Jefferson is THREE!

Our little son is THREE YEARS OLD!  Wow. He’s growing up so fast.  Here are some photos of him over the past two months, and I have some of his birthday party that I will get from a friend, since we took off for his party without the battery to our camera. Grrrr. Here’s a link that will hopefully get you to some of the party for now.

Some updates:

• Jefferson is still potty training. It’s been a bit rough, he was doing pretty well and then we had our sudden month long trip which was preceded by Kirby being gone for a couple weeks, and then also he was gone during the trip.  So he regressed quite a bit and we’re struggling to get back where we were and progress further. At least we’re on our way, his main problem is just noncompliance. He can totally do it just fine and knows when he needs to go, but he won’t go when we tell him to go try, and the whole forcing thing doesn’t work so well.  And then he finally gets desperate and we’ll tell him to pull his pants down and sit down, and he won’t do it.  And if we do it for him, he almost always is able to hold it in just so we don’t win. So, he finally goes in his pants because we try to tell him to pull his own pants down while standing right in front of the bathroom, and he doesn’t, and then it finally comes out. Sigh. He goes pee just fine, never pees in his pants except every so often during his nap or nighttime. He goes running to one of the bathrooms and just goes, standing up, and does a good job of aiming most the time and he cleans up after himself when he doesn’t.
• Jeff is such a singer.  He always has a song in his head and is just singing constantly.  I love it.  He loves lots of traditional children’s songs like the ones based on nursery rhymes or folk songs, etc. and he loves the Disney movie songs. He also loves artists that we listen to like the Avett Brothers, Damien Rice, and of course his favorite song, Fix You by Coldplay.
• Jeff is a very sweet big brother to Cora.  He loves her and tells her she looks cute in her outfits, and he makes her smile every time he comes near her. He speaks in a sweet voice to her and tells her it’s ok if we are in the car and she gets upset.  I saw him holding her hand once while I was driving and he told me, “Cora needed some attention from me. She was going to get sad.”
• Jeff is using gestures more with his hands and the ones that especially crack me up are when he does things like adults do when they are trying to make a decision and say, “Um, I don’t care, whatever you want.” And he does the hands and the inflection just perfect.  You’d have to see it, writing about it just doesn’t get it across. 
• I painted my toes for the first time in I don’t even know how many years, and Jeff saw them and said, “Why are you painting your toes, Mommy?” and I said, “Oh, just so they look pretty. Do they look pretty?” and he said, “No, I don’t think so.  I think on other girls they do, but not you, Mommy.”  :)
• WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY raised to the infinite power is now many times Jeff says that word.  :)  It’s great though, he learns so much and it keeps us on our toes being creative and knowing about things so we can make sure to tell him, “WHY?” or “WHY NOT?”
• Jeff is taking swimming lessons right now, and he loves them.  He even floated for 7 seconds by himself one day. He mainly has fun, I mean, he’s three, I’m not trying to make it like swim team for three-year-olds, but I am glad he’s learning. He gets to have semi private lessons with Nick Monroe, so they have fun together doing that.
• Jefferson is such a love, though he can be quite the general sometimes and doesn’t want to listen all the time, we try to keep him in check. We have to be very firm so he doesn’t get his way, because he certainly tries to be clever enough to achieve that. :) For the most part, he’s a very pleasant little boy and he is polite and kind to others. We love him so much!