Three last month.... a little medium boy

I can't believe that it has been over a month since Micah's big birthday bash.  At three, he is finally starting to understand that his birthday is his special day, and this year it lasted an entire week.  We held his birthday party a week before his actualy birthday due to some other conflicts.

The party had a safari theme -- we decorated with some calendar pictures of African animals saved by Grandma Judy, invited a face painter, and "commissioned" Aunt Jackie to make a giraffe-shaped cake. The kids each brought a safari animal and we had a parade, read books about safaris in our tent set up in the backyard, and we played pin the tail on the monkey.  A good time was had by all!  The good part of having a birthday party for a 3-year old is that you still get to set the guest list, so we had a nice crowd of our friends and family, and kept the menu simple {for us!} - sandwhich roll-ups, chips, dip, and cake and ice cream.  It is nice to have a summer birthday because all the chaos happened in the backyard. Exhausted, we ended the day with a family trip to Benihana, where Adam has been anticipating with glee for a long time... I thought it was more expensive than it was worth, but it was a memorable end to the day.

At the end of the week, I took brownies into Micah's school so they could all sing happy birthday to him, and on his actual birthday, we had dinner at Grandma's house.

And the rest of the summer has been a whirlwind of Micah-growth.  For most of the summer, he's been insisting on falling asleep in our bed, or waking up in the middle of the night and wandering into our bed. One night, after we put him to sleep in his own toddler bed, we couldn't find him.  Panicy minutes later, we found him asleep in our closet hidden by low-hanging clothes.  I finally put two and two together and realized that he was uncomfortably in his toddler bed, now way too small for him.  So one of his birthday presents was a brand new big-boy bed from Ikea.  He loves the cozy space and the three drawers where he can store all his treasures, and we love not having to walk him back to his own bed in the middle of the night. 

So, big boy bed, check.  Running outside without us to play with his friends {several much older kids) in our cul de sac, check.  Definite opinions about things and wanting to do everything himself, check, check, and check.  We kept telling him, hopefully, that these things meant he was a big boy and, hint hint, big boys use the potty.  No dice.  "I'm not a big boy, I'm a little boy," he insisted.  Adam finally hit on a solution, telling him, no, you're a medium boy.  Now he loves telling us, "I'm a little medium boy." 

And even medium boys can use the potty, apparently. This week, to our surprise, we came back from a few days away to learn that his daycare had decided to move him to the next room, where diapers are not allowed.  He had had a few potty successes before, but they were very sporadic.  Now, after only a week in the new room, he's had a few accidents, but a lot of success. His only big disappointment is that in the new classroom, they don't give candy rewards for success the way they did in the old room.  Several times, I asked him when I was taking him home if he needed to use the potty, and he insisted on going to his old classroom to pee since he knew they gave treats there, which made me laugh.  I was also amused by watching him try to figure out why his underwear had a flap in the front. That's definitely a question for daddy!  This morning, he came to wake me up to tell me he had to use the potty.  "I have a feeling" he told me.  We are so proud of him. We just discovered some video snippets from when he was a baby that we have been showing him, and he loves pointing out all of the things he couldn't do when he was a baby that he can do now.

One last amusing anecdote.  It has been important to me that Micah know from the very beginning his unique story, including the fact that he didn't grow inside me.  He knows "Rajeshree grew me" and he has seen pictures of the doctors who helped us.  This morning we were reading a library book about a mother telling her daughter about all the changes in nature she observed while waiting for her.  I liked the story because it isn't heavy on the pregnancy part, more on the waiting part, which I think rings true for all of us who had babies in India.  {also, the book has beautiful watercolor pictures of nature and makes me tear up every time I read it} Anyway, this morning when I read it to him, I did point out the picture of the heavily pregnant woman at the end, explaining that the baby was inside her. I thought that would be the end of that, but sure enough, Micah immediately asked "how did the baby get inside her?" Luckily, right now it is enough to talk about the daddy put a special seed into an egg and it grew into a baby. Yikes! Time for me to create that book I've been thinking about to explain surrogacy!!!

Anyway, my little medium boy will soon be up from his nap -- time to go buy him a new backpack and underpants!