of those terrible twos where everything is a battle of wills. He's getting to be more logical, and can understand and reason and be reasoned with, which makes behaviour SO much better. He doesn't want a time-out, and so will modify his behaviour to what's acceptable instead of just freaking out. I can't emphasize enough just how much this makes life more pleasant during the day.

We're still not napping and that ALSO has made life much more pleasant, because we have stopped the nighttime battles as well. Well, not entirely stopped, but at least severely truncated. He seems to have finally accepted both the bedtime routine and the fact that going to bed is just a thing we do, and actually just goes along with us. I'm sure some kids got this fact early on in life, but our kid still hated doing bedtime as little as a few months ago.

But truly the best part of being almost-three is the fact that playing and interacting has become so much more interesting. The kid has an imagination, and he uses it, and the stories and games and playtime is getting more and more interesting. We still read books, but much fewer, and I was concerned about this until I realized that now instead of reading 10 or 12 books a day, we only read four or five at minimum. Which, you know ... still quite a few books. And we can talk about them more and imagine more about them and count the things in them. 

He still reads his own books, and can type his own name and is working on typing other things. We've been talking a lot about the letters that go in words, and now when I tell him a word he can tell me the letter it starts with. I can help him type words by exaggerating what each letter in the word says -- he typed "mommy" the other day from this method. And we've seen the very beginnings of number / math activities, when he holds up two fingers on one hand and one on the other and says "two and one make three!" I asked him what happens when he had two fingers on one hand and TWO on the other and it took a short while to answer, but he finally did get it right. 

He's getting a little bored at daycare, because he's the oldest kid there and he'll be moving on to the older kid centre in a couple of months. I think he's tired of all the "babies" because they are, of course as littler kids are, fascinated with him, and so they hang around and smile at him while he's trying to play and it's kind of annoying. I've been talking up the new daycare as much as I can, but I still think it'll be a strange transition for him. I think he'll love it eventually, having other kids his own age to play with as well as more interesting toys. 

I also love almost-three because he hasn't lost the last of his little-ness. He wants to be more independent and do things himself -- clothe himself, walk by himself, get in the car himself, shut the car door himself, feed himself, play by himself (rarely!) and even just be alone, but he still likes to sit on the couch cuddled up with his mom and be carried on occasion, and he still loves to fall asleep cuddled up with one of us. He still comes over to me after daycare and gets a big hug and likes to kiss me over and over. He tells me that he loves me. Almost-three is a delightful combination of little kid and big kid, and I kind of wish I could hold on to this stage for a really, really long time.