TCS: Charlie at 2 and a half.

 Charlie on his first day of preschool. :)

Since his best friend is now at kindergarten all day, we started Charlie in 3-day-a-week preschool on Wednesday. He came home and told us he didn't like it, but we're also not sure he knows exactly what that means except in the context of food or Gracie bothering him. He was definitely having fun on the playground moments before I picked him up. :) And he didn't cry at all when I dropped him off--just walked into the room and didn't look back!

Since that's all I know about his preschool experience, I thought we could find out what else goes on in his little world, so while he was playing with a bin of noodles and a crane truck at the kitchen table, I asked him the same questions I asked Gracie. :)

1. What is your favorite color?
Ummmmm yellow. And pink and orange and red and pink and red and and my crane truck is is is um is yellow and this is green and this is uh, blue. This is blue, and this is green! Sooo this is orange!

2. What is your favorite toy?
Ummmm a farm. A book. A moose. Giraffe. Ummm penguin. I have a lots of toys in my bedroom. Sooo the crane truck is getting more of noodles!

3. What is your favorite fruit?
Ummmm the favorite fruit is orange, too. Its orange, too. I like to eeeeeeat sandwich with apples with berries in it buuuuut sooooooo... I like to use apples with berries in it.

4. What is your favorite TV show?
I like to watch Rapunzel ("Prepunzel"). It has a cow on it! (He thinks horses are cows.) The crane truck is digging some some some noodles!

5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?
Ummm I think ("I sink")... Well... I don't know. But I like to eat apples with berries, so I just... My favorite toy is my crane truck. You're not in charge of it!

6. What is your favorite outfit?
I like to wear a "Pinch Me" shirt! Sooooo, a crab pants. (He has some jammies with crabs on the pants and a crab on the shirt saying "Pinch me" that he just finds hilarious.) Mommy? Ummm.... This. Today the crane truck is driving. It's about to drive! It was going about to go backwards! It stopped!

7. What is your favorite game?
Ummm I think so. It's a favorite toy that I can play.

8. What is your favorite snack?
Ummmm sandwich and peanut butter with berries in it, there's two berries in it, buuuuut my berries are too small they are big soooo they ARE big. Soooo...

9. What is your favorite animal?
Ummm... I think so it's my bear! Yeah! It gets to say (sings) eee kee lee kee ha ha ha! (breaks into a Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood song) If you have to go potty go right awaaaaaay!

10. What is your favorite song?
Ummm... Ummm... Uh "Grandpa's Farm" and "Twinkle Twinkle" and "ABCs" and a excavator song and a bulldozer song and a crane truck song! Mom, you know, you know, you know the the you know the crane truck song? (Breaks into a rendition of a song someone made up for him:) The crane truck likes to diiig! And diiiig dirt. He don't likes to get a hurt. He likes to say hoot hoot! He likes to dig some diiiirt! And he likes to diig with diiiirt! Yaaaay! (claps)

Radioactive and Demons (both Imagine Dragons songs) in the car. (He can sing both fairly well, too.)

11. What is your favorite book?
Ummm... I think... I think... A ABC book? Soooo... I read another book? Umm... I like to read a Elmo! That's a book!

12. Who is your best friend?
Ummm... Samuel? Samuel is a grown up! (He is 6 months old) No. He's a baby, silly! He has a tummy! (His BFF is probably actually Grace right now. They are SO excited to play when she gets home from school.)

13. What is your favorite cereal?
Ummm... I think... I don't know. Ummm. It's yellow. It's yellow, too. And my truck is yellow, too!

14. What is your favorite thing to do outside?
Ummm... Baseball?

15. What is your favorite drink?
Ummm... water?

16. What is your favorite holiday?
Ummm... Ummm uhhhh.... Ummm... to drink water.

17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night?
Umm a book. That's a book. Puppy goes and monkey goes and he's heavy in my family. (Monkey is bigger than Charlie.)

18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?
I like to eat Cheerios yummy in my tummyyyyy. Yes I do like to eat yummy in my tummy. Yes ma'am. He's talking to the lady.

19. What do you like for a special dinner?
Ummm a mustache. (He's pretending a crane truck wheel is a mustache right now.) I like to eat Cheerios! Yummy in my tummy!

20. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Umm it will be my birthday when Juliette's born.

21. What is your favorite thing to do?
I don't know.

22. What is your favorite thing to do with Mommy?
Umm play.

23. What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy?
First we got to drill it. (Runs away to find a drill for his crane truck, so mom asks the question again.) Umm read a book.

24. What is your favorite thing to do with Gracie?
Look, a mustache. (Sticks his play-drill on his nose and turns it on.)

25. Anything else you want to say about yourself?
Ummm... Some words?

Other things about Charlie at this age...

His Lego trains say, "Chugga-chugga-CHEERIO!" instead of "choo choo," which we love. He also calls all remote controls (like for the TV) a "pretty puh-mote." We're not sure why they're pretty, but they are. His enunciation skills have gotten better over the last month or so: he's started saying "Juliette" instead of "Goo-lee-yet" and "Charlie" instead of "Carly." I know its progress, but is also always just a little sad when he learns to say something right instead of in his cute Charlie way.

Loves & Likes

His favorite passtimes still usually involve opening and closing things. He's gotten a lot better at restraining himself from playing with doors/drawers when we ask him to. But any toy/box/bin that is allowable, he will play with.

He also loves playing excavator/dump truck. Sometimes he plays with actual toy trucks, sometimes he uses a bin of noodles and some measuring cups, and sometimes he just raises his arm in the air, makes his hand into a claw, and becomes a crane truck. "Look Mommy! The crane truck is digging the dirt!" Amusingly, he doesn't seem to want anything to do with actual dirt himself. :)

He loves watching Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, and will also sit through Sid the Science Kid or Word World, mostly because he knows Grace likes them. He loves The Muppets and Tangled when we get to watch a movie.

We usually have music playing, so he's big into singing and dancing. He can identify a lot of songs and though he doesn't know the names of artists, he can tell when one of our faves is playing. Wednesday a Ben Lee song came on Pandora and he started singing a different Ben Lee song in response. :) He's got some great dance moves, too. He definitely keeps us laughing.

He loves peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and has recently become obsessed with granola. He also likes any and all fruit, especially watermelon, blueberries, strawberries, and bananas. Milk is his beverage of choice. Goldfish are pretty popular, too.

Dislikes

He doesn't like vegetables (he's been known to cry when we ask him to eat a carrot. ONE carrot.) and he's hit or miss with proteins. He hates cheese. (How do we share DNA?!)

He doesn't like when Daddy goes to work, or when it is nap or bedtime. He's gotten a lot better at coping with these things (we have some incentives in place) but he still lets us know he'd rather they didn't happen. :)

Big Steps

He's potty trained! Totally and completely--he even wears undies at nap time and at night. Our next things to practice are putting underwear on independently (he can do this with some guidance) and learning how to wash his hands without playing in the sink. :) He's seriously done so awesome--he even gets up in the night and comes to get us if he has to pee, and that only happens about once every couple of weeks.

He's also gotten a lot better at communicating in the last two months, which has meant a lot more using his words and a lot less crying hysterically. For some reason he cried every time we drove anywhere for pretty much all of June. A couple times I pulled the van over and we had some, er, conversations about how we don't scream in the van. Sometimes vegetables get him down, but we just ask him to go to his room until he is done crying, and he's usually pulled himself together within a few minutes of that. Since potty training in July I think he is feeling more like a big boy, and he has been talking things out with us a lot more. He's also getting great at conversation and his sense of humor is shining out. He cracks us up.

He wasn't really interested in books until he turned about 2, but now he can sit through and recite his favorites, and he always wants to take some to bed. He often asks me to sit and read to him in a chair in his room. (He's very understanding about the fact that I no longer have a lap.)

Independent playtime/pretend has gotten a lot more fun for him lately, too. He's started to parent his favorite toys, putting blanket to bed or cuddling Monkey when he cries. He only occasionally punishes them; he is mostly a very benevolent parent. And or course crane trucks and excavators are a big part of pretend time, too.

I love this age, and he is a ton of fun. He is definitely my little buddy, and it was hard to send him to preschool even though I knew it would be good for him. I just missed him! He's always starting conversations and showing me things and telling me what his crane truck is up to. We love our Charlie boy. :)