Eugenious

Dear Sylvan,

You’re really 3 1/2 now, an age you’ve been calling yourself for the past few months. You understand ages better than I would think someone with little knowledge of fractions could: you know that after you’re 3 1/2, you’ll be 4, then 4 1/2, etc. Each age is a compartment, or so I imagine it in your brain. You’ve got the sequence in hand, and you even said to me today: “I’m 3 1/2 and Elena’s zero; when I’m 6, Elena will be 3.” I actually remember thinking, when I was about your age, that I’d never be older than my older friends, and it was sort of an epiphanic moment; it saddened me then.

Your understanding of numbers isn’t always so obviously accurate. Witness this conversation with your Dad:

Daddy: “If I have seven of something and you have eight of something, who has more things?”

Sylvan: “Mommy!”

But your understanding of your Mommy is accurate – especially if we’re talking about Mommy having more chocolate.

During the past couple of months, you’ve developed a friendship with Camilla. I won’t tell any stories that might embarrass you later, but suffice it to say that you’re crazy about Camilla and she’s crazy about you. When you see each other at school, you start giggling and making Happy Talk hands, facing each other and smiling. While I don’t expect Camilla to drop you like a hot potato (not only do I think you’re a little young for the fickleness of middle school friendships, but Camilla is such a genuinely sweet person that I don’t think it would cross her mind not to include her Sylvan in her circle), the depth of your joy with this friendship makes my heart both swell and break for you, for the deep love and the deep pain that we humans cause each other. I don’t mean that last sentence as a warning. But I will be here to hug you when your heart breaks.

You and I have given up your naps this past week. Since September, you’ve rarely slept at school on the couple of afternoons you’re there each week. I have been dreading this, although now that I’m not spending an hour and a half trying to get you to take a nap, it’s much less stressful, of course. We still read books and I leave you to spend some quiet time in your room in the late afternoon. You read books to yourself one recent afternoon and jumped on your bed for 45 straight minutes on another.

Sometimes I wonder if whoever coined the term Terrible Twos meant Terrible Threes. But that’s not alliterative. Thankless Threes? I feel that way on the difficult afternoons, when you and I are butting heads, sometimes literally, when you are having a difficult time curbing your whining and so am I, frankly. But you are definitely becoming a better listener and helper. You made yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich yesterday, from removing the bread and jelly from the fridge to slapping the slices of bread together. I helped with the twist tie on the bread bag, a little final peanut butter spreading, and cutting your sandwich into nine pieces, per your request.

How about Thecodont Threes? That’s probably most appropriate, given your new interest in dinosaurs, especially pteranodons.

You’re becoming more and more independent, which is great, given that, even though Elena’s pretty low-maintenance for a nearly seven-month-old, she still needs to have her diaper changed and be taken upstairs for naps. You have created some fantastic train tracks and glued together some fun collages recently, all under your own steam.

Sylvan wears a homemade bracelet and necklace

You still love letters and sounds, and, if you ask me a word and I suggest that you sound it out, you ask pertinent questions, like, “Does this C make a ck or ss sound?” Recently, you spelled WMM with alphabet blocks, then said, “Look, Daddy, it says ‘Wuh! Muh! Muh! That’s what Elena says: ‘Wuhmuhmuh!'”

I’ll leave you with a joke, the first you’ve told, as far as I know:

How do light bulbs and light fixtures learn to fly?

They just need to be a weathervane!

Yeah, I don’t get it either, but I’m willing to laugh with you.

Love,

Mommy