Brady's 3rd Birthday

Brady turned 3 just a few days before Christmas.  Crazy!  In the morning, we decorated his door with some ribbons, toilet paper (couldn't find any streamers at the store!) and balloons. He was a little out of it at first and arguing with me that he was still 2, but after he woke up a bit, he had a blast with it.  I made him some blackberry Mickey Mouse pancakes for breakfast, which he loved.

It's hard to do much for a party when December is just so busy for everyone, so I just invited some friends to McDonald's to play in the play area and I bought the kids Happy Meals.  The kids had fun, moms got to chat, and it was minimal planning on my part.  Perfect!
For dinner, we went and ate pizza at my Grandma Melville's and the Valquintos were there to celebrate with us.  Brady got some Mega Magnet builders, magnetic gears, and a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse book with little figurines in it.






He wanted a Mickey Mouse cake.  I was going to try and do it a little fancier and make Mickey's face on it, but Brady didn't care, so I just went with easy.  He absolutely loves cake and icecream and singing Happy Birthday to someone, so he had a great time with it being his turn.





Here are some things Brady is doing at age 3:

• He is still obsessed with Letters and numbers.  All day long he plays with his big foam letters and carries them around.  They always have to be in order or it drives him nuts. He plays with them like other kids do action figures or something.  I kind of think they are his imaginary friends.  He will put them in bed to take a nap and they make messes and things.

• He continues to learn things like crazy.  I think that he could pass the Kindergarten end-of-year assessment right now with flying colors.  These are some math skills he has picked up on, mostly on his own.  He just sees patterns and gets how things work:
• He can count to 200, skip count forwards and backwards by 10 and can make it up to about 40 skip counting by 2's, identify any number correctly up to 1,000, add equations with sums up to 10, he reads all the house numbers while we are out running, he has my phone number memorized, he is content just to sit and stare at a 100's chart, and he is constantly counting everything he sees.  I think he sometimes has a hard time turning his brain off.

• Language skills he can do:  He can read well over 300 words, he pretty much can read all the words in "Go Dog Go", he memorizes how to spell words.  One day he just said "Y-e-l-l-o-w that spells yellow".  Why, yes is does Brady!  He can spell most CVC words and a few others like zebra, Tanner, clock, and book.  He likes to write letters and numbers.  When we ask him a yes or no question, he has started to either write y-e-s or n-o in the air.
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• He loves mazes.  I printed out some easy ones from the internet and put them in sheet protectors so we can do them over and over.  He loves finding a way that leads to a "DEAD END!"  When we drive sometimes, he will point down different roads and say "that way is not a dead end" or "that way is a dead end."
• We aren't really sure what to do with him as far as school goes.  We're afraid he is going to be trouble if he is bored and he still has 2 years and 9 months until starting Kindergarten.  It's definitely not going to be in our budget to pay to send him to a private school, so hopefully he can have good teacher and they can figure out how to challenge him.  While he is still a cute, social, and playful little boy, his mind just works different than most other kids.

• He is becoming pretty polite and says Thank you, Please, and You're Welcome often.  He is starting to use pronouns correctly, but I kind of miss his "Mama hold you" talk.  He can still be somewhat of a stinker.  If he doesn't want to do something, he just says "ZERO." For example, "Brady, do you want to take a shower with Mama or take a bath?"  "ZERO!"  (He always says "Zero means nothing!")
• He has been nicer to Tanner and they are so cute when they laugh together.  He always gets excited about Tanner's new milestones.  "Tanner is standing up!" or "Tanner is clapping!"  We still have some problems with him pushing Tanner over, but it's when Tanner is after Brady's toys and he doesn't want to share with him.  He always says "2 cute boys!" when they are next to each other.  Sometimes I am included in the count and it's "3 cute boys!" or "4 cute boys!" if Dave is around.  We're working on the whole boy/girl thing!

• Brady hasn't napped regularly for almost a year and a half.  But, I still put him in his room for 2 hours every afternoon.  It still is a calming time for him and I need the break.  He has to have the lock on the outside of the door to keep him in.  He tries to lock me in there with him any chance he can.  We have to keep something over the door so it can't shut all the way and we keep a screwdriver handy in the room if we have to take off the doorknob to get out.  When he locks the door he says, "Uh oh!  How will we get out?" and thinks it's the greatest thing.  I always get really mad at him.  My biggest fear is that one time Tanner will be out in the hall and I won't be able to get to him and he will fall down the stairs.  Brady is sometimes in his boots when I get him out of quiet time.  He loves staring out the window.

• Brady loves to help out with things like cooking and unloading the dishwasher.  He is good to pick up things I drop.  I hope this means that he will be a nice boy and that some of the misbehaving he does is just related to his age.

• He is really into identifying feelings and always wants everyone to be happy.  During Fast and Testimony meeting on Sunday, if someone was crying he would say "She's happy!"  If I get frustrated with something, he asks, "Mama, are you happy?"  When he sees something that is supposed to be scary (like the abominable snowman), he says "He's happy!"
• He still runs away and has been lost a few times when we are out.  We lost him at the zoo once and he was just squatted down playing with some toys in the gift shop, oblivious that we had been looking for him for 10 minutes.  Last week, he somehow got away from us at the Treehouse Museum.  It was crazy busy.  We had the workers on their walkie-talkies looking for him.  Once again, he was oblivious that we had been looking for him and was at a big floor map of the US finding numbers in order.  One time when I was talking to him about us looking for him I asked him what he would do if he couldn't find me and he said "801-725-2190".  Hopefully he remembers that if he really is lost sometime.
• Brady started Sunbeams on Sunday.  He is several months younger than the next youngest kid and I think he is going to have a hard time sitting still!  When I asked one teacher how he did, she said he was a little crazy!  I teach the CTR 7 class, so I got to be in there and watch him during Sharing time.  He sat on his teacher's lap for about 30 minutes, then started shouting "I want to go home!  I want to go home!" He ran back to me and I took him potty and I think that was part of his freak out.  Here are some pictures of his first day.  It also would have been Heidi's first day of Sunbeams, so I tried to get some pictures of him with her lamb, but they didn't turn out as cute as I envisioned.
  
  
  
  

I'm sure I will be adding to this as I think of more things about our sweet little boy.  I love him so so much and all day long I feel like I am kissing his head and telling him how much I love him.  He takes it for now, and hopefully he keeps letting me for a long time.