34 Months

Timmy hit 34 months yesterday and although I've been blogging pretty regularly recently, I wanted to write down a few more things about him at this point.  He still plays by himself beautifully a lot of the time, his cars and trains provide hours of distractions for him.  His trains mostly go around his little mat with train tracks, and they help each other pull large loads.  His cars usually line up for races, either on the ottoman or the TV table.  It's funny, his trains are very helpful and polite to each other, I hear lots of "please" and "thank you" and the occasional "bust my buffers" (!) which is how the trains treat each other on Thomas and Friends.  His cars on the other hand like to crash into each other and are more apt to chase each other roughly and say things like "slow down" "come back" and "watch what you're doing" which is in line with how the cars speak to each other in the movie.  I prefer playing trains with him... 

Some of my favorite words Timmy says are "Allthebody" instead of "Everybody."  He came up with this term all by himself, and although I don't repeat it back to him, I will be so sad when he switches to "everybody" instead.  It is so cute when he says "allthebody"!  Tim recently tried to teach him "water" instead of "wawa" which he still says, and I just looked at him pouting and asked him not to take that away from me yet either!  ;)  Another phrase he started on his own a while ago was "Hey! Watch what you're doing to me!" He says this if you accidentally bump into him, or when Tim is wrestling with him. I think it's Tim's favorite phrase.  Ofcourse, my absolute favorite thing that he has started saying, without prompting, is "I love you sooo much!" and it just makes my day when I get an unsolicited hug and he says that to me! 

Beyond those babyish terms, Timmy's speech and sentence structure and understanding have grown radically recently.  He asked me "Why?" three times in a row the other day, but it hasn't taken hold as his primary word yet.  We were doing a lot of stuff around the house this weekend and Tim had tools out upstairs.  I had moved a package of screws into my room, hoping they would be out of sight, out of mind, but Timmy went in looking for them.  I let him bring one out and he got his plastic tools out to fix something.  Next time I looked, he was back in my room.  I said, "Nope, out of there, you already have one screw, Mom said no more."  In response he held up his empty hands and said, "No Mom, I'm not taking more screws, I'm just walking around!"  That type of explanation and cause and affect understanding have come out of nowhere recently.  A brief Time Out episode last night ended with him saying, "Sorry for not listening Mom" before he was told what he needed to do to get out of his chair.

Speaking of Time Out, Timmy seems to be hitting the Terrible Two's more now then in the past year.  But I'll admit, I'll take his Terrible Two's actions over a lot of kids day to day tempermant!  When he decides he wants to do something he asks a million times, even if your response to him is that, "Yes, we can go take a tubby, as soon as we eat dinner."  The Yes action has to be immediate to get him to stop asking!  If your response is "No" it receives a whiny "But I want to _________" and more asking.  There have only been a handful of times that he has dropped to the ground crying over something, and none of those episodes have been about anything in a store.  The only public ones have been over leaving the playground!

Another big milestone is his increased interest in reading.  Tim or I read a few stories before bed every night and Mom reads to him throughout the day.  He has started 'reading' the stories back to us when we are done, and in some cases he knows almost every single word, and he mimics our phrasing and emphasis on certain words.  A lot of books he will say certain phrases along with us while we are reading to him.  He knows his alphabet and all the letters by sight, it's one of those areas that I can still watch him learning.

The kid is still obsessed with being outside, running, and going to the playground.  He is one happy kid with this beautiful weather right now!