My Almost-Three-Year-Old

Benjamin is now 34 months. I'm not sure if it's his approaching third birthday (he's steadily moving away from 2 1/2!!) or Peter's recent sitting up (which frees me up tremendously! I love, love, LOVE this stage) but I have been enjoying (almost) every minute with my big boy. He really is a lot of fun. He often asks me if I'm happy, tells me he loves me, and says we're best friends. He likes to pull me down to the floor randomly and give me big hugs. He even takes his responsibility to "help Peter be happy" more seriously these days while Mommy is busy.
So here's a post, dedicated to him. This way, I won't forget some of the little details that made him so endearing at this age.

Benjamin still loves his games, especially Candy Land. He's doing much better at following the rules lately.

I guess he must have gotten it from Blue's Clues, but Benjamin is really into "contraptions" like pulleys, ramps and see-saws. He actually uses those words in context too. Like instead of calling the cord on the blinds a string, he calls it a pulley. I know I didn't teach him that one. This is a fun ramp game that he likes. He rolls these cylindrical blocks down the slide and tries to make them into the bread pans at the bottom. Then he counts how many missed, and how many made it into each of the pans.

Benjamin likes to talk a lot about what's "good for our bodies." He loves checking out books from the library that are all about bodies. During dinner, he'll often start explaining that a certain food "helps our body to be strong and it gives us energy." For breakfast, he'll choose Grape Nuts over any other cereal on the table, which is weird to me because even I won't eat Grape Nuts very often.

The only place he likes to be naked is in the tub, because as he often reminds me, he has to wear a shirt so he "won't get sunburned" and pants and underpants because "we have to be modest." I might have told him about sunburns last summer, but he never forgot. Nevermind that we're in the house all day, OUT of the sun! :)

He gets so excited to go on any outing with me. We went to the fire station last week, and you would have thought it was Christmas. He was an angel, anticipating for days the fun he'd have there! If you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up, without hesitation, he'll answer, "a fireman!"

We also went to the pet shop on a whim last week, and now he talks all about "Marshmallow" the white cat. It was by far his favorite pet there!

He memorizes books, so I have to be careful about how I read them. I was reading his current favorite, "The Best Mistake Ever," by Richard Scarry, and accidentally left out a line at the end. He stopped me, and "reread" the last two pages back to me, word for word.

I've only recently started noticing how often he quotes from his books too. The other day, he was pretending to fly on an airplane and to to Grandma and Grandpa Cannon's house. When he got there (the destination was apparently in the lower half of his bedroom closet) he had to make sure he had everything there with him. Books, pull-ups, pajamas, toys, puzzles, games, boxes...Then he excitedly told me how much he loves their house because it is full of "wonderful toys to play with and good food to eat" ("The Little Engine That Could," by Watty Piper). It's true.

We have funny conversations all day long, like about who he's going to marry. He says he's going to marry Mary Joyce because Kennedy died. I had to inform him that Kennedy moved about 1/2 hour away and that she's not dead, but it's still Mary Joyce that he's into. I guess he can't do long distance relationships or something.

So I really can't take credit for this fun, bright little boy. I just feel lucky to be the Mommy.