Alex is THREE!

As of the moment this posts, at 10:05 UTC (3:05 AM Pacific, 6:05 AM Eastern) Alex will be exactly three years old!

Once again it is amazing just how the time has flown by, and all the new things he is doing every day. I last did a post like this six months ago. Since then, here are some of the new developments…

• It has been a long time since I tried to do one of these “You are about to turn X” interviews with Alex… I think the last time may have been at 12 months, but hey, for the first time he actually did have a little conversation with me about it. (If you haven’t hit play on the video above, do so now, K?)
• No more diapers!!! In order to start preschool this fall, Alex needed to be potty trained. So in August Brandy started potty training boot camp. The first few days there was quite a bit of protesting and a number of accidents, but after that Alex gave in. He is now very proficient at all things potty. (Well, mostly. :-) )
• Because he mastered that, he is indeed now in preschool. He’s only been there two days so far, and is still adjusting. But unlike last year’s day care, he is not so clingy when we leave him in the morning. He came into school the first day knowing and understanding what was going to happen.
• I mentioned six months ago that he was really into trains. He is still really into trains. Over the last six months the track setups got more and more elaborate, taking up more and more space. Lots of branches, bridges, etc. Until about a month ago. After one of the times the tracks got cleaned up, when he got them out again he didn’t build another big layout. Instead he started building circles. Little circles, big circles, nested circles, etc. Just yesterday he built an elevated circle. Fun stuff.
• He tells elaborate stories about things that happened to him, or just stories he has made up. For instance, he told a story about some ducks who were running away from a frog who was ribbiting at them (while acting out a really scary ribbit). Or just telling us about how he went to the fireworks on the 4th of July. Or how he went to the zoo with Papa Bill and Grandma Cathy.
• Brandy said that over the summer when he was staying home instead of going to school all day long he would talk about how Daddy was at work, but when Daddy got home Daddy would play trains and cars with him. Awww…. (Makes me feel awful for the times I got home and didn’t play trains and cars… although usually I did. :-) )
• He still likes his train videos and YouTube, and still has TV shows and movies that he likes, and games he likes on the iPhone, but he is less into those things than he was six months ago. Much more into the running around playing with physical things.
• He has continued to work hard on the alphabet. (See Day 6 of Grandma Leslie’s Visit.) He’s getting better. But more to the point he is super excited about it. The alphabet song is the song of choice in almost all occasions. More recently, he has started working on actually “building” letters. Mainly “A”. He’ll make A’s out of trains and other things as well as trying to draw it. And he describes it: “Build A! Down, down, corner!”
• He lies! Yeah, yeah, supposedly not a good thing, but shows imagination. For instance, as he drags his rug with roads and such out of his room and starts taking it down the stairs, and I say “Alex, your rug needs to stay in your room.” he says “No! Amy said! Amy said rug downstairs!”. Often his lies take this form, telling one of us that one of the others told him to do something, or it was OK to do something, when in fact none of us had… especially when the most recent person has told him no.
• Along the lines of lying, there is more general acting. He has this fake laugh he uses sometimes. The first time I heard it was when he had just accidentally knocked over one of his elaborate train track creations. His face started to scrunch up like he was about to cry. But then out came this really disturbing fake laugh. Then he said it was funny. He still looked really upset like he was about to cry. I asked him if he was sad. He said “NO! Funny!!!” And then the disturbing fake laugh again. He later has also used the same laugh when the rest of us are laughing and he doesn’t quite know why, but thinks he should join in.
• Amy says another new thing in the last six months is that he has turned into a cat. By this she means he has become fond of meowing and pretending he is a cat. And indeed, he does this not infrequently.
• He will also pretend he is a dog. More specifically, although he did this before the last six months, he is more frequently greeting his special friends by licking them. He learned this from Roscoe. We tell his that this isn’t how people do it, but it is too cute to really be too insistent about stopping him. The most amusing of course is when he and Roscoe both are licking each other.
• He has strong opinions about what he wants to eat, what he wants to do, etc and is now able to express himself clearly about these sorts of things. So when asked what he wanted for his birthday, he was very specific that he did NOT want a regular cake, he wanted cupcakes, and more specifically he wanted race car cupcakes. And after the last time we went swimming, he was very specific that after swim he wanted to go to the bookstore (to play with trains, not books) and then after that he wanted to go to the playground.
• Amy says in the last six months he also got cuter… and eviler. By that she means that when he gets into the right mood, he can be an absolute hyper demon. Running all over the place, knocking things over, pulling on things, and generally being a “poop” (Amy’s word). He can run us all ragged. Luckily, this is not all the time. But when it hits… watch out! I believe these are the terrible two’s, right? Although I have heard from some others that the three’s can be even worse!

Anyway, as usual there is tons more, but I figure that it enough for now. Alex is three! Wow!