Growth Spurts

I love preschool. Q, who had been trying my nerves lately, is wildly happy and content in the afternoons when I get off work. It’s like he was desperate for a focus for his energy and now that he’s got it, and he can be a happy 3 year old and only a test his limits a little bit.

He’s doing great with potty training (no accidents, knock on wood, pull ups at night) and earned a compliment at preschool for his polite snacktime request for “more please”. A lot of the things we’ve been working on so hard on are coming to fruition. I’m so proud. What a good kid.

I’m noticing that an awful lot of his preschool peers also have a younger siblings lined up and waving goodbye in the morning (usually a year or less, one is due in January). I have visions of a parenting conveyor belt. We stand there all chummy, as our babies toddle in, holding each other’s hands (or their teacher’s), proud and amused at ourselves and our children. Some, like Q, don’t look back, which almost makes me cry. Others keep trying to retain eye contact as they sob, “NOOOOOO!” and their parents flinch, wishing their children were excited about a happy and busy day in preschool.

I’ve noticed lately that Q is enjoying trying out new words and phrases, although he has difficulty enunciating hard consonants in the middle of words. (“Water”, for example, often sounds like, “more” to me.) Several times in the past few days he’s stumped me by using the word, “startled” in a sentence. I had explained that N was startled by something he did, and that was why she’d burst into tears. This morning he informed us that N’s rattle was startled. (We need to work on the concept a little more.) He also heard us talking about something alarming (I now wonder what) and rephrased our comments to say, “We don’t like pants scared.”

Little sister N is so mellow it cracks me up. After nursing this morning, the house was dark and quiet. Thinking she’d drifted off, I popped her into her bassinet and got ready to shower. When I got back, she was just hanging out, looking around, gave me a huge grin. The big ones are impossible to resist. I suspect when she gets the opportunity, she’s going to be a quietly mischievous child…

We’re struggling with the sleep thing a little, but I think it’s because she’s in the room with us. (And struggling means she wakes up at 4 am, I pop her into bed with me and she wakes at 5:45 for breakfast.) I think she’d sleep better without me picking her up at the first whimpery snort of the morning. (We don’t call her ‘Snorty Girl’ for nothing.) I also suspect she’s hit a growth spurt and simply gets hungrier early.