Nate the Great turns 3

My little baby boy turned 3 last week.  It's hard to believe.  It's also hard to believe that he's only going to be my "little baby boy" for a couple more months.  It makes me kind of sad. I don't know if this guy realizes how good he's had it, at least compared to the girls.  We've had lots of time together, just the two of us.  And, let's face it, I tend to baby him a little bit.  He is the littlest right now.  I know the second the baby is born, he will suddenly seem so huge and that makes me a little sad.  I am excited for Nate to be a big brother.  I hope he'll adjust to the changes alright.

Here's a little bit about Nate right now....

He makes me laugh all the time.  He is always making these crazy facial expressions.  Here he is pretending to be a rock star:

 

He has this crazy boy-intensity that the girls never really had.  It tends to come out when he's playing sports or pretend fighting.  It makes me laugh.

 He loves nutella:

 He still insists on dressing himself:

 Sometime he takes a million pictures when I let him play on my phone.  I don't mind having to go through and delete a bunch if it means coming up with a few gems like these ones:

 He's learning and growing every day.  He loves to play at the park and is still a good climber. 

 He can draw really good faces now:

 He can also spell his name with magnets on the fridge.  He recognizes most letters, all colors and shapes and he can count pretty well too.

Although he is talking better and better these days, he still has some adorable little sayings:
-"Upswide-down"
-"Flee" instead of "three"
-"Moo-lawning"--how he says "mowing the lawn"

He hardly ever naps.  This makes his mommy frustrated some days.  But, he's doing better about staying in his room during quiet time anyway.  When he does finally crash somewhere, he looks pretty darn cute doing it:

 

 He makes his Mama happy every day.   I sure love this guy.

 

Nate seemed to enjoy his birthday.  He got to go out to "Old McDonald's" for lunch--his favorite restaurant:

 I labored over the blue Thomas cake that he had requested.  It didn't turn out too bad (thanks to this Pinterest tip), but the frosting tasted kind of weird. I'm not sure why.  You win some, you lose some. 

We had a fun night playing with his new toys. He loved the big dinosaur that Elizabeth gave him and the Dreamlites night-light that Natalie gave him.

Now that he's 3, we're on to a new adventure.  I'd been telling him that 3 year-olds don't wear diapers, just underwear.  Although he wasn't super thrilled about it at first, we made up a little potty chart and he's been doing great!  Today he was accident-free and has been going on his own.  Yesterday was a little bit rough.  I had to run to Target for some things.  I was so happy when he told me he needed to go in the store and even went on the public toilet, a very big step for him (after much persuasion and bribing with an icee).  Unfortunately, I committed the cardinal sin of potty-training: letting it slip from the forefront of my mind when I bumped into a friend there and got talking.  He ended up peeing in the cart.  One consolation--I was much more relaxed about this situation than I would have been a few years ago.  Maybe I'm learning something.  Or maybe my standards of cleanliness have just relaxed a whole lot.  I choose to believe it's the former.

As we're getting ready to check out, Nate of course reminds me about the icee that I promised him when we finished shopping.  So, he proudly exited the store, icee in hand, 1 for 2 on the day.  It could have been worse, I guess.

I just love watching him learn and the proud look on his face when he gets it.  We sure love our Nathaniel.