Thirty-Four Months

Dear Patrick,

Today you are exactly thirty-four months, a mere two months from turning three years old. Once again, I find myself writing your letter at Nana and Grandpa's, which seems to happen fairly often. The funny part is that despite this phenomenon, we don't see them nearly as often as we used to. Our visits just somehow seem to fall right around the 7th of the month. But that's okay because you seem to take your best pictures in places other than our house--at least your happiest.
One of the month's huge accomplishments is jumping. It's a skill you've been working on for a long time, but only recently have you been able to find yourself actually lifting off the ground. Now you regularly clear several inches every try--and that's a lot of tries. You spend much of your day hopping around, in imitation of frogs, toads, bunnies, and plain old Patrick. I wish I knew how you found all that energy to jump everywhere, when you're not skipping or running like an Olympian. It makes for one worn-out mommy by naptime, but your calves are going to end up very muscular at this rate. It's no wonder you don't gain much weight.

Speaking of that, you still aren't growing very fast. You seem to be growing straight up, but you have very little meat on your bones. Your youngest girl cousin has almost caught up to you already, and I'm sure the rest aren't far behind. It won't be long until even little Corey is handing down his clothes to you.

Recently we had to start a whole new wardrobe for you, one lacking any hard decoration of any kind, especially buttons, zippers, and snaps, so that we could save ourselves needing to repaint the entire house. When we did so, we immediately passed down all your pajama onesies to Nathan, who was barely squeezing into any of his. It was scary to realize that your underweight brother fills out those onesies nearly as well as you do. Once Nathan starts walking, I'm sure I'll start getting asked whether the two of you are twins.

Despite your size, though, you are mature for your age. Oh, not in language, of course--more on that in a minute--and much of the time not in obedience, but you are socially advanced. You want to be so helpful and insist on cleaning up after yourself (unless, of course, I ask you to). You help with Nathan without being bossy and let me know when you see something that needs attending to.

You are also so grown up with showing affection. For the first time in your short life, you are giving hugs and kisses on command and spontaneously. You'll only give them to people you know and love, but you don't hold back. There is nothing better than getting you out of bed in the morning to be greeted by a huge grin followed by a kiss. "Mmm-ma!" This loving side of your personality definitely makes up for all the times your disobedience frustrates me.

Another thing you do right now that I love is carry around Dinosaur. He goes with you everywhere, even outside the house right now. You want to share all your experiences with Dinosaur from meals and naptime to meeting new people and going new places. It is such a stereotypical toddler picture to watch you lugging around your comfort object, and you attract stares of the best kind everywhere we go. If that contagious grin and huge, expressive blue eyes weren't enough, Dinosaur gets smiles from the grumpiest-looking adults.

Unfortunately, your language is still lagging behind. Last week we had your six-month review with Miss Joann from ECI. She'd mentioned recently that your language had improved so much that she thought you might be ready to move on from ECI, that you might have gotten all the help you needed to catch up soon. But when we looked more carefully at all the milestones of all the areas of language development, we realized that you're not really that caught up. Yes, you are talking much more with a huge vocabulary and whole sentences, and we can understand so much more of what you say. But you talk according to your "own agenda," as Miss Joann put it. You talk about what you want to talk about, but you have difficulties holding whole conversations.

It's hard to explain exactly where the problem is because you do respond to questions--sometimes. If I ask you whether you want something and you do, you will repeat what it is you want. "Milk sippy?" "Milk sippy!" You do not answer yes or no, and if the answer is no, I usually don't get a response at all. When I ask an open-ended question, you stare at me blankly; whether it's from confusion or stubbornness, I have no idea. So even though I was hoping that you had advanced enough to outgrow ECI and catch up to normal almost-three-year-olds, you are staying in it for the time being. And in another two months you will graduate to the school district's care, where you will get all sorts of new therapy to have you caught up to your peers.

You ARE growing and maturing in every way, though, even your language. You are communicating so much more now than you were even a few months ago. My dreams of six months ago, before all this ECI stuff, were to be able to communicate enough with you to know your basic needs and hold some conversations about your interests. Even if you're not caught up, you can at least do that. I can understand you when you're upset because Sock Puppet didn't make it into bed with you or that Dinosaur needs a place at the table for lunch or that you want to color with black, not green. I can understand you when you go through all your bedtime phrases, and I can understand when you tell me, "I love you." And that's the one that really matters anyway, at least to me.

I love you too, Patrick.

Mommy