Forty-Nine Months

Dear Peeper:
You are forty-nine months old today. I'm still getting used to you being four, but you seem to be doing a pretty good job with it.

Our only concern lately is this crazy pee-pee thing. Your urinalysis checked out fine, but you're still going really often and having some accidents.

First, I'm going to do what I should've already realized needed to be done, and switch back to only decaf coffee, and see if that helps. Lately, I've been making way too many cups of Cafe Mocha and Dark Chocolate Cocoa in the Keurig, and we both love it, but neither of us needs the caffeine or the sugar.

I should clarify that your "cup of coffee" has less than an ounce of coffee in it. Mine is about one-fourth to one-third skim milk, then I pour a little bit, maybe an ounce or so, into a sippy cup and fill it with skim milk. So, you're probably getting as much or more caffeine from my milk than you are from the "coffee" you're drinking yourself, but if you're peeing all the time, it seems like a reasonable place to start.

When I told you about it, you were not thrilled, but I promised that I would make the change myself, too (I explained about the caffeine in the goody milk, too) and that I would order some "squirts" as you call them (flavored syrups) and we can still use the Keurig to make decaf, and then add the (sugar free) syrups.

While you were in the tub this evening, I ordered a bottle each of chocolate, caramel and peppermint, so we can make caramel mocha or peppermint mocha, or just plain old mocha-mocha.

If things don't settle down after a few days, maybe by the beginning of next week, I'm going to check with the doctor again, and see if there's anything else we should be looking into, or doing to help you.

In the meantime, we'll just keep sending you to the potty, and watching for the pee-pee dance, and cleaning up pee.

On a more cheerful note, your pre-reading skills are really taking off. You have some sight words and as the past couple of days, you're starting to try to decode (sound out) words on your own!

Bless your heart, though, the first two you tried were "Abby" and "time." I explained about "and sometimes Y" but didn't even attempt "silent-E" yet.

The site words you know (that I can think of) are:
Your name, of course
Mama
Mommy
My real name
Mommy's real name
Both dog's real names
exit
stop
go
me
and possibly on and no

You can also spell several of them; you particularly like e-x-i-t and s-t-o-p and n-o.

Mommy and I were just discussing that this might be the last Christmas that we can spell about your gifts around you, and I may need to password-protect the "Xmas2013" directory on my computer!

Your math skills are coming along, as well. You've been counting to twenty for a while, and now you don't leave out any numbers. You can keep going from there with a little bit of prodding, but you usually say "twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten!"

I need to get you a big hundreds chart and put it on the wall or something, so you can see what's going on with the whole 20, 30, 40 . . . thing.

But the biggest news, developmentally, I think, has been your fine motor skills. I discovered recently that you can write your name! Neither we nor your teachers had seen you do that before. You are also suddenly very interested in trying to write letters, as well as making more representational drawings.

Granted, when you say "Look! I wrote a P!" it might look more like a lollipop, and I strongly suspect that a lot of your pictures start as scribbles and then you declare what they are, but at least now you're saying that they're something they actually do look like, not just "That blob of color is Mama, and that's me and that's Mommy."

A few days ago, you drew me, with two legs and some eyes!

The downside of this sudden interest in writing and drawing is that you're doing a great deal of it on your own body. You are totally inked-up pretty much all the time these days. It's not so bad with the washable and dry erase markers, but the ball point pen is there to stay for a while.

This evening, I looked over, and you had little circles all over your tummy. When I asked, "What is that?" you said, "It's a face!" and when I took away the pen, you said, "Uhoh! I forgot the ears!"

I gave up and let you draw ears before running you off to the tub for a scrub.

Other than that, the main thing going on here is the beginning of the Christmas season, which you're very excited about. You can't wait for December 1, when we can start opening drawers on our advent calendar, and getting the candy out. (Note to self: Buy candy, print notes and fill calendar in the next three days!)

And you are really looking forward to Santa coming. As soon as we decorated the tree and hung up our stockings, you were checking yours for candy!

Maybe our new friend Christopher the Elf will bring back a little sneak preview from Santa one of these nights.

You're old enough now, and yet still young enough to really enjoy all the fun Christmas activities we have planned, and I can't wait to enjoy them with you.

Merry No-It's-Not-Christmas-Yet, little Pooky!

I love you.


Love,
Mama