Happy 3rd Birthday, Moses! And a Bunny Massacre

Moses is 3 years old! In the past year, Moses has learned to use the potty (he even wipes his own butt), he taught himself how to swim, and most recently, he's even figured out how to legibly write his name. He's a smart kid, and he knows it. His precociousness has enabled him to elude many of the disciplinary toils that his older brothers endured when they were his age. For example, one day last week I told Moses to do something, and he defiantly replied, "no!" When I scolded him for saying "no" to me, his countenance softened and he calmly retorted, "I didn't say 'no', I said 'I know'". Then, instead of correcting him for lying like I should have, I found myself speechless, marveling at his quick and clever manipulation of the English language. His language-delayed older brothers, on the other hand, used to stubbornly (and silently) ignore my requests until I spanked them for the 100th time. The twins have turned out to be sweet boys, though. I hope I'll be able to say the same for Moses when he is the twins' age!

Moses celebrated his actual birthday by staying home all day with Mommy and his brother Caleb who was suffering from an ear infection. I had hoped to do something fun with him while his brothers were at school, but watching movies, drawing pictures, and eating popsicles proved to be a pretty fun day after all. Then he and Joshua went to Mimi and Papa's house while I stayed home and rested with Caleb. The next day, we had a small celebration of February birthdays with Mimi, Papa, and Sooja Emo, where Moses enjoyed popping kim baps into his little mouth to his heart's content. Then this past weekend, we threw Moses a horse-themed birthday party with some of his preschool-aged friends. As it turns out, non-girly horse-themed party decorations are pretty hard to come by, so I found myself tracing and cutting gender neutral horses into the wee hours of the morning in the nights leading up to the party. It was a labor of love for my little horse-lover.

Looking back over the past year, I remembered a couple of little things that I'd forgotten to write about. This past Fall, when Moses was a little over 2 and a half years old, he and I were on the trampoline in the back yard when suddenly he burst into tears and exclaimed, "Oh no! Somebody killed all these bunnies!" Confused, I asked him what on earth he was talking about, and he scooped up a handful of little brown, fuzzy balls. I think they were seed pods of some sort that had fallen from an overhead tree, but in Moses' eyes, they were obviously baby bunny tails. Sure enough, copious amounts of little fuzzy balls were scattered all over the trampoline, so from his 2-year-old perspective, it appeared to be the scene of a bunny massacre. I assured him that no bunnies were harmed in the production of these little brown fuzz balls, but Moses continued to insist that they were "bunny tails" all season long.

Also during the Fall months, Moses collected lots of double acorn tops--just the tops that were missing the nuts, if that makes sense. He called them "angels", presumably because they resembled angels' wings, and frequently presented them to me as gifts, proudly saying, "here Mommy, I got an angel for you!" I'd forgotten about Moses' angels until recently when I found one in the basket where I keep my hair dryer. So sweet.

In the last couple months leading up to his birthday, Moses started to take an avid interest in drawing. Like his big brother Caleb (who has actually eased off from his artistic pursuits as of late), Moses spends most of his free time drawing. When he holds a pencil, his grip is impeccable--I don't think the twins held a pencil so well until they were at least 5 and a half. Moses' impressive fine motor skills have enabled him to produce an ever-increasing portfolio of representational art. They are rarely simple still-life drawings, though. Moses' drawings tend to tell a story, and he will often narrate the story aloud as he draws it. For example, today I overheard him singing a made-up song: "Noah's ark, Noah's ark, Noah's ark..." so I looked over and saw that he was drawing Noah's ark. Then he picked up a blue marker and began singing, "Here come the waves, the bad guys are drowning, here come the waves..." while drawing chaotic, sweeping blue waves beneath the ark, over top of the "bad guys".

Somewhere along the way, Moses developed a habit of folding up his drawings into little wads of paper which he calls "gift-day cards", which I believe he contrived as a cross between "gift" and "birthday cards". He'll say, "I made a gift-day card for me and all my friends". I have been trying to gently convince him not to fold his beautiful artwork into these little wads, so lately he's compromised by folding them just once, calling them "books," and then asking us to read his "books" to him. If I'm lucky, I'll pluck a particularly impressive drawing away from him before he transforms it into a "gift-day card" or a "book", and will convince him that it's best suited unfolded, taped prominently to the dining room wall or hanging on the fridge.