Jake | 3-Years-Old

I'm a bit overdue on this post. Okay, really, really overdue...by over two months! My does time fly around here! These pictures were taken shortly after Jake turned three in March. He's such a cutie. :)

Jake is very much the baby of the family, every bit a mama's boy, and loves being the center of attention, so it will be interesting to see how he adapts to the new baby this August. ;o) In fact, just today he needed some extra cuddling after getting in trouble at the dinner table and went to get his blankie and asked me to rock him for awhile (actually pretty rare for him - he's never been that big on rocking). Pretty soon Abby and Ben each came over to check on him and were fawning over him, saying things like, "Oh, he's so cute!", giving him hugs and kisses, and even bringing him one grape at a time from his dinner plate and hand-feeding them to him. What a life! Jake was in his element. Seriously, this boy is in for a bit of a shock when he soon gets replaced as the baby of the family. :) I was also thinking that it was probably easier for Abby and Ben to adjust to a new baby in the family than it will be for Jake, mainly because they were younger at the time (Abby was 18-months-old when Ben was born and Ben was 22-months when Jake was born) and thus Jake has had so much more time being the baby of the family.

As mentioned, Jake likes to be in the center of things and is quite good at hamming it up. He's a very silly boy and enjoys cracking jokes and saying weird things to get people to laugh. His dance moves are hilariously adorable. He is a very fun-loving, goofy little boy.

He loves to sing. The longest song he can sing is the Gilligan's Island theme song - he's got it down word-perfect....unless of course he's doing one of his many version in which he picks a letter and sings every single word of the song with that letter as the beginning. While it was pretty cute when he started doing that with songs, sometimes it gets a bit old when he does this habit with his regular speaking. For instance, I ask him if he wants a drink of milk and he answers, "Pes." Um, huh?....and then he adds, "Pes, pilk, please," (translation: "Yes, milk, please."). Uh, okay, so then I know we're going with the letter "P" right then. :oP

And speaking of letters, he's very into them. He likes to identify which words start with which letter and he often asks me to spell out-loud various words at his request. I imagine if he were my only child, I would have even more time to work with him and he could probably be a beginner reader by now. Perhaps he'll pick it up himself soon, as he has with many things already. He's bright and a quick-learner, that's for sure!

One difficult thing with Jake is that he has some pretty severe OCD-type tendencies. I'm always vacillating between trying to accommodate his extreme and strange requests, and then worrying I'm encouraging the behavior and so sometimes treat it as a disciplinary and training situation. I know that inconsistency is not a good thing with parenting, but I'm honestly at a loss at how to deal with this. For instance, blankets are a HUGE, HUGE deal to him. They have to be the RIGHT way - which includes which side is up (he can feel the difference), which direction it goes, how it lays on his body, how many he wants stacked up on him and in which order, etc, etc. If things aren't perfectly right, he goes into a tizzy. And this isn't JUST at bedtime, it can happen many times during the night too where he starts crying hysterically because his blankets are messed up. And sometimes it seems he doesn't even know what "right" is at the moment and nothing we can do can calm him down or make things okay. It's hard. It's frustrating. This doesn't happen every night - it seems to go in cycles, with me often thinking he's growing out of it, only for it to crop up again for several weeks at a time. And blankets are just one issue. Sigh.

But overall Jacob is a joy and a wonderfully silly, sweet 3-year-old. He is so, so special to us. I don't know if it's just because he's the youngest and so still has some of that babyish cuteness that the older two no longer have, but Kevin and I adore just watching him move/play/run/smile/anything! He likes you to look him right in the eye when he wants to tell you something, and sometimes I find myself getting so lost in his beautiful eyes with those long lashes and his chubby cheeks and his absolutely adorable voice that I realize I didn't even hear what he said! He's that darn cute and sweet. We love this kid. :)

 

The stats: 34 inches tall, 31 pounds