Paulo - 3.5 years

Paulo, you are 3.5 years old! Amazing how time flies, and how much you change in just a bit of time. Right now the most overwhelming thing in the horizon is that in just a month you will be starting Junior Kindergarten! Granted, you are not quite 4 yet, so you will be one of the young ones in the class. Still, it is amazing how far you have come since the beginning of the year when I just couldn't picture you going to school on your own.

In general, you are quite the big boy now that wants to do it all by yourself and doesnt want anybody's help. This applies to going bathroom, and a lot of other things, except eating. You still want my help for that even though you can manage fine on your own. However you always want me to hold your toast for you so you dont get your hands messy with the jam, or you just wait until I spoon feed you your soup etc.

You are so much easier to be around now. You still have your little quirks and are definitely stubborn and like things a certain way. For example, every.single.morning. you want to come down the stairs, lay on the couch, and drink your milk in front of the cartoons. Any variation of this causes a guaranteed meldown. I am not to speak to you until you are all the way down the stairs, your milk must be a certain temprature, and no one is to be seating in your "spot", your one pillow should be where your head goes and the flower pattern MUST be facing upwards... phew.This is a lot to arrange and sometimes drives daddy nuts when he forgets "the rules". You have lots of little quirks like these, but in general you communicate so well, and start to reason with us in a way that you are pretty easy to be around now.

In terms of your relationship with your brother it is getting SO much better, and that of course makes me SO happy. You barely ever fight with your brother anymore. You still get frustrated at him, but mostly because you don't want him to touch the Ipad, destroy your block towers, or mess with whatever you are playing with. However, I see more and more of you two being silly together, running around getting Emilio to chase you, or just laughing with him.

You are a little bit shy, but you are a very well adapted kid. You play well with your friends and always want them to come home to play. you NEVER fight with them, which is something I am very proud about. I still try to help you find ways to stand up for yourself, because the way other kids normally act means they sometimes mistake your quietness with being a pushover, and they may not be so nice to you sometimes.  So I always encourage you to respectfully ask other kids not to treat you that way.

About 2 months ago we finally dropped your afternoon nap. You still went down pretty well, but it almost always meant you were awake by 10.30 or sometimes 11 a.m. and didnt seem to matter how much excersize you got in the day. I finally caved down to end the naps because that meant you woke up tired every morning. It was a difficult transition and you were a mess every afternoon, but it is slowly getting better every day. I still can't take you out in the car in the afternoons, and it means you have to go to sleep super early. However it is nice you have you asleep effortlessly by 8 p.m. and you sleep straight until 8 a.m. the next morning.

Another change that came about with the elimination of your nap is the kind of things you like. It is amazing that when you used to nap, you used to love your bike, begged to go on it all the time, and had ZERO interest in anything that required you to sit down and focus, i.e. crafts, puzzles, painting, building, etc. However, now that you are tired by noon, you are OBSESSED with all those activities. You love puzzles, LOVE painting with watercolors, markers, stamps; you can spend hours building with your blocks and your legos, and you have a noticeable obsession with patterns : drawing lines, lining up your cars, building block patterns, etc. are all favourite activities of your now.

I can go on and on about you at 3.5 years old, but one more thing I quite like about you now is that your are very affectionate. You give hugs and kisses, and always tell us that you love us. Sometimes you even "accidentally" hug your brother!

You are my little guy and I love you so so much. Te quiero con todo mi corazon chiquis.

Happy Birthday Paulo - 4 years!!

Happy Birthday Paulo!

Unbelievable that you are 4 today. You are such a "big" boy now, and you can do so many things that I just could not picture you doing even six months ago. Some new things you can do now:

- you love brushing your own teeth, and I have to really convince you to even let me just check them.

- you can pretty much dress yourself with some help. You can put your on shoes, jacket, socks, etc. although you don't always do it because you want us to.

- you can go bathroom all on your own. You don't even let me hang out in the bathroom with you most times!!

- I think the biggest thing for me is you understand everything very well, and it is just easier to do things with you. For example, you can hang out by yourself while I put your brother down for his nap. You prefer to wait in the car when I have to do a quick run to the store.

- you can submerge your head in the water. We have not been so diligent to take you swimming, mostly due to lack of time and logistics, but it is such a big milestone that you now love to put on your goggles and submerge your face in the water.

Another big change with you is your bedtime routine. Since you started school in September you are so exhausted in the afternoons that by 6.30 you are more than ready to go to b ed. We have done some changes in our daily routine, mostly meaning you don't get to hang out with daddy as long in the evenings. But when he comes home he takes you straight to bed and after reading one or two stories, you are out in no time. And then you sleep for 12 or even13 hours, only waking up  once to come into  our bed with daddy. You also sleep so soundly that almost NoTHING wakes you up.

The other funny thing is now you have started being really afraid of the dark. You always want company to go into a dark room and you want to sleep with a bright night light on. This never used to happen, and is probably a sign of your growing awareness.

You love school, and have new friends who you always run around with. You are a quiet little boy, and surely like your own space, and your peace and quiet. You are not one to spend hours being loud and being crazy, you soon have enough and if you don't have a rest you just lose it.

You are kind, you don't like to fight, you are a good sharer, you are helpful, you are inquisitive, and a little unusual. You like cars, dinosaurs, space, jellyfish, and ninja turtles. Your favourite toys are definitely your cars, but you have a new appreciation for crafts (mainly painting, colouring, papercutting), and sports.

It is hard to describe your whole personality in one page, but this is my best try. You are such an affectionate little boy. I love you with all my heart :).

Paulo the bike rider

Paulo can now ride a bike without training wheels. It happened over the Easter Long weekend on April 3rd, when in the morning, I took his training wheels off and took him outside to ride the bike. He got on the bike, and I went the whole speech again:

- You WILL fall down many times. You just will. But you have to stay strong, get up and try again. Every time you get back on your back you will be better at it. 

- If you start feeling wobbly it means you have to pedal a little faster.

- watch the road. 

So he went on the bike, I held the back of his seat. He started pedaling but kept forgetting to steer the bike and kept going to the side of the road. We stopped, talked about why that was happening. 

He got back on the bike, started pedaling, and soon he was riding very stable on a straight line. I started loosening my grip on his seat, and he was fine. Then I let go. And he just kept going. For a long time. I ran in front of him and put my hand up showing him he had done it, and he was riding by himself. And then he had a huge smile on his face. That whole thing took 10 minutes, at most.

After that, he never fell fell down. Next we taught him how to start on his own (without a push) and he mastered that within minutes as well. And ever since then, he has been riding the bike non-stop every afternoon, and riding it to and from school every day. I have now started riding my bike with him when I pick him up from school and Emilio is napping. 

I have also noticed (and this might be a coincidence or not), but ever since his learning to ride the bike without training wheels, he seems to have gained so much more confidence in everything. He has made better friends with the boys at his school, talks to his teachers, talks to our neighbors, etc. I really do notice a big change in him in that respect.

Paulo is almost 4 and a half years, and started riding his balance bike since he was 2 years old. :)