Dear Lucas (42 Months),

Today you are officially 3 AND 1/2. That means after today you will actually be closer to turning 4 then you are to just being plain old 3. It also means that in a few months you could be going to school. You have been begging for months to go to school and there is a chance that you might get to go in September. Things all depends on if your name gets randomly drawn for public Pre-K or not. We won't know until March if you got picked for a spot and if so at which school. I am REALLY hoping you get into this brand new Montessori school because it is the only school that you would be able to go to Pre-k-5th grade. At the other schools you are only able to attend for Pre-K then you have to go to your district school after that. (Where that will be I don't know, because we want to buy a house sometime next year.)

Before you go to school though you have to be potty trained... and so far you haven't been. I learned the hard way last year that you were not going to potty train until you are ready. We're tried bribing you, using reward charts, we've even tried pointing out all your cousins and friends that are potty trained. Sometimes you even humored us for a few hours but then you always went right back to refusing to stay with the program. Sometimes I feel like I'm the last one on earth with a 3 year old still in diapers and I get fed up with random people telling me that by 3 you should have a gold medal in pooping in the potty. However, I've tried to not pass my frustration on to you because I know it is going to eventually happen.

Well the last two weeks or so you've been stretching your Independence by changing your own diapers. You haven't even been telling us that you need your diaper changed... you just go ahead and do it yourself. Let me just say, THANKS! It's been kind of nice. So I figured if you were getting to where you wanted to change your own diapers then you might want to have your own little potty so I went last night and bought one. Before today we just had a little ring that fit in our toilet that kept you from falling in because I was trying to avoid having to have a little potty around. Our bathroom is tiny and we don't have anywhere to put it (plus I didn't want to have to dump it out and clean it.) Well, this morning you saw the box without anyone telling you about it and opened it up. When I saw you about to change your pullup I asked if you wanted to put on another pull-up, or if you wanted undies. You requested underwear and then preceded to go pee five times in a row.

You weren't just sitting on the potty and just happen to be peeing either. You would be playing or watching a movie and then announce loudly "I have to pee" run over to the potty, carefully pull down your undies and sit until you were done. Then you would announce "all done" and we would take a trip to the bathroom where you poured the pee in the toilet and proudly flushed. Then I would gush about how proud I was of you. Then you would move Lucas the pirate up a space and you would go back to what you were doing. About halfway through the day I think you got tired of having to stop what you were doing every so often for a potty break because you went and got a pull-up. I think your pull ups are going to have to be hidden and just brought out during bedtime. I'm trying to let you take things slow and not force you to do anything because I've already learned that hard way with you that "you can lead a toddler to the potty, but you can't make him go."

I didn't mean for this whole letter to be about potty training. The only other really big thing lately going on is that you love to make messes... HUGE messes.... with things like glue, and random things from the kitchen that are supposed to be out of your reach. We haven't been able to quite figure out just how you end up able to get into things until the other night when your Dad caught you red handed stacking your kid chair on top of another chair so you could reach the top of the refrigerator. You are too smart for your own good!

I love you to the moon and back,

Mama