Joseph - 3.5

Joseph is officially 3 1/2 and such a big boy. He is excited about becoming a big brother even though I'm pretty sure he has no idea of the full repercussions.

Things we love about our 3 1/2 year old boy:

He loves trains. Our dining room is currently the train room and he loves to go in there and play and play.

He loves puzzles. Joseph has quite a few puzzles and can do most of them "all myself!"

He loves Legos and Lincoln Logs and anything else that can be used to build things.

He loves to ready books and will help with sounding out letters and words. He has known all his letters and their sounds for quite some time but is becoming very interested in how they all work together.

He loves his Georges. He currently has 4 Curious George friends. Red George (the first and favorite), Brown George, Blue George and Yellow George. They go to bed with him every night and come downstairs with him every morning. He has more friends that stay on the bed. Apparently they're good enough to sleep with but not to hang out with during the day.

He's just a little OCD. Things like getting milk in the morning have a routine that needs to be followed. The dish towel on the stove gets straightened quite often. He apologizes profusely for involuntary messes (throwing up) but ironically, not for the many messes he makes and doesn't want to clean up.

He loves going to school and is becoming a lot more interactive with his friends. He goes two days a week and enjoys playing outside, circle time and show & tell.

His imagination is going wild. He is always pretending to be a movie character of some sort. Most recently his character of choice is WALL-E although sometimes it's also fun to spin like EVE.

He is still a great sleeper. He sleeps about 11 hours at night and still takes a 3-4 hour nap in the afternoon. On school days he only gets a 2 hour nap (and I'm sure he doesn't sleep the whole time) which makes for an earlier bedtime on those nights.

He's still a sweet snuggle-bug. I love snuggling with him first thing in the morning and the last thing before he goes to bed. And I love that he loves to hug.

He's grateful for everything (almost). He is quick to say "thank you for my nummy dinner mama" and "thank you - that's my favorite!"

He makes up silly songs and loves to entertain people he knows well. He is still pretty shy around people he doesn't know well . . . at least at first.

Joseph is a sweet, adorable, precious, challenging, smart and funny little guy and we're so glad to have this sweet 3 1/2 year old as our boy.