Rough & Tumble
Another weekend, another three year old’s birthday party. We headed over to Ben’s on Saturday for pizza and cake, along with some wading pools and splashing. Zane didn’t spend too much time in the water since they were all freezing and the whole setup was in the shade. You gotta have body fat to do that kind of stuff long term. Eventually we had to leave and Zane wanted to take one of Ben’s toy cars. “Sorry buddy,” didn’t seem to cut it and he cried the first five miles of the drive home. The nice thing about crying around that time of day in the car is that you are pretty much guaranteed he’ll fall asleep a few minutes later. He did.
Despite our best efforts in lathering him with bug lotion he’s been getting some nasty bug bites lately. A black fly crawled down his shirt and took a big chunk out above his spine, leaving an angry and leaky welt. A few others honed in on the top of his hair where it swirls and exposes a bit of scalp. He has bites on his neck, ankles, and even the wrist. Still I was surprised when waking him Saturday after his nap and finding a HUGE welt on the back of his head. No obvious bug big or scratch, or even a bruise, just a bit knot. I asked him what happened and he said Ben hit him with an airplane. Now, is this what happened or does he have a grudge after having to leave Ben’s race car behind? We’ll never know.
As to his newest wounds we have a pretty good idea. Zane has started playing with and wrestling Raz these days. Yesterday while Faith was working in the kitchen they were having at it and Zane ended up falling over/off of Raz and into a kitchen chair. A bunch of tears, a little blood, and then he was back to normal. As for the scratch we aren’t sure, but Zane says that Raz scratched him.
On one hand he seems to be getting pretty beat up, on the other it’s a surprise he has as few wounds as he does. He’s always climbing up and jumping off of things, tripping, running into things, crashing, and swinging toys and other things around and into himself. He’s also bonking into us quite a bit but we have a bit more, er, padding. We could use a little more mental padding to put up with his stubbornness and craziness. Yesterday was a classic example of the terrible-twos at three: where it took forever to get him to either do things we wanted or stop doing things we din’t want.
Now that Spring is fully in swing Zane has been spending more time outside, exploring the world. He loves the frogs in our ponds and always wants to “touch” them. That is, until he gets close to one, and then he wants YOU to touch them because they will bite him. He laughs and laughs and laughs when you try and the frog ends up jumping away and then it’s “want to touch frog?” all over again.
I found a robin’s nest in an apple tree this weekend. Saturday Zane and I climbed a ladder to peek in at the baby blue egg. Every day since then he says that he wants to go out and see baby bird egg. We’re being careful not to visit too often and not to touch anything so the Momma bird doesn’t get scared away from her nest. I think Zane will really love it when there’s a baby bird looking back at him.
Potty training has been going wonderfully. We’ve not only given him all of the poop trucks, but another half dozen “poop cars,” which are from a bag of hand-me-down hot wheels we had in the garage. The other thing that’s helped is the iPad, since it keeps him occupied and on the toilet long enough for his bowels to do what they need to do. He’s waking up most morning with a dry diaper, so we might start trying the big boy underwear overnight again.