37 months old.
Good thing this little guy is so cute because so far, THREE has been challenging :) Our days are full of a lot of "no's", arguing, trying to get Tucker to move a little faster, encouraging sharing and keeping hands to yourself, food battles, potty battles, nap battles, and meltdowns. Thankfully, they're also full of laughter, snuggling, learning new things, friendships with little people, sweet sibling time, and fun!
To nap or not to nap... that is the question. Last month, Tucker was not napping a few days a week and fighting me on it almost daily. Some days when he was napping, he was having a hard time falling asleep at night. I was worried that these were the dreaded signs that he was ready to drop his nap all together and ugh, I was sad about that! I got tired of fighting that battle so we decided to stop enforcing the nap and introduce "room time"--where he just had to stay in his room for an hour or so doing something quietly. We did this for about 2 weeks and although he seemed to do fine without the nap, we started having more discipline issues than ever before. The days were LONG and something had to give. So, as of the last several days, we're back on the nap train and surprisingly, it's successful almost every day. Conclusion: naps are awesome and we're going to keep em' coming as long as we can :)
Tucker is still loving school and lucky for us, he likes to tell us all about it. He loves his little friends and it's becoming a night time ritual to pray for every boy and girl in his class--all 11 of them--every night before bed. Sweet. He also has a weekly playdate with his buddy Max and our beloved babysitter, Miss Shannon and he looks forward to that every week. He also recently moved up to the 3 and 4 year old class at church and he likes his "new class". It's a lot more structured than the toddler class and he comes home with a little knowledge of what they're learning which is fun to hear. We are SO grateful for all of these outlets that he has during the week and the reassurance that he's well taken care of when we're not around.
This month was full of fun Fall things - Halloween, preschool Harvest party, football watching, walks in the nice weather, and some good downtime at home on the weekends too.
As Tucker is becoming a little person, we are learning his personality and his needs. We're finding how important it is to not just parent him how it seems logical to us, but to combine our knowledge with his personal needs. One thing that we've noticed so much lately is how "physical" he is. It's obvious that he needs this outlet--whether it's wrestling with daddy, hugging Hadley, or not so popular choices such as hitting Grey or roughhousing with whoever happens to be close by. This is usually frustrating but we're trying to learn how to channel that in a positive way. We have a long ways to go in figuring out this parenting gig....Aah, I guess we always will be, right?
So,here's hoping this next month is not quite as challenging... but I'm sure it probably will be. There ya have it--a honest blog post--it's not always as pretty as it looks on the blog :)
Tucker's Thanksgiving Feast at school was on Monday. His class dressed as pilgrims (CUTE!) and even better--Tucker got to be the line leader when they walked into the gym for all the parents to see. (I don't know about your kid, but mine talks about wanting to be the line leader everyday :)
Cutie sister tagged along...
