So this is Three?

It's been a couple of months since I ditched the monthly letters to Gray, so I owe him an update. In the last couple of months, we have transitioned to a new nanny, started pre-school, got kicked out of pre-school and started potty training (and stopped, and started, and stopped, etc). Gray was so excited about pre-school and he got to go to two classes before they told us that he had to be fully potty trained in order to attend. Now, I totally understand these rules but was so annoyed that they neglected to tell me this before I got the poor kid all excited to go TO SCHOOL! The next session starts in mid-August, so we are working on potty training in earnest now. I have figured out that Gray is not a kid who is going to be trained in a weekend- this is going to take weeks, I think. All weekend we have been visiting the potty regularly, and having accidents regularly too. It doesn't seem like we are making any progress at all, but we are keeping on. Today he accidentally peed a total of two drops in the potty and I went totally overboard with the praise... and he freaked out. I did eventually talk him down but he was not having it. He wanted off the potty that instant and of course had an accident about five minutes afterward. Poor kid. Every time he has an accident he says "But it's okay Mama, it was an accident, right? It'll dry, won't it?" I feel like I keep unlocking little bits of his psyche as we continue the potty training venture. Yesterday when I put some poop in the potty he said "I don't want my poop to go into the wall!" so I had to explain that it goes down a pipe to a pipe under the street... to which he said "I don't want my poop to go under the street!" Oy.

Gray has also been somewhat of a mama's boy lately. I feel like I'm getting glimpses of four year old Gray and I am looking foward to getting to know that boy. Three year old Gray has these incredible moments of sweetness and insight interspersed with these insane crazy periods. Sharing has always been a sore point for Gray and I have observed him hitting or pushing Eli to get him away from toys. I get SO MAD about this and always over-react, which doesn't help one bit.

I love to watch Gray learn to reason and think things out. I was drinking a protein shake in the car the other day and he said "Is that chocolate milk?" to which I said "No." He said, "Mama, just look at it. Is it CHOCOLATE milk? It LOOKS like chocolate milk!" I had to agree, it did and then I explained that it was chocolate flavored (and not very good). He tells me all the time that when he is big like Mama and Dada he can drink the things that we drink.

He remains a finicky eater, insisting that all kinds of things are "yucky" which makes me insane. Stuff he loved a year ago is now stuff he will not touch. He is a great sleeper and continues to take epic afternoon naps. Every time I think "Oh, I should just put them in daycare" I go back to this fact. He would not get those naps at a daycare and he just loves them so much.

Gray is developing this insane sense of humor and the best example happened the other day. We were at DQ and he was eating a dipped butterscotch cone. I was telling him that when I was a little girl I loved eating those too. Phil said "Do you like doing the same things that Mama did when she was little?" Gray said, "Uh huh!" Phil said "Well then do you want me to break your arm?" Without missing a beat, Gray kept licking his ice cream, stuck out his arm and said "Go for it."

He is awesome.