Before I forget what Nathan is like when he turned three, I feel the need to write down where he is at in terms of development.
Nathan knows his alphabet, though he forgets U and V when he sings the alphabet. He is only just starting to remember them. He knows most of the sounds that go with the letters, and a few sounds that go with combinations of letters. This means at we can sound out many words, though he doesn’t manage to link the sounds with the actual word yet. I think that the words that he does know/recognize are memorized. He will spell out the words he knows before saying the word. M Y my. N A T H A N Nathan. S T O P stop. He now says the ‘f’ sound
Nathan recognizes easily numbers up to 12. He loves doing dot-to-dots that go to number 35, so he is starting to recognize higher numbers as well. He does simple addition and subtraction, particularly well with numbers below five.
Nathan now generally runs like an older child and not like a toddler….he clenched his fists and runs with elbows bent rather than hands open and arms straight. He is getting the hang of catching, though you still have to throw a ball directly to him. Throwing, though, is another matter. He loves throwing and can do it quite well now. He can jump over things and can jump forwards rather than on the spot.
Nathan continues to favour his left hand when drawing, so I think he is taking after me and is turning out to be a lefty. He loves drawing and painting, cutting and glueing. He is able to cut roughly along a line now so he is able to cut out a picture from a magazine. He still doesn’t watch TV, but he does get a little bit of screen-time on the computer or iPad. He has watched the occasional documentary on the iPad, loves TuxPaint (computer drawing programme) and does a few educational things on the iPad.
Mostly Nathan is an absolute joy to be around, though there are times when he tries to hurt his brother, and times when he wants something he can’t have and then he has meltdowns. in reality these meltdowns aren’t so bad, but they do happen. He also has a habit of wanting something because Toby has it and will do something immediately after we have just told Toby not to do it. Still, the two boys generally have a ball together and seem to talk to each other in Toby-ese.
As far as toileting goes, Nathan is very reliable at going to the toilet when he needs to. He loves standing to wee, something I have been letting him practice outside to the detriment of our violets, but i haven’t been brave enough to encourage the standing wee inside the house yet. Occasionally, though, he will wet his pants when he is distracted or busy doing something. I don’t recall the last time he wet his bed.
The things that I can think of right now that Nathan loves are rubbish trucks, concrete mixers, trains, trams (particularly the brown one…the tourist tram), the zoo, dugongs (a legacy of going to the Sydney Aquarium regularly), cranes, parks, playing in sand, cooking, acting at being an adult including caring for his baby (Teddy) and pretending to go to work, sweeping, vacuuming, sewing, playing doctor, playing with cars and trains and his tool bench, riding his bike, swimming, pretending to go to Mars or the moon in a rocket, and basically helping out anywhere he possibly can.
