3 Years of Sully

My love bug,

Year two was my favorite year so far: your personality blossomed in such a way that it felt like I was making a new friend. Flashes of holding your hand as we walked through the grocery store, snippets of teaching you to cut with scissors, sound bites of giggles and sillies as you and Dad wrestled on the floor will forever be filed in my mind.You went from an adorable baby to an amazing kid in just a year, and it blows us away that we get to be your parents. Your strongest qualities are your empathetic heart and your ability to discern whether a person or situation is for you; we are praying big prayers that these things we already see in you will sprout and bloom even more so as you grow into a young man.

Your imagination is probably my favorite thing about you. You tell us what each of our characters are and talk in a voice for whichever character you choose for yourself. You take songs we listen to and add in your own words to tunes, and it’s always hilarious. You’ve just started telling your own stories: “one day…” you say in the most animated voice and proceed to tell us a quick story that mostly ends with you doing something silly or fun like eating a lollipop. While toys are fun for you, you'll always choose to play pretend over any truck or ball.

Year three will certainly bring great change and growth, as you are not only getting bigger and smarter, but you are getting a new title of “brother.” Mama prays so hard that you know our love is only multiplying, not dividing as we add Eloise to our family. With each change and adjustment, we will be right there with you, snuggling, talking about it, and figuring it out together.

Life Updates:

-School: You started school this August! Since Mom stays home with you, school really isn’t something that we felt we had to do, but with sister coming soon and with you leaning more on the bashful side, we felt like a small program would be worth a shot. To be honest, you are still warming up to it, but we’ve seen you grow and blossom in ways we never could have taught you ourselves. Each week at pickup, your teacher tells us of a new way you were brave or tried something new, and it’s so much fun listening to you recap your day. At nap time, you say “Thank you, God” for your teachers and whatever activity you liked that day. We were a little concerned with how Covid, a newborn, and you in school would all work together, but your school is the ideal distancing experience, so we are hopeful that it will continue to be safe for us.

-Big Brother: In less than a month, you will be a big brother! At first, you were not on board with a sibling, frequently telling us “no brother” or ‘no sister.” Sometimes, you would even cry if we started talking about her. But over the last couple of months, you’ve seemed to really own the fact that she’ll be here in October and tell us you are excited to watch movies with her and eat gummies with her. I know it will be an adjustment for all of us at different points, but you are such a tender-hearted, loving boy; I know you’ll fall in love with her too. We’ve been praying for your heart to be prepared and for a strong sibling bond that lasts a lifetime.

Favorite Memories:

-Friends: You have two really great buddies that we see almost weekly, and it really is the sweetest watching you all play. You guys each have your own interests and personalities but still play so well. Mom loves it too because their moms are my friends, so we get built in socialization for all of us!

-Auburn trips: Every weekend, we all three go to Auburn after your nap for an afternoon of fun. We get a lemonade which you can now order on your own (“one frozen reg-lar lemonade, please”) and take a lap and play on Samford Lawn. It is truly one of your favorite places, and you walk around like you own the place. Mom and Dad pick up Fusion to take back to eat after you go to bed, and because of that, you’ve memorized part of our order and say it when you play kitchen (“extra noodles, spicy level nine”).

-Playtime: Playing with you is really fun lately! You can vocalize where you want to play and what you want to do, and it changes daily. You love PlayDough, crafts (my heart!), digging outside, tractors, and pretending. Mom and Dad love playing with you because your little imagination comes up with the funniest scenarios, and you have the cutest conversations with your animals.

-Sunday Breakfast: Because of Covid, we’ve decided to do online church for a while longer. We tried going back in person a few times, but each time, you got a bad cold, and we were left wondering (or testing) if you were positive or not. We still try to make the most of the full experience, so every Sunday, we make “special breakfast.” You climb up on your kitchen steps, ask for your chef’s hat and jacket, and mix a bowl of flour like you are a gourmet chef. Meanwhile, Mom makes waffles, pancakes, donuts, or muffins before church starts. Once the baking is all done, you help us set the coffee table, and we all sit on the floor to watch church. You LOVE being in the kitchen, and though actual cooking isn’t my thing, I’ll be happy to help you bake any day of the week!

-Spontaneous Car Picnics: Sometimes, we just need something a little different to do in our week, and if that's ever the case, I'll either pack us a lunch or drive through "Chick-A-Lay" for a picnic. Sometimes we park in front of a construction site to watch the equipment, and sometimes, we'll park in the Home Depot parking lot and watch all of the different trucks go by. Occasionally, we'll surprise Dad at his office and all three eat together. Something that you've started saying when you really enjoy something is, "That's a fun treat," and it just melts me.

Loves:

-Play Dough

-”Making some-pin fun” after nap with Mom

-anything involving Dad, but especially driving the truck on our road to take the trash can up for garbage day

-Halloween

-Being told racoon stories

-Blippi Videos

-Bubble Guppies

-the library

-Whataburger

-knowing what comes next

Dislikes:

-big crowds, especially of kids

-anything that you sense might be remotely spicy

-If you decide you don’t like something at the moment, you’ll say, “I cant love that yet,” and it cracks me up every time. At least you have that growth mindset!

Food:

We’ve gone a complete year without any type of allergy reaction! Woo hoo! At your last appointment this year, your numbers were still too high to try any more challenges, so we are spending this next year exposing you to baked milk as much as possible and praying that your egg and cashew numbers continue to drop. You love our trips to Birmingham because we stay in a hotel (your favorite activity ever!) and eat at Chuy's.

As far as what you like and don’t like, there really isn’t much. You much prefer unincorporated foods, so a lot of times, we serve you the deconstructed version of whatever we are eating. Your favorite, go-to, will eat anytime food is a bowl of spiral, chickpea noodles with a little bit of oil on them. You ask for them all of the time, so we serve them frequently for lunch with different sauces.

Sleep:

We’ve considered transitioning you to a big boy bed, but you have never ever once tried to crawl out so we’re just waiting on that. You take a 2-3 hour nap each day and sleep 10-12 hours at night in your crib, so there’s no point in interrupting that for you. Plus, with sister coming soon, we don’t want you to have to work through any major transitions unnecessarily so we’ll reevaluate down the road. Night time is a favorite time of all of our days: we read 3 books, sing a few songs, and pray. Listening to you fill in, “Thank you, God for___” gives us a glimpse into your heart and mind, and we love hearing what you loved about the day. Blue is still your best bed time buddy, and you happily snuggle in with him every night.

(You've never been much of a snuggler, but every once in a while, you'll have a hard time sleeping at nap, so either Dad will go in and rock you or I will crawl into your bed with you and snuggle. You almost never go back to sleep but will sit there sweetly without saying anything long enough to at least rest.)

Growth:

This one is so difficult to even complete because you are like a completely different kid after a year! You are more like a kid than baby, speaking in full sentences, playing pretend, and telling us stories. You know a lot of letters, can count to ten forwards and backwards, know all of your colors, and can retell stories and books to fine details. Your little personality and the things you say keep us laughing, probably even at times when we shouldn’t but you are so animated and vibrant in how you talk. As far as size, it seems like you haven’t grown very much in a year when you look at the numbers, but you seem so much more grown! You are just over 3 feet and around 28 pounds and are in between a 2T and 3T.

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When you do something that scares you, you say "God helps me cuz he lives in my heart," and if you hold onto that, you'll make it through it all, bud! Life is better because you're in it, and we love you more than you love Blue.

Love,

Mom