Noah is 3.5 Years Old

Noah hit the 3.5 year mark a few days ago so I figured it was time for an update.

The biggest recent news is that he is starting to drop his afternoon nap. He's napping right now actually, but for the past couple of weeks I've just let the nap go - and it has been amazing. Before, I would have to fight with him to nap, then he'd be grumpy when I woke him up, and then not tired enough to fall asleep at night. I'd have to fight with him again to get to bed at night and he usually didn't fall asleep until 10:00 or 10:30. A couple of weeks ago he seemed to be doing pretty well after lunch and too energized for a nap, so I just let him hang out in his room for a bit without napping. Then later at night, he was out by around 8:30. Amazing. Even though I let go of that little "break" during the day when his nap would have been, the extra 2 hours at night is totally worth it, plus no more fighting about sleeping (and no more grumpiness after nap). He still needs a nap every few days, like today, but otherwise this new change seems to be going well. The only hard part is getting him to take that nap every few days. Now that he's had a taste of just playing all day, he doesn't want to go back! And quite frankly, I don't either. In addition to no more sleeping issues and grumpiness, because Sarah is still napping, I also get a huge chunk of time just to spend with Noah during the day, and I think he really likes that. He starts to unravel a bit sometimes, especially in the evenings, but overall we haven't really had too many issues with meltdowns.

As Noah gets older, his personality continues to develop, and it's fun to get to know him through relationship, not just observation. He's really into movies and TV (yes, we kind of let him watch a lot) but he's always so interested in what happens between the different characters, especially the bad guys. He is always asking questions about why this person did this, why this other person did that, or just making connections with what he sees in the shows to what he sees in real life. He watched Frozen yesterday during the snow day and this morning was non-stop asking questions about the snow monster. Is he bad? Is he mean? Why does he throw people? Why does he throw the snowman? Was he trying to hurt them? Why couldn't he walk? Why was the snow man on his leg? He only is mean to people who shoot at him? And then he moved onto the wolves. Why were they chasing them? They were hungry. Did he want to bite them? Why were they hungry? Did the other animals not want to share their food? Different animals like different food. Like bears like fish? But some bears don't like fish? Etc, etc… It can be hard to answer these questions while driving on half-plowed roads, but at least he hasn't reached the stage of Why? Why? Why? after every answer. I think he was really stressed about this snow monster though because his questions kept circling around why this monster was being mean to people, and then right before nap time today he asked me if it was okay to hurt people sometimes. It's so interesting to see him forming these ideas of what's right and what's wrong, what's fair and what's not fair. He's also doing a lot of categorizing. There are a lot of questions like only boys do this? Only girls wear this? Only men do this? Only babies do this? Like he's trying to piece the world together, one question at a time. Hahaha..