To Jojo

My baby is three years old today!  He has changed so much, just in the last three months or so.  I had written some cute things he was saying a while back, and now his speech is coming out so clearly that they are obsolete.  But here they are, so that I will remember:

"Os dat?"  (what's that?)

"Hep Mama Hep!!!"

"Good monig!"

"Wook mama, a caxi cab!"

And a game he started playing just before bedtime:  "Where's Jojo toes?  Where toes?  Ack - Der dey are!!!!"  All this while we make a big production of saying "Stinky toes!!!"

He's been waking up early most mornings since the time change, and instead of crying out until we come in there (what Gabriel did at that age), he just gets up and climbs into bed with us.  Some mornings he dozes a little more, but most he keeps fidgeting until one of us gives up (or in?) and gets up with him, then whispers, "Good monig".  

He talks really fast, so sometimes it's hard to catch everything.  Then I found out this week that he never speaks at school.  They have been a little frustrated because he just clams up and won't talk to them, even when something has made him upset.  This is so funny, because I never pegged him as The Shy Kid AT ALL!!!  He's always been outgoing and fearless.  Maybe it's just a phase of growing up and realizing how the world works, which he is figuring out every minute of every day.

He helps me cook by getting out every piece of tupperware and every wooden spoon in the kitchen.  He helps me get ready in the morning by getting out every toiletry from our cabinets.  He pulls out at least 30 books a day, most of which he at least looks through.  I don't read to him as much as I did Gabriel, but he seems to have picked up on just about everything just as well.  Gabriel reads to him some, too.  He has two constant requests:  "Can I watch TV?" and "Can I listen to music?"  Constant.

He's a fantastic dancer, and figured out how to incorporated his shoulders into his moves not long ago.  He obviously inherited this talent from Mommy, and has brought up the age old question in our family:  Do we have a distant cousin who was famous as a Soul Train dancer?  Watching this kid, I say YES!!!  He is still a World Champion Hugger, and gets so intense about it that he sometimes hurts us.  He's starting to pretend, and uses different hilarious voices while moving his little cars around.  He is very funny already, and I attribute  this, at least partly, to my mother-in-law, with whom he spends almost as much time as me.  She is sweet, has a smart sense of humor and is basically a big kid most of the time.

He is smart, smart, smart.  I'll hear him pretending to read a book, and expect to find him reading "Go Dog, Go!" or something.  But no, he's sprawled out on the floor reading one of our big books, like the one about Scotland or the history of Mexico!  Who needs Dr. Seuss?

We are going to start him in gymnastics in January, and I can't wait.  The kid has been doing hand stands, sometimes one-handed, for months.  He loves to put his hands on a chair or the bed and propel his feet up and land, perfectly, every time.  He wanted to show me one day that he had learned to balance his whole body on the arm of the recliner in his room.  A few months ago we heard a ruckus in his room and when we asked what was going on, Gabriel yelled, "We're tackling each other!"  When we got to the room we saw Joel tackling Gabriel, over and over again, and both of them belly laughing about it.  He loves to shoot baskets in our toy hoop stand in the back yard.  Because he has found his sweet spot, and can make it over and over again, I am trying to get him to shoot from farther away.  He and Gabriel race each other by sliding down the slide on our swing set and then running top speed to the fence on the other side of the yard, over and over again.

We still continually confuse Joel and Tucker.  I say "Joel" when I mean "Tucker", and vice versa, at least three times a day.  They are such twins.  They are adorable, too smart for their own good and constantly getting into trouble.

 He still worships his brother and wants to do everything Gabriel does, including play the drums.  He's amazingly good for a three year old.  He's started playing the keyboard while Gabriel practices.  We decided that with his karate-kicking, high-jumping and loud personality, he is lead singer material (think David Lee Roth, before he lost his voice and tried to be a paramedic), so we're hoping for a microphone stand for Christmas.  A match made in heaven!!!

His diet has shrunk.  The only things he really LOVES to eat are waffles, bananas with peanut butter spread on top of every bite, oatmeal with dried fruit and almonds stirred in, graham crackers, and Cheese Rollups from Taco Bell.  He's turned on virtually everything else he was eating, which really was a list of only about 15 things, but still.  He would eat sweets constantly if I let him.

He still does not really resemble anyone in our family, until he laughs and looks exactly like Jav's mom.  Except with green eyes and light brown hair.

I love this boy so, so much.  Happy 3rd birthday, my little Jojo