Andrew 3 1/2 plus*

'nastics, originally uploaded by leslie_capron.

(*losing track of the months and too lazy to count!)

Recently Andrew has been glowing rainbows and light and is just full of funny sayings, cooperation and all around pre-schooler awesomeness. We're coming off a great weekend where he was awarded Edward (from Thomas and Friends), for going a whole week without jumping on the couch. This is serious restraint people.

Andrew has been enjoying his school and other activities. This weekend we did a family art class with his friend Maverick and had fun making Christmas ornaments. We go back in two weeks for glazing and firing. Above you see him in action at gymnastics. A month in he's gotten over his anxiety and is really enjoying the class.

Andrew's still a bit fearful in situations that are unexpected. Saturday we went to the Irvine Global Festival (this is our third year going). This is an event at a big park that is filled with booths from local restaurants, organizations and businesses. There are several stages set up for bands and dance performances. There is an entire section just for kids that was full of about 10 boucehouses of varing complexity. Andrew saw the bounce houses and got a bit nervous and teary and did not want to go in any of them. In this case having Owen in the bounce house didn't help. He wanted nothing to do with it. He eventually recovered and started to have fun once we spent some time at the playground. Given that he loves bounce-houses in general, this is totally perplexing.

Andrew is talking a lot. And he's getting into "trouble" at preschool for talking and not paying attention. Eric and I find this more funny than anything else because it seems totally out of character for our reserved little guy. I think his behavior is completely age appropriate, but we do talk to him about having to pay attention and listen to his teachers.

He still needs a good nap everyday, but on the weekends its getting harder to get him to go to sleep. Our compromise is that he needs to stay upstairs and have an hour of quiet time.

His imagination continues to grow. He's making up stories when he's playing with his trains and you can here him narrate the action: "oh, no, the Thoman fell off the track!". He's also having fun making up non-sense words.

We're enjoying Andrew a lot right now and are banking all this greatness to weather whatever 3 3/4 may brings us.