He's THREE!

Well, we have a three year old.  As always, it's hard to believe that he's growing up so fast.  The last year has been so much fun.  I feel like I'm talking to an adult sometimes with some of the conversations we have. He is so funny, loves to learn and is such an encourager. We continue to go story time at the library each week and check out a stack of books.  He can't wait for Daddy to get home and read all 10-15 of them. I'm not sure which one of them loves it more. Recently he's been checking out a few books on Presidents.  He read one on Harry S Truman.  We were standing in line at Walmart Customer Service to return something and he says, "Look, it's Harry S Truman!"  It was actually Sam Walton.  That made me laugh!

We went to the doctor for his 3 year well child check this week.  He weighs 33 pounds(65%) and is 38 inches tall(68%).  He is wearing size 3T and just got new size 9 1/2 shoes for his birthday.  His heart murmur was still present at the appointment.  It is very faint and they feel confident it is an innocent murmur. Otherwise he got a great report.  He went to the dentist last week and had his first actual cleaning and another round of fluoride.  His upper molars still haven't erupted. Somehow he got the idea that daily 2 hours are optional.  Who told him that? He still naps most days, but when he doesn't he'll still sleep 12 hours at night, so that's nice.  He has been potty trained for 3 months, minus a few accidents.

We had such a fun time celebrating his birthday.  He loves the Royals and baseball.  We thought maybe we should start with a T Bones game to see if he'd even stay in his seat and watch the game.  May 19th was Opening Day for the T Bones.  We went to dinner at T Rex then walked to the game.  He did really well and we even had to sit through some light rain.  A bag of kettle corn kept him occupied for a while, but he made it to the end of the game.

On his actual birthday, we had a party at the park with our family and friends.  We served brunch and had about 30 people join us.  The weather was perfect and the kids had so much fun playing.  The theme was Thomas the Train.  He is very much into trains right now and that was his first choice for a party theme.  He wanted Thomas and Victor to both be on his cake.  Aunt "Shoosh" Shannon helped us make a Thomas cake and had several trains chugging around it.  He asked for several trains for his birthday that he picked on Amazon.  He looked through Pinterest with me to chose a cake design, also.  He has an opinion about most everything.  He talks in his sleep most nights and is quite the dreamer. I'm afraid he gets the crazy dreaming part from me:) A lot of the time, he talks in his sleep about trains. Although, a couple weeks ago he woke me up at 3:30 am to ask what the name of the pizza place was that we went to several months ago with his cousins.  Crazy kid!

Here are some of my favorites from the last 3 months.

My first flower of the season :)

Some friends from church invited us to go to the zoo with them.  He was so excited to ride the train!

 Great Grandma Mary Lu reading him his new books on Easter

What a great helper!

 These 2 love to play pirates together.  That is Caden's "pirate face"

 March Madness at Power and Light. RCJH :) Love those blue eyes!

 Very proud of his sucker plant from story time at the library

 Easter goofball!

 Easter Sunday morning at church

 Handsome!

 Oh the giggles:)

Using his golf cart to pick up the weeds Daddy was digging up in the yard.  Such a creative thinker!

 Go Royals!

Big stuff drinking his Starbucks water!

 Having fun in the bouncy house at the Crawfish Boil at church

 We took a day trip to Parkville and Weston.  This was taken at Cafe de Amis in Parkville.  It's a really good French restaurant that we'd been to several years ago and wanted to eat at again. 

 Such a hard worker! The rain boots were perfect for car washing!

He loves to take selfies

 Happy Mother's Day to me :) He picked out this shirt, card and lilies for me. 

  My boys took me to dinner at Luigi's in Leavenworth on Mother's Day.  I wore my new shirt :)

 This is how he spends a good portion of his day...playing trains.

 Hard at work putting a screw back in.

 Birthday dinner at T Rex

 T Bones Game and kettle corn = happy boys

Birthday Time!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Caden!!

I printed a birthday interview off of the internet and asked Caden the questions.  Here are the answers :)

1. What is your name? 

Caden

2. How old are you?

Three

3. What is your favorite color?

Purple

4. What is something that you are really good at?

Taking trains

5. What do you want your job to be when you grow up?

Cook noodles

6. What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy?

Watch a video in the green chair

7. What is your favorite thing to do with Mommy?

eat yogurt

8. Who are your friends that you like to play with?

friends from library and friends from church

9. What is your favorite toy?

trains

10. What is your favorite book?

Thomas the Train

11. Do you have a favorite song?

Jesus Loves Me

12. What is your favorite thing to eat?

noodles

13. What is your favorite dessert?

cookies, granola, coconut & cream

14. What is your favorite thing to do outside?

mow

15. Where is your favorite place to go?

Walmart

https://vimeo.com/172261574

Here's the link to his annual video from age 2 -3:)

2 years and 9 mos

Well it's our last quarterly update before Caden turns the big THREE! He's already talking about it and I'm not rushing it.  We have loved this age!

He is measuring 37 inches tall, 31 pounds, size 8 1/2 shoes and 3T clothes.  The molars on the lower arch finally popped through and we're still waiting on the upper ones.  So, maybe by the time he's three he'll have his two year molars :) He loves to watch basketball, play football with Daddy and pitch a baseball to anyone who will play with him.  He LOVES to pitch! I'm thinking it's time for me to get a glove because my hand burns when I try to catch the balls he throws.  He has quite the arm.  If you mention the word April, he'll let you know that's when the Royals start playing again.  Each day we work on a letter of the alphabet and that has really helped him to recognize the letters. We write words that begin with that letter and talk about it throughout the day. He loves to practice his letters and asks how to spell things all day long.  He can spell several words on his own now.  He loves to read books and continues to memorize them and "read" them to us for a change.  We encourage his reading and go to the Basehor story time every Tuesday morning and pick new books to read.  His favorites lately have been Pete the Cat, Elephant and Piggie and Bible story books.  GiGi got him a number chart and he also likes to point to each number and practice saying them.  He can say 1 through 20 on his own and makes it close to 40 while looking at the chart.  He seems to be a visual learner :) I love teaching him things and watching him learn.  He loves music and sings a lot.  Aunt Lee Lee got him some new Bible CDs that go along with his Bible story books.  He loves to sit by the CD player and listen to the songs and memorize them so he can sing along.  Most of the time I'm not aloud to sing along! He says, "Let them sing it!" I sing anyway because I love to sing, too!  He says funny things all the time and keeps us laughing.  When we went to watch Upward Basketball last week as we pulled into the parking lot he wanted to know if there would be girls there.  Yes, he was interested in the cheerleaders as well as the game :) He loves to go to church and be in his Sunday School class.  We pray he'll always love to go to church and learn about God. He has a great teacher and lots of boys his age to play with.

Potty training is going well.  I was about to give up in January.  It seemed like we were going backward instead of forward.  Then one day it just started getting better. He made it 10 days without an accident so we let him start wearing underwear instead of pull-ups.  We still have to remind him that it's time to go potty, but he's doing better about telling us when he needs to go.  Most days he goes to sleep between 9:30 and 10 and gets up about 8.  I have to wake him up around 8 in order for him to be ready for a nap.  He'll usually nap from 2-4, give or take 30 minutes. We have our moments, and some days he spends some quality time in time-out for not listening, but overall we have a ton of fun.  Ton is one of his favorite words :)

Here are the highlights from the last 3 months.....

Thanksgiving Lunch

Looking throught the Black Friday ads with Uncle Mike

We had Thanksgiving Dinner at my aunt and uncle's house this year with my side of the family.

It was a full day of fun, family and food!

Let the countdown begin....

Mailing a letter to Santa at the Basehor Library

Family Christmas Adventure :) 

Union Station, Crown Center, Plaza and dinner at O'Dowds.

Christmas Sunday at Fellowship West

Cowley/Jarratt Family Christmas

We spent Christmas Eve at my parent's house and went to the Christmas Eve Service at Fellowship West.  It was a fun and relaxing day with family.

Aunt Shannon thought Caden needed a drum set :)  He just kinda liked it!

Cookies for Santa and new Christmas pjs

Reading Luke 2 with Daddy before bed

On Christmas morning we let Caden open his gifts from us.  The tunnels were a big hit! 

We spent Christmas Day at Mitch's parent's house.  We had lunch and opened gifts.  

 Then just had a fun time with family and ate soup for dinner.

Catching snowflakes on his tongue like in Charlie Brown Christmas

Continuing our tradition of making snow donuts for the first real snow

We went to Wonderscope with Baw-Baw, GiGi and Aunt Shannon

All ready to play in the snow the 2nd time we got some snow

Rock Chalk Jayhawk

The Christmas Train at the Library

 Happy New Year! We went to Cabela's and Culver's then home for Caden to go to bed.
We rang in the New Year then went to bed ourselves.

On New Year's Day we celebrated Christmas with the Klein's 

Helping make one of his favorites...apple pie :)

My superhero

Cutie :)

He wanted to try on Daddy's shorts

He picked this bear out at Walmart and used the gift card he got for Christmas.  His GiGi helped him name her, Rosie, because he didn't like any of my name suggestions!

I love this face! 

He thought it was a good idea to unload the ottoman/toy box and sit in there 

to eat his snacks and work on his numbers.

Helping Aunt Aimee blow out her candles

The day before Valentine's Day we went to watch some Upward Basketball games then went to have lunch at Paulo & Bill's.  He was pretty excited about making his own ordering choices.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day apple pie :)

The day after Valentine's Day we had dinner with my family.  These 3 cuties were wearing their 

Valentine outfits from Baw-Baw & GiGi. 

Playing in the leaves on a nice, warm, February day! He's ready for spring!

Hard at work on his numbers

Next update...3 years old!