your thirty-sixth month

Three years had past us by in a flash.

And now you were definitely a baby no more

and were a proper fully-fledged boy

with the age to prove it.

You had spent your last weeks as a two year old

seemingly trying to fulfil a quota of "terrible twos" behaviour.

You were still a delight most of the time,

but you didn't half try to push our buttons at times.

Meal times could be a complete battle ground,

you always put up a fight about going for a nap

(despite crashing out and sleeping for ages once you went down),

and some days it just felt like it didn't matter what we did,

if we said 'black' then you would say 'white'.

We knew that you were just pushing boundaries,

seeing what you could get away with,

and learning about your place in the world.

And we knew that you wouldn't be a normal little boy

if you didn't push it a bit sometimes,

but my goodness, it could be really hard.

Especially because we knew how bright, charming, kind and lovely you could be.

Your little sister was more and more interested in playing with you

which somedays you loved

and other days you loathed.

The two of you could chase and giggle and cuddle and run

for endless lengths of time,

without ever tiring of each other.

But if you were concentrating on something specific,

then your sisters intrusions were most definitely not welcomed.

It always made us smile that when these moments did happen,

you would simply tell us that you thought she needed a cuddle,

so that we would scoop her up and take her away

leaving you to play undisturbed.

Your obsession with letters was continuing 

and you could now tell us the initial letter sound of words.

This often resulted in hilarious conversations where you would say things like:

"m for Mummy, I am going to go in the b for bath after d for dinner."

And you were now reading all two digit numbers 

completely out of context as and when you saw them.

Now that you knew letters and numbers,

you liked pointing them out to us all the time,

and you could spot the teeniest ones,

in the most random of places.

It seemed like we said it all the time,

but we were so incredibly proud of your thirst for learning.

You were just such a little sponge

and picked up so much that was going on around you.

You were still happiest with your nose in a book

and had memorised such large portions of your favourite books

that you could tell yourself most of the story

just turning the pages as a prompt.

Three years with you had been such an amazing adventure

and we could wait to see what the next year would bring us.

But we knew for sure,

that you would carry on surprising us,

constantly make us so proud,

and that we couldn't love you any more if we tried.