Van

This is the cutest, funniest kid I know.  He is sweet, but firey.  He's tough, but sensitive.  He's disobedient, but then impulsively helpful.  He's exhausted, but won't sleep.  He's goofy and irreverent, but then surprisingly profound and was listening all along.  He's thankful, then suddenly whiny.  He's rough, then sporadically gentle.  He's a mess of contradictions.  And I'm loving every minute of him. (Almost every minute - not the ones where I have to send him to time out - well some of those too, probably!)  Which I guess just means he's a 3-year-old boy, right?

Happy in his undies in freezing cold water.  

Little Mogli man. 

One day he brought the garbage cans in for me without me asking.  Cute boy. 

I walked into the garage one day only to find Van taking my license plate off my car with a screw driver.  Awesome.  

Here are some fun things he's said and done lately.

• He loves to get out a notebook and draw 1s and Vs in them.  And he almost holds the pen right. 
• He knows all of his letters and all of his numbers through 10.  
• One night we were putting his undies on after a bath and he tells me, "I used to be a baby like Izzy, but I turn into a big boy now!"
• I call him buddy and one day a few months ago he started insisting that he isn't buddy - he's a garbage truck. I can't ever call him buddy anymore - he reminds me every time. 
• He's constantly singing now.  He loves to sing songs that his sister sings, but he'll make up his own now too.  I love it when he sings, "Call Me, Maybe" and his favorite, David Archeletta's "Love That Breaks Your Heart"
• There's almost nothing I can do to get this kid inside.  He plays outside from sun up to sundown - most of it in his bike helmet too.  :)  He won't even come inside for lunch - he eats on the driveway.  One day he was so exhausted at the end of the day, he came stumbling up to me at the bottom of the stairs, put his arms around me and said, "I want to go to bed now."  I think that is the 1st time in his life he has asked to go to bed.  My children have too much zest for life and they can't stand to waste time sleeping!  (Which I love, except it drives me crazy because they function in a constant state of exhaustion!)
•  We ended up at the Dinosaur Quarry in Emery County a month or so ago and Van kept asking over and over, "But why did the dinosaurs die?"  I calmly explained each time that they don't really know - it could have been an asteroid, or an earthquake, or a volcano, or they froze to death.  He asked for the 100th time and I finally said, "Why do YOU think they died, Van?"  To which he responded: "There was a big rock and it went in the volcano and the hot lava went all over the dinosaurs and it was an accident."  Well said, my little paleontologist.  
• My kids are really into telling jokes lately.  Van's usually start like this: "Want to hear a funny, funny joke?"  An extra good one was "Why did the monster truck crush the house?  He wanted to crush the ketchup!"  :)
• He calls anything that belongs to girls, "girlies".  That would make the girls bathroom "the girlies bathroom."  Ha.  
• He replaces the "uh" sound with a long "o" sound, which results in some giggling from us.  He wants to eat a "bonana".  He wants to wear the "Lightning MoQueen" undies.  
• He seems to have chosen a future occupation already!  One day I was being silly and called him my baby (which he doesn't like at all), and he calmly told me, "I not a baby, I'm a police officer."
• We went to Target to pick out a present for his friend Luke's birthday.  He was so excited that as we walked in he shouted, "I going to get Lukey a truck and he's going to LOVE it!"
• He was trying to do something in the driveway on his bike and he suddenly threw his hands up in the air and yelled, "Piece of cake!"
• One night I was tucking him in and he had his arms wrapped tightly around my neck.  He looked into my eyes, smiled and said, "Let's do licks!" Then dragged his slimy, cute little tongue up the side of my face.  He says, "Let's do licks" with some frequency now.  If it weren't so hilarious it would be disgusting.  He did it the other day after I had been running.  His face was hilarious when he tasted the salt.  
• One day he asked me, "Where's chubby Izzy?"  Cute nick name for his baby sister.  I don't think she'll like it if it's still stuck when she's 12 though.  :)
• One night while I was putting him to bed he looked out his window and started explaining to me how there is an alligator in the clouds (I think I figured out which one he was looking at, too!) and how it was eating everything in the sky.  I'd kill to be a fly on the wall in his brain.  Creative, funny kid.  
• When he needs to go #2 on the potty and you ask him to hold it he actually puts his hand on his bum and holds it in.  It's hilarious. 
• We went on a Mommy-Van date recently.  It was amazing to have that time just the two of us.  And way overdue.  He told me all about how he chops trees.  With his hand of course.  And told me, "I'm sad Emery's not here, but I'm happy mommy's here!"  And I was telling him all of the reasons I love him and he vigorously jumped into my lap and threw his arms around my neck in a big tight hug.  If you know Van you'll know that that doesn't happen very often, so it was such a cute special moment. 
• I've realized that although mentally and socially he's a normal 3-year-old, he's so physical and has been trying to keep up with Em for so long that he's a 5-year-old physically.  He has a really hard time playing with kids his own age... but does great with older kids.  He wants to ride bikes (fast - on a 2-wheeler), climb stuff and play make-believe.  He swims on his own like a crazy man.  Other "little" kids have a hard time keeping up.  He's such a cool kid.  And seriously coordinated, too.  :)  I'm sure he'd play great with other 3-year-olds - if we could get him to hold still long enough to play!