Happy Holidays!

On Saturday Connor and I attended our first ever breakfast with Santa (well, that I can remember anyway) at our family YMCA. Because he was an oblivious baby his first christmas, and in Japan for his second, where New Year is the big holiday, not Christmas, last year was the first Christmas Connor actually observed.

While at age three he is a big boy this Christmas, he doesn't totally grasp the concept of Santa. He has no response when people ask him what he wants for Christmas, or if he is waiting for Santa.

But he still gets excited about Santa and Christmas trees and decorations. That's really nice. He gets the spirit of Christmas, not the materialistic bent of it.

I was thinking this morning, three is a great age: kids are talking and interacting. He is a real little person now. I think I mentioned in a previous post, the explosion of play and pretend talk I've noticed lately. Imagination and curiosity are really fired up.

Connor is a really good kid too. His passionate moments rarely boil over into full meltdowns.

He's doing great with his reading and writing - it seems like just the other day (it was two years ago), we were in Japan, making lists of words he could say. Now we could make a similar list of words he can read. He's putting all the pieces together. He's also developed an interest in writing, and he doing quite well. Last night he wrote his dad's name all by himself as an independent project (crayola marker on a dry erase board!). It was very cute.

So, look for a letter soon from Connor! Ha ha.

And the vocabulary: it's hilarious. Today he told me to turn off the over-range fan because it was "annoying" him (a word he learned from me in recent days- "Connor, stop that. It's annoying." He knows the context). And the other day, wailing, "This shirt won't cooperate for me!" when he couldn't get a shirt on.