3.5 Years Old Today!

This little peanut turned 3.5 years old today!  What is going on?!  I cannot believe that he is half way to his fourth birthday.  Time is just going so fast!  Emmett is such a funny guy who is full of energy and life.  He continues to make all of us laugh on a daily basis and can be such a source of joy for our family.  Emmett continues to love playing toys, riding his bike, playing in the backyard, and spending time with his siblings and friends.  For the second summer in a row, he has preferred to just hang out on the ladder of our above ground pool that Ron and the kids put up in our backyard the end of June.  He loves to throw things in the pool and watch the older kids play in the pool instead of going in it himself.  Emmett still loves all things train and truck and loves watching a few shows daily on Disney Plus (Spidey and His Amazing Friends, Bluey, and Puppy Dog Pals) and any sort of kids dinosaur video on YouTube during his screen time.  He continues to sleep well at night from 9/9:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.  He also has napped like a champ for 2 to 3 hours every day until the kids got out of school on June 17th.  Much to my chagrin, Emmett has figured out that his siblings do not sleep during nap time and so it has been a bit of a struggle to get him to cooperate and lay down.  As a result, he has probably skipped his nap about 5 to 10 times since school got out which is a major bummer for me as I was hoping to keep him napping through his preschool year (like all of his siblings did).  We shall see if I can get him back on track in September once everyone returns to school.

Emmett is still doing a great job with being potty trained.  He rarely ever has an accident, always goes #2 in the toilet, and hasn't wet his bed at night since January when he had Covid.  As a result, I stopped putting him in Pull-Ups diapers the end of May when we moved him out of his crib and into his big boy bed.  Emmett loves sleeping in his big boy bed and even did a great job taking a nap on his bed every afternoon until his siblings got out of school.  He also continues to be a great eater and also has become quite an independent snacker.  Unlike my three other children, Emmett will happily help himself to snacks in the pantry any time of the day that he wants.  This usually happens when I am not in the same room with him which is quite frustrating at times as he continues to eat snacks outside of the kitchen.  In addition, Emmett has continued to struggle with being obedient on a daily basis which first started occurring regularly back in December.  Although Emmett can still be a very happy, pleasant, and well behaved toddler, he disobeys me multiple times a day.  This normally results in me asking him several more times to obey before picking up the phone to "call" Santa to cancel Christmas or the mother of his best friend, Luke, to cancel the next playdate.  Normally, placing these pretend phone calls results in Emmett obeying, but sometimes it results in him throwing a tantrum and getting placed in a time out.  So, all is not perfect with Emmett all of the time in toddlerdom these days, but I guess that is only to be expected when working with a three-year old every day.  I keep on reminding myself that this is just a season and one day it will pass.

Overall, we still all love our Emmy and thoroughly enjoy having him be a part of our family.  In closing, I just want to record a funny comment that Emmett said the other day.  Although he says things that make us laugh every day, this one was just over-the-top cute.  While we were up at Priest Lake this past week, Emmett came inside one afternoon really cold from playing in the windy air and cold water.  He asked Ron to give him a quick bath to warm up while I was finishing making dinner.  After his bath, Emmett came and sat down at the dinner table with the rest of the children.  Everyone noticed right away that his lips were totally purple from still being cold.  After all of his siblings pointed this out to him, Emmett seriously wiped his mouth with his hand and immediately looked at his palm afterwards and said in a very confused voice, "I don't see my purple."  As you can imagine, everyone burst out laughing!  Oh Emmett, you are just the cutest!