Paulo - 3 years

Dear Paulo,

It is so hard to believe you are a full 3 years old. It has been almost two weeks since your birthday and I haven't had the time i wanted to dedicate to you here, but i may as well get on with it because busyness seems to never go away these days...

You are without a doubt not two anymore. You are definitely a little boy now in everything you do. You are still the cutest little big headed boy. You run around looking diwn at your feet like you cant believe how fast you're going. You still love playing soccer and basketball and pretty much anything that involves a ball, and you are quite good at it.

You are now much more inquisitive and the "why"  questions go on and on. You are very sensitive, not only in that your feelings get hurt if I just raise my voice (and God forbid if you daddy gives you trouble for anything, which you are definitely NOT used to), butalso in that you can always tell if somebody ( that is me, haha) is mad, sad, frustrated or angry, and you always ask: "que paso mama?" " porque estas triste mama?".

Your English has also exploded in the last six months or so. I think your going to playschool has something to do with that, but also the fact that your Nanna now lives with us and talks to you in English all the time, and you cant get away speaking Spanish to her like you do with daddy. I have noticed lately that when you play on your own, you speak English now, which in my eyes is both bad and good. Good, because you're getting more confident in your English skills; and bad, because your English may be starting to dominate your brain, marking the beginning of a language battle.

Your sleep has come a looong way since your second birthday. When you turned two and your brother was born, I remember having a really hard time putting you to sleep if he was awake. I had to sit on the edge of your bed and you would beg me to lie down with you. It would take you so long to fall asleep without me being right there against you. Then when we first moved to Ottawa we had some really ugly battles at nap time, which were totally emotionally draining for both. Now, you cooperate very well, and after reading a couple of books together you lie down on your own and fall asleep if I stay around your room. Sometimes you even ask me to leave the room and shut the door! At night, however it always takes forever to get you to sleep, and you stall, and stall and stall, which makes it really hard on daddy. However once you are asleep you pretty much stay asleep even if we wake you to cover you up, move you or anything else. You still wake up once a night though around midnight and come into our room, where we have put a little bed and blanket next to ours, which we call " la cama de los enanitos" and you are usually pretty happy just staying there.

You are a very determined little guy. You definitely have a very defined personality now. Youare very  inquisitive, super well behaved and obedient as long as you're kept busy and have people's attention. You can be shy but when you warm up you have no problem talking to others. Yu definitely are most comfortable playing with older kids and adults. You are such a sweet little boy, so sensitive and love to cuddle and kiss. You are full of "i love you"'s and " thank you" s and " p,ease"s . you even thanked me for dinner once without anyone telling you to!! Your do battle a lot with your brother....pretty much All.the.time. Which can be very frustrating, but I haven't lost hope that you two will be the best of friends when you grow older.

Your all-time favourite  things for a while now are 1. Balloons, 2. Balls, 3. Rockets and 4. Jellyfish.

Paulo, We love you so much. You are such a huge deal to our family. Our love for you multiplies every single day. Te quiero mucho enanito precioso!!