Justin & Marcie: Carter - Three Years Old

Cannot believe I am mom to a three year old!!! So here’s what’s going on with Carter at age 3 now:
Diapers
No diapers!! Carter is completely tee-tee trained and has been for a while. I don’t even have to take him to go to tee-tee. If we’re at home, he’ll just go on his own and the only way I know that he’s gone to the bathroom is to hear the toilet flush. Then he brings his underwear to me and asks me to help him put them on. I usually put them on around his ankle and he pulls them up on his own. He’s just not coordinated enough yet to put each foot into it’s respective whole just yet. As far as poo goes, well, we’re unfortunately still not trained for that. He just won’t go in the potty for some reason. He waits until naptime or bedtime because he wears a pull-up during those times (he’s not ready for underwear while sleeping long stretches just yet-his control over his bladder only applies when he’s awake). So he basically waits until he’s wearing a pull-up and then goes poo in the pull-up. I’m about to force him to sleep in underwear during naps. Hopefully this will force him to go in the potty because he really does refuse to poo in his underwear (and I’m ok with that!).

Shoe Size
It’s been a while since we had his foot measured, but last time we did, he was an 8.5 wide.

Clothes
Our small boy is still small! He can wear 2t and 3t shirts, but his 2t pants are still a little big! I got a bunch of 3t jeans from consignment sales and NONE of them fit him. I went and bought some 2t jeans from Children’s Place and even those are still a little too big! Pajamas are all still 2t or 3t, though I’m starting to put away a lot of the 2t ones that don’t fit.

Feeding
This year had a lot of ups and downs with feeding. We know that we do have a picky eater on our hands (at least when it comes to trying new things), however his pickiness has started to get less and less as time goes by. He now eats pizza! It’s not his favorite thing to eat, but he will eat it. I finally got him eating grilled chicken again, too. He used to eat it but he hit a spurt where he just refused to eat it for some reason. So I let it go for several months but tried again just this month and he eats it again. I’d like to try for a peanut butter jelly sandwich next…or even a grilled cheese. Bottom line-he still doesn’t like bread, so that’s what we need to work on. He also doesn’t eat hamburgers yet, but I’m hoping that will come with age. He tried potato soup for the first time this month and liked that as well. He still does really well with his vegetables-preferring peas, green beans, corn and carrots. As far as meats goes, he likes ham, grilled and fried chicken, and fish nuggets. He still loves fruit too, particularly blueberries, strawberries, bananas, apples, peaches and pretty much any flavor of yogurt. He’s tried a ton of other new snack foods, too. His favorites right now are Doritos (cool ranch kind) and Mike and Ike’s.

Sleep
Still naps once a day for the most part. Sometimes he just goes up to his room for a couple of hours but doesn’t actually sleep. I’m ok with that as long as he still has quiet time. On the days that he doesn’t nap, he falls asleep FAST at night. On days that he does nap, he still goes upstairs to his room at 7:30pm, but a lot of times he doesn’t actually fall asleep until 9ish. On average, he still sleeps about 10-11 hours at night. Naps range anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to 2 1/2 hours.

Mother’s Day Out
Carter is in the Older Two’s class at our church. He loves it. This was also the first year that he will walk into the room and not cry. He did cry for the first few weeks (new teachers and all) but eventually stopped and he hasn’t done it since. When we get to his room door, he ALWAYS turns to me and says “kiss and a hug” and I give him a hug and kiss him and tell him I love him and to have fun and then he runs into the room and plays with the other kids. I love his teachers (I knew them before this because they are members at our church). This is also the first time he’s come home and sung me songs he learned or talked about things that happened. He’s memorized not only who the moms of the other kids in his class are, but also what cars they drive. He can tell me in the parking lot whose mommy is driving what car and he’s always right.

Statistics
Carter’s three year appointment was on January 5, 2015. They took his blood pressure for the first time. He had Henry with him of course and naturally, Henry had to get his blood pressure done too. Thank God for the sweet nurses at our pediatrician office that are patient and understand that sometimes the only way a toddler will do something is if his “friend” has it done too.

He wasn’t a fan once it started getting tight. He kept saying “it’s too tight!!!” but he was able to keep it on because we distracted him by showing him the screen that had the numbers that kept changing as his blood pressure was being taken. It was 108/50, which the nurse said was a tad high for his age, but she said it’s likely a bad reading since it was his first time and he was really nervous. The doc didn’t seem worried. Carter is now 32lbs (50th percentile) and is 3 feet 1 inch tall (40th percentile). Our doc estimates that he’ll be 5’9 at full growth. Justin is 5’9 so that won’t shock me. We opted to do a vision test where the nurse stood several feet away from carter and had some pretty small pictures of objects (house, car, birthday cake, christmas tree…stuff like that). He had to cover one eye and tell the nurse what the objects were and then do it again covering the other eye. Carterman got all of them right! We talked to the doc about him not pooping in the potty and after a few questions on his part, he decided that Carter is likely constipated and when he does poop, it hurts, which is why he won’t go on the potty. He told us to give him a stool softener and we would likely see a difference so we’re going to start that soon. The doctor also noted that Carter is developmentally advanced for his age, which we knew already. He is so stinking smart it’s ridiculous! We go back again when he turns 4 at which time he will get his very first tetanus shot. Yikes!!!

Other Abilities/Random Things to Note

My insanely smart kiddo loves to identify the states on a map of the U.S. now. He knows the name and location of about 15 states so far. For Christmas, he got an Encyclopedia Britannica U.S. Map puzzle. Once you put a state in it’s proper location, you press the state and the map will tell you the state, it’s capital and the nickname of the state. So for example, when he presses Alabama it says “Alabama. The Yellowhammer State. State Capital-Montgomery.” He has learned so much by playing with this toy!!!
He loves puzzles
He still absolutely loves the alphabet and it’s the very first song he asks to sing at night before going to bed.
He sings songs on his own now too-mainly songs like Jingle Bells, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and, thanks to daddy, the Auburn fight song. Thanks to me, however, he also knows a good chunk of the Alabama fight song ;)
We are currently working on him putting his own underwear on. He’s good at taking his clothes off, but is pretty dependent on us to put them on, so we are going to start working on that too.
His new obsession-CARS!!! Like the little hot wheels cars. He doesn’t even necessarily play with the roads that the cars come with…just the cars. He got roughly 20 of them for Christmas and he just puts them all in a line and plays with them.
We introduced him to Sprite and he is obsessed. He wants it all the time!
The biggest thing to note is that he is an AMAZING big brother. Y’all…this kid just brings me to tears how much he loves his brother. He is always checking on him to make sure he’s ok, he wants to help change diapers, wants to go upstairs with me to put him down for naps and ALWAYS has to give him a kiss and a hug.
He remembers EVERYING. And I mean…EVERYTHING. We can’t promise him something and not follow through because he will totally call us out on it. He also repeats absolutely everything he hears so if you come around my child and curse, be prepared to see the bad side of this momma!!
He also (just last month) started using the pedals to ride his tricycle!!!