Nathaniel is 2 years and 10 months old.  This means that he is nearly three.  THREE.  It is mindbending to consider those 3 years.  They didn’t pass quickly or fly by, but they were crammed with so much life that we are still recovering from the impact.

This little boy rocks our world.  He loves to announce, “I Sanyiel!!!!”  He is loud and busy and so loving that we are left breathless.  His kindness and over-the-top loves are rivaled only by his siblings at the same age.  With abandon, the Olson kids will smile and giggle and chat and remind you of your intrinsic value whenever they interact with you.  Jesus is so clearly present in the way that our kids offer loves!  Nathaniel maintains his Bully of Luhh-uhhhve reputation, but he has calmed down considerably.  He doesn’t bowl kids over anymore.  He wraps his arms around his friends and squeezes them without falling over!  He offers sweet, puckery kisses (and kissed a Kindermusik classmate right on the lips!).  He will spontaneously walk up to us, hug us and say in his sweetest voice, “I wuvvv woo!”  You can’t help but feel special when you are loved by someone as sweet as Nathaniel.  He and Dr. Li shared a very special bond and it was wonderful to watch our little man attach so quickly and completely to our guest.  Dr. Li immediately became part of our family primarily due to our 2.5 year old’s efforts to draw him in.  There is no such thing as too little to reach out to others!

Nathaniel is still a doggie man, and Arf-Arf accompanies him all over the house and often on outings as well.  He thinks that all of our pictures of Hoochie are of Mochi because he knows that she is HIS puppy.  Truthfully, he has never met a dog who wasn’t instantly HIS.  He is (slightly) calmer when he snuggles puppies and he doesn’t body slam them anymore.  Lest you worry that all of his puppy lovings are mellow now, let me assure you.  He still follows them everywhere and invades their personal space and accepts/delivers open-mouth kisses.

His favorite word is “fay-fit” (favorite).  EVERYTHING is his “fay-fit.”  If he likes something, it’s his “fay-fit.”  If he doesn’t like something, it’s “not my fay-fit.”  During our Mommy/Thanny mornings twice a week, he chats my ear off and points out at least 37 things per 15 minute increment that are his “FAY-FIT, Mommy!”  His fay-fit show is Diego (second place: Blues Clues).  His fay-fit toys are puzz-ohs.  His fay-fit song is whatever song is playing right now on the radio that he recognizes.  His fay-fit food is anything he can procures for himself without help.

Nathaniel is desperate to go to “pee-sool” and he begs to go inside every time we drop off or pick up the twins.  He wants to be big WIGHT NOW!!!!  The twins inform him that he can go to school when he is 3 and I quickly add “3 and a HALF.”  Because he will be 3 soon and preschool is still 7 long months away.  We plan to keep him distracted with all of the glories of summer until it is finally TIME.  Rissa has tried to explain to him that when he goes to preschool, she and Zach will be at kindergarten, but I suspect he believes that the 3 of them will OWN that preschool classroom together!

Our little man (“no, Mommy, I a BID BOY!”) has incredible visual pattern skills.  He can see colors and lines and connect them in his mind.  When he works on a puzzle, he skips the outside edge pieces and finds clusters of color and connecting lines and begins with those.  He’ll build the leopard, then a flower, then a parrot in his rainforest puzzle.  He’ll build the T. Rex, then the triceratops, then the pteranodon on the dih-soh puzz-oh at the libewwy.  Edge pieces are just trim, so he saves them for last.  He has an image in his mind of the final picture AND each detail/item that builds that picture, and then searches the pieces pile for just the right one.  He selects and places the piece he is already thinking of which is the opposite of what most of us do.  His teacher at TCBC’s Explorers class pulled me aside to talk about Thanny’s puzzling; apparently, he whips through even their hardest puzzles in record time.  I thanked her for noticing his interests and said that he’s been into puzzles since he was one; I didn’t have the heart to tell her that he finished his new 100 piece puzzle for ages 6+ in 25 minutes on the first try.  It is amazing to watch him work and to see his concentration and focus in action.

Now that he is so “bid,” he has a new “bid boy bed.”  He and Zach share a firetruck bunk bed.  Nathaniel has decided that he is the driver and that Zach is the ladder man.  He is still learning how to stay IN the bed… he falls out every other night or so.  When he doesn’t fall out, we find him dangled over the edge and almost out.  He is used to squirming in his sleep and moving all over his crib, so feeling uncontained is very disorienting for him.  He LOVES having Zach as a roommate and being able to access Zach anytime is a new thrill.  He sneaks out of his bed and climbs the ladder to whisper to his big brother.  We hear Zach say over and over, “Nathaniel, get back in your bed, I’m sleeping” followed by “Oh-tay” and then it repeats.  I especially love his big boy bed because he can invite me to come in and snuggle with him.  He squirms all over and steps on my head while trying to arrange his blankies in just the right way, but he is so cuddly and warm and he smells delicious.  I love the way he wraps his little arms around my shoulders, snuggles in and kisses my cheek… right before he steps on my head. 🙂

Nathaniel loves super heroes and has been fighting “bad duys” and “wobots” with his fire extinguisher for several months now.  He chose a Spiderman puzzle and loves to pretend that he is “Spy-man.”  He considers himself a super hero and knows that he needs to a) be awesome and b) “hep bad duys mate dood tsoices.”  He flies like “Soupieman” from the bars across Zach’s top bunk (with Daddy’s help, of course).  Now that he can haul anything and everything into his bed by himself, he sleeps with a growing assortment of “fay-fit” toys.  His plastic allosaurus is often in “time out” on the shelf inside his firetruck bed… I assume it’s because allosaurus is not soft and often pokes Nathaniel and the various stuffed animals (mostly dinosaurs and puppies, plus one parrot).  Nathaniel’s super hero status has increased his confidence, if that was even possible!  He enters rooms with both hands raised in the air and a “TAHHH!!!!” (ta-da).  He also “TAHHH!!!!”‘s when he finishes a puzzle, shares his toys, performs an intricate dance move and doesn’t land on his head, etc.

Nathaniel has entered the magic window of sibling friendship where he is both old enough to be fun AND he has his own toys that interest the older kids.  They are prone to include him because his fun toys might come too!  He and Rissa have been choosing one another as playmates and we consider that a huge success of our efforts to forge a bond between them.  (It is our hope that our children can pair off in any configuration for play time; the Twin bond and the Boys bond were easier to develop).  She lets him play with her dollhouse and he lets her play with his puzzles.  Win-win!

I kept wondering when the incessant “why?  why?  WHY?” phase would kick in with the twins.  Neither of them ever did that.  With Thanny-man, my wait is over!  He asks “why?” approximately 386 times per day.  “Why you do dat, Mommy?  Mommy, what you doing?  Why?  Why?  Why?  WHY????”  No matter what answer I give, he follows it with another “why?”  If I say no, he wants to know why.  If I say yes, he wants to know why.  Just recently, he’s been able to resort to “oh man!” or “oh wheel” and walk away, which is a welcome relief.  He is nothing if not opinionated!  He wants to walk at the grocery store instead of ride in the cart (“dat for babies, I not baby, I BID BOY!”).  When we are driving home, he says, “No, we doe to the libewwy!  Mommy, we no doe home, we do libewwy!”  When we are heading out for errands or a trip to the library, he says, “No, first home.  We doe home, Mommy!  HOME!!!”  He doesn’t automatically agree or disagree, he just always has his own plan and agenda.

As our little man approaches 3, we are exiting the toddler years (we’ve been there for quite some time now between all 3 kids!) and entering the preschool years.  We left babyhood behind a long time ago!  It isn’t sad because each new phase is even more fun and more challenging than the last!  But it gives me pause… should I stop thinking of Nathaniel as my baby?  I mean, he’s right, he’s a “bid boy” now.  All 3 kids will always be my babies because I can instantly go back in my mind to when they were babies… those memories are fresh and real.  And we talk about those days with our kids – they love those stories.  But Nathaniel is a big boy now.  He has made that abundantly clear.  He claims to already be 4 years old because he wants to be big even faster!  I feel secure in the fact that since he still says “bid boy” for big boy, he’s not too big.  His ideas are brilliant and well beyond his years and his language is well-developed and continually blossoming.  But his speech patterns still betray his littleness, and I love him little and “bid.”