Nathan is now 3.5 years old. People talk about the 2’s being a tough time, but we seemed to mostly breeze through. Yes, we had difficulties, but nothing that would make me dub the year as the Terrible Twos. That year Nathan had to get used to being a big brother, so I didn’t really expect it to be easy. The Threes I have been finding harder, though until now it was mostly to do with sibling rivalry/fighting. I have definitely found the last few weeks the hardest of being a parent so far, and it has been solely due to Nathan’s behavior. He has become really unhelpful, and deliberately destructive and/or messy. He has also had a number of tantrums/meltdowns when he doesn’t get his way, with many if them being in public (which is never pleasant). The thing is, I know that when he is being destructive, for example, that I can fix the situation by spending some one-on-one time with him, but either I am in the middle of doing something I don’t want to stop, like cooking dinner, or Toby gets upset and tries to dominate my attention. I also think that sometimes I expect too much from him, because he is the big boy compared to Toby, and I forget that he is only three years old which is still pretty little really.
Still, I don’t want to linger on the difficult, because there are some wonderful things that Nathan is doing, and he is also fun to be around. He is interested in everything, wants to know how everything works, wants to do (almost) everything on his own. His reading is slowly coming along, and he still amazes me at times when he reads a sign or a word in a book I didn’t realize he knew. He is getting a lot better at throwing, but still struggles with catching, and his balance is great and can now walk on planks (for example) without falling off. He still has his own language, but his real words are getting more and more understandable by those who don’t know him, with more sounds being pronounceable, though c, q and r sounds are still pretty difficult for him. He adores his little brother and they share their own little world and can play together really well, but he is also way too rough with Toby and often play ends in tears.
One of the things that has changed with Nathan over the last 6 months, and it is a really big thing for us, is that he doesn’t often breastfeed to sleep any more. Most nights Andrew reads him to sleep on the couch while I am getting Toby to sleep in the bedroom, and then we transfer Nathan to his bed. Funnily enough, he doesn’t go to sleep when Andrew reads to him in his bed, but he does if I try on the bed (though that doesn’t happen very often). Being able to share the job of helping Nathan to sleep has been wonderful for me. The books we read to Nathan are ones with lots of words and not many pictures like Roald Dahl books (though many of them have to be censored – many of his stories have lots of violence and/or guns in them, neither of which are really appropriate for his age…to my way of thinking).
Nathan has started watching a small amount of TV in the last 3 months. He has seen a few episodes of Playschool now, mostly when Andrew doesn’t make it home from work before I take Toby to bed. To stop him harassing me while I try to get Toby to sleep, watching Playschool as been a useful distraction. He has seen half a dozen or so episodes, so it is not a regular event. He has also watched a few documentaries which he loves.
Update: yes, it is now several weeks on from when I wrote the above, and I truly jinxed us with Nathan’s sleep. He has become so very difficult to get to sleep lately that we are having fights at night over sleep which I hate. I am hoping he learns to relax and go to sleep soon….surely this is just another phase…..surely…..
