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.