Halloween Program

Today was the Halloween program at Anthony's preschool. Boy was I impressed. They brought FIVE classes worth of 3 year olds on stage to sing a total of nine songs. As far as I can tell all the kids sang all the songs. They all did remarkably well. Anthony is the little red blob to the far right. He's a little airplane. I noticed they made a point of sitting him on the edge directly next to a teacher. (That's my boy!)

I have to admit, I totally glowed watching him parade up to the stage with all his little preschool friends. It was so nice watching him sing on stage in front of everyone. It was really a wonderful morning.

After the program parents were invited to go back to the classroom for snacktime.

Three Year Check-Up

Today Daddy took Anthony in for his three-year check-up. Anthony is 38" tall and weighed in at 32 pounds, 75% for height and 50% for weight.

Dr. Babcock was pleased with how he is doing--learning his letters, learning to count, how well he speaks, etc. He even had an eye exam and has 20-40 vision.

Only negative part of the appointment was the shot, evidently it wasn't quite as much fun as his flu shot was. (I still don't get why he was so excited to get the flu shot.) He told me at dinner, quite indignantly, that the girl poked him with a shot.

A bit of trivia. It took Anthony 3 months to gain his first eight pounds and he gained his second eight pounds by the end of his first year. (At his one year appointment he weighed 24 pounds.) It took him two more years to gain another eight pounds.

Pumpkin Painting

At the farmer's market on Sunday I spotted some reasonably priced (organic) mini-pumpkins and had to indulge.

Anthony had a great time painting them. He loved mixing all the colors together and coated the pumpkins quite liberally with paint. We have a trio of painted pumpkins on the kitchen table as a Halloween centerpiece. Come November they will be a Thanksgiving centerpiece.

I don't plan a repeat of graduate school where my pumpkin centerpiece sat on the kitchen table until spring and I moved to California.

Fruit Loop Necklace

I happened upon a mini-box of Fruit Loops the other day and set Anthony to work stringing a necklace. The first five or ten beads took pretty intense concentration but pretty soon he was stringing them like a pro. It was great--Bob and I got to finish breakfast and the newspaper while Anthony had his project too.

Incidentally, he totally rejected the Fruit Loops as food. In fact, he saw the picture of Toucan Sam on the box and declared them to be bird food.

A Bad Day

Anthony is having an off-day today, not sure what's up. He's been acting up pretty much every chance he's had. It started before breakfast with the finger-painting of his sleepsack. Fortunately the fingerpaint is washable. The rest of the misbehavior hasn't been permanent either. Hopefully he'll be in a better mood after nap.

Corn Maze

Swank Farms has an enormous corn maze every year. We don't do that one yet. Instead we do the little maze inside the kiddie coral. That was plenty. Anthony seemed to enjoy hiding inside the corn field, too.

I am looking forward to going and doing the big maze.

Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

Today we trekked down to Swank Farms to visit their pumpkin patch! What a great time. Anthony jumped in the bouncy house, jumped off a pile of hay bales into a pile of hay, fished for goats, ground corn, explored the maze, drove a (toy) tractor and even picked out some pumpkins to take home!

Thanks Auntie Jessica!

The fingerpaints that Auntie Jessica ordered for Anthony's birthday arrived yesterday.

In retrospect maybe I should have hidden the package until the weekend. But, I was eager to give him his birthday present irregardless that it was 10 minutes until dinner-time. He had a lovely time with really no mess at all!

An Unwanted Milestone

I'm actually surprised it took this long.

Bob and I were just waking up when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet.

Yes, Anthony finally climbed out of the crib and came to join us in bed!

Okay, he's been climbing out of the crib after naps for awhile now. At night Anthony sleeps in a sleepsack and he hadn't quite figured out the zipper--its trickier than on a sweatshirt.

I'm actually moderately impressed that he came to use rather than yelling for us to come to him. More than once I've heard him say, "Mommy, can you help me with the dark."

I'm not sure what the next step is:
a. Embrace his newfound freedom (yeah, right!)
b. Add a safety pin to the bottom of his sleepsack so he still can't get out
c. Put a child-lock on his bedroom door to keep him inside.

Thoughts??

Anthony's latest tattoo

Really, what more can I say?

Happy Hollow with Grandma and Grandpa

For Anthony's birthday we took Grandma and Grandpa to Happy Hollow Zoo. We did the full zoo tour--all the animals down in the hollow, our favorite rides and the puppet show. Grandpa helped Anthony ride the bald eagle on the carousel--Grandpa's favorite. I think that Grandpa's wingspan was a bald eagle as well!

The puppet show that day was "Elephant's Child." At the end of the show Anthony turned to me and asked me to pull his nose like the crocodile did. I did, but Anthony didn't grow a trunk.

The best part of the day came at the meercat enclosure. The meercats put on a good show digging madly. Then Anthony bent in two, pawed at the ground and announced, "I'm a meercat."

Our Playborhood

This was the scene that greeted Bob when he got home this evening. There are five different families represented here, all from our block!

(And yes, there are five children in the wagon. There were six a few seconds before the picture was taken.)

I had a weak moment

Okay, why on earth does the ice cream truck have to come down our street at dinner time?

And how is it that Anthony instinctively knows that something good is on the truck? (That one is pretty easy, there were a bunch of other kids running for the ice cream truck, too.)

And yes, the shirt that is now covered in orange sherbet was brand new this morning.

Three Years Old

Anthony is three years old today. I guess its time to wax philosophically about how my little guy is growing up. Well, enough of that.

Let's see, the vital stats. I think he's about 37" tall and weights just over 30 pounds. He's tall enough that they don't measure him for the roller coaster which requires 36". He's on the verge of outgrowing 2T clothes--his little belly is almost hanging out, though 3T seems huge. He's quite fine boned; the days of "Mommy's fat baby" are long gone.

His favorite toys include his tricycle, his scooter, his fleet of airplanes, his dress-up clothes and his magic wand. He loves play-dough, though he still eats it. Legos get a lot of play, too. He's also ridiculously fond of Mary Poppins. He enjoys some of his fine motor toys--his latch board and lacing cards. We do all sorts of pretend play--flying the airplanes in formation, loading up the doll stroller and running from the dragons, and of course cooking in the kitchen.

Speaking of cooking in the kitchen, we need to do more of that. Anthony's a pretty good helper in the mornings when we make pancakes. He really wants to crack eggs, though my nerves aren't quite strong enough. I do let him pour in the ingredients and help stir.

He loves to read and has figured out that those letters on the pages make the words I read. Some of his favorite books right now include Corduroy, Martha Speaks, and his name book. He definitely prefers books with plot to those with just facts and pictures.

His best friends are still the same cast of characters--Robert and Ciaran in the neighborhood and William and Courtney at daycare. He adores Hannah across the street, though I'm not sure the love is mutual. He plays with all the other kids at daycare, there are now FIVE 3 year olds, plus three 2-year olds who follow them around. He's only been in preschool for a month, so I don't know too much about his pals there.

Unfortunately, he isn't all that well behaved right now. In fact, he can be downright defiant. Key misbehaviors include running, throwing away contraband items, and letting the cat out. We're still dealing with hitting and kicking when he doesn't get his way. Hopefully we'll improve there soon.

A few more party pictures

One other thing... Until dinnertime tonight, Anthony had eaten a grand total of 3 cupcakes, one lollipop and some strawberries. (He'd been offered an array of healthy food that all went untouched.) I'd promised him a cupcake before the party. He came out in the morning, greeted grandpa and then mid-sentence announced that he wanted a cupcake.

Anthony's Birthday Party

Today was Anthony's THIRD birthday party. We had five friends over for a nice low-key party. We played in Anthony's new bounce house (Thanks Grandma Kay!) and with the other yard toys. I especially liked watching four kids play in the playhouse together with no fighting!

Anthony's party had an airplane theme this year. The sign on the front door announced "Anthony airlines flight 3 is boarding in the backyard." We had airplane tattoos and for lunch served fleets of pb&j airplanes. The cupcakes had red airplanes on them and the goody-bags included an airplane whistle and an airplane lollipop with a sticker that said, "Thank you for flying with us." I had fun with those little touches. Bob was the genious with the cookie cutters and got pretty good at not wasting too much sandwich.

Fun with Grandma and Grandpa

Grandma and Grandpa Moragues are here visiting this weekend for Anthony's birthday. As far as I can tell, the entire weekend is going to be airplane themed. Today they all went to Hiller Aviation Museum and sat in the 747. (As if Grandpa didn't spend enough time on an airplane yesterday!)

Mowing the Lawn

Anthony is SO EXCITED to help Daddy mow the lawn. Hopefully he'll remember this 10 years from now when its his job!

"Can I have a shot?"

Yes, Anthony asked Dr. Babcock for a shot today.

We had an appointment to discuss Anthony's asthma medication (after his last flare-up he is now taking Singulair and Pulmacort). Dr. Babcock gave him a few bandaids to play with while we talked.

Anthony opened up his Snoopy bandaid, played with it for awhile and then asked quite politely for a shot. I, of course, had already informed the nurses that Anthony needed an influenza vaccination, carefully avoiding the use of the "s-word".

The nurse came back and gave him his shot. Anthony happily applied his own bandaid and we were good to go.

Strange. But who am I to complain?

Fun with Lego

In the past few weeks Anthony has been really enjoying playing with his legos. Left to his own devices he builds towers of squares as high as he can reach. With dad's help he builds more sophisticated structures like this house/castle. Anthony deconstructed it a few minutes before the picture was taken. It used to have a pitched roof and a slide, too. Once his creations are built he incorporates them into imaginary play. We have about a dozen little lego people to play all sorts of roles.

Big A. Little A, What Begins With A?

A few weeks ago, Bob was reading Anthony his "name book" and Bob came to me all excited that Anthony new most of the letters in his name. I told him that Anthony was just demonstrating remote memorization. Later that week they were playing with alphabet blocks and Anthony could clearly identify an "M".

Anthony is very interested in letters now. I opened up a box of (Honey Maid) graham crackers the other day and Anthony yelled "H". Where ever we go he picks out the letters he recognizes.

He also seems to have made the cognitive leap that the letters on his books make words. Now when he picks up books to browse he complains that he doesn't know what the words are.

Neighborhood Picnic

Today was the Cuesta Park Neighborhood Association annual picnic. It just gets bigger and better every year. Anthony had a grand old time. He got his face painted, ate all sorts of treats (and little lunch) and had a great time visiting with some old friends.

One of the neighbors came dressed up as a clown and made balloons creations for all the kids. A lot of the little ones were intimidated by him, but not Anthony. It took him about 20 seconds to decide that he wanted to say Hi to the clown and get a balloon.