Child Summary: Isaac at 3 years

Sleeping
Isaac is a good sleeper. He sleeps from 7:30pm (8 or 8:30pm for the summer) until I wake him up at 7am. If I don't wake him up, he has trouble falling asleep at nap time. He naps from 1pm until I wake him at 3 or 3:30pm. Again, if I don't wake him he will wake up before 7am after a couple days of longer naps. So he is getting about 13-14 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. He will skip a nap occasionally and just play in his bed. This is more likely to occur when we have disturbed his schedule by staying out past bedtime too many nights or by skipping a nap for an event. I recently took most of his stuffed animals out of his bed while trying to get him back into a routine after a weekend full of disturbances. This seemed to work well.

He goes to sleep easily and happily. He has the occasional bad dream and is very easy to calm down. He is in a big boy bed now and NEVER gets out without me. And he is keeping his overnight pull-up dry most of the time now, about 90% of the time.

Room time
We have not done regular room time this summer. We are about to start school again in a week and will start up with an hour of room time in the morning again so that I can get some school underway with the girls first thing after morning Mass. Hopefully, he does well with this transition, and I am not kicking myself for not doing it this summer. We've just been very busy doing fun stuff!

Eating
He eats well, but eats slowly now. All my kids were bitten by the slow eating bug around 3 years of age, and he appears to be no exception. He loves salad, and will eat any vegetable if he can dip it in Ranch. Fruit is a favorite of his, as well. Although he doesn't love spicy things, he will eat them as long as they are not too spicy. He is my only black olive eater in the house, besides myself.

For breakfast, he will eat either cereal (usually Daddy's Frosted Mini Wheats) or yogurt most days. For snacks, he is not picky, but he loves granola bars to death. For lunch, he like Hannah in that he is addicted to peanut butter and jelly. Even though he likes other things, he would rather have a PB&J sandwich for lunch. Most of the time, he is eating his sandwich, standing on a stool the second it is made while I finish up his veggies and fruit. He's always been impatient for food.

Siblings
He loves both his sisters and wants to play with them most of the time. He does seem to favor Hannah a bit still, but I have yet to figure out why since Genna is so sweet and loving to him. He will play whatever they want if they don't feel up to playing trains or Legos with him just so long as he gets to play with them.

He is very excited for his baby brother to "pop out" of my tummy, but he insists that we should name him Baby Conley still. He loves to feel him kick too.

Education
He knows the basics including his letters, numbers, shapes, and colors. He also knows lots of random facts about whales and sharks and other things like baby animal names. He can write his name, except for the "S." This coming year, my plan is to do lessons with him on phonics, math, and use the Five in a Row curriculum for the rest of the subjects. I will not be spending more than 30 minutes a day in formal learning, and realistically, probably not even that much with the new baby. I do hope to include him in our Religion and Art lessons at his own level.

Books
He loves to be read to and enjoys looking at books as well, although not as much as the girls always have. After hearing a book one time, he can retell the whole story, details and all, even weeks later. His favorite books lately have been Where the Wild Things Are and all books about airplanes. His old favorites are The Fox and the Hound, Chicken Little, and Bambi, two of which have hunters in them which is probably why he likes them.

Toys
At the moment, his favorites are Thomas trains, airplanes, and play dough or gak. He loves to play outside, riding his trike, using sidewalk chalk, and blowing bubbles. He plays well and carefully with his toys most of the time. I recently have had to correct him about throwing toys, but I think this is a behavior that has been picked up by other kids he plays with and will probably be a short term problem.

Dentist/Doctor
He did great a t the dentist, sitting in the chair by himself and following directions. He needed me to sit next to him, but that was it. He asked questions and was curious what things were.

At his 3 year well check up, he did not need any shots. I told him ahead of time that I was pretty sure he didn't need any shots. His sisters did not go with us to the doctor because they were playing at a friend's house and so he was a little bit nervous about it at first. I promised him that if he was good and brave he could have a lollipop afterwards since that's what I always got when I was little. That seemed to get his mind off being afraid. He did great once we were there, but he did check with the nurse and doctor to make sure they weren't going to give him any shots.

Talking
He is a big talker, especially for a boy. He talks nearly as much as the girls do. My favorite thing is his expressive face when he talks. He wrinkles, squints, and twists his face while he is talking and uses quite a bit of inflection.

Concerns/Trouble Areas
As of the last couple weeks, he is having some discipline problems. He is crying a lot, when he used to use his words. He has been much more difficult to calm as well. He has also been more deliberately defiant to me (not to Dad as much.) My guesses at the cause or causes for this turn of behavior are, 1)he is getting his 2 year molars in finally, 2) I am being too lax with him because of my lack of energy at the end of this pregnancy, and 3) as I mentioned earlier, he has not been doing his regular room time and I really think that helps with discipline and obedience. It is probably all of those things, and I need to tough it up and crack down a bit on our rules. Normally he is a very laid back, obedient boy who is easy to discipline. Hopefully, he will get back to normal soon. He usually prays "for the best mom he ever had," but on a particularly challenging day last week, he prayed, "I pray that my mom will be the best mom I ever had again." Needless to say, he wasn't happy with how things were going either. Constant discipline and consequences coming from an unhappy mommy do not make "the best mom I ever had."

Schedule
I have already mentioned his sleep schedule and since summer is over for us and the school year begins and our schedule is about to change I won't post a schedule here. During the summer, other than getting his naps and trying to keep to an 8:30pm bed time, we haven't had a set schedule. We have been swimming twice a week and had lots of play dates with friends. Plus, we've played outside with the neighbors whenever it was not too hot.