Kaleb at 3 years old

I'm still in a little bit of shock that I have a three year old.  A little boy that could start preschool in a few months.  He really does make me so proud so often, it's hard to believe that I could ever be angry with him... but he is still such a little boy at heart.  The other day we were discussing an article about "The Top Things You Should Never Say to Your Kid," and one of them was "ACT YOUR AGE!!"  Their reasoning was of course to never pigeon-hole a child into expectations that are higher than they are capable of at that time... When I think of telling Kaleb to act his age it would be telling him to be MORE rowdy, MORE obnoxious, MORE noisy and just overall less of a person than he is.  When I keep that in mind (which isn't often enough), I remember what a great kid he is. 

ANYWAY, Kaleb is now 40 inches tall and 38 pounds.  That's the 90th percentile for the 3-year point which is why EVERYBODY thinks he is at least 4.  He can be quite a handful, but this has been a busy year for him with his new baby sister, learning to deal with all the rules that come with a big-boy-bed (like don't touch the window treatments) and potty training recently (different posting for that).  Thankfully he is just handling it with more tears than tantrums and continues to be a joy to us.

As always I must RAVE about what a helper is with Sasha.  He loves to pick her up and take her places (like out of his room), and she just thinks it's hilarious!

 Kaleb has also taken on the responsibility of being her little tutor.  He likes to teach her things, even if they make no sense at all.  Doesn't this picture just scream "Aye, Sensei!!"

Here he is feeding her... something he is always asking to do!  Doesn't she look HUGE in his lap!?

 Their favorite game is for Kaleb to run around the room, back and forth and Sasha crawls after him.  Sometimes he will hide around corners and surprise her which she just thinks is AWESOME!!  It might be quite a shock for Kaleb when she starts walking, but for now they really are great buddies!!

 Sometimes when Sasha is napping, I can tell Kaleb really misses her.  The other day, he couldn't help but play with this little baby doll.  He set up the blankets for it, and told me, "Mommy, my baby is crawling!!"  Oh, man i love this kid!

And then there are times when Kaleb is just a cute little kid. 

 I love this shot of his ginormous feet!!

Part of the growing pains of boy-hood include getting a few scrapes, like that week he had one on each elbow from two totally different falls.  One of which he barely teared up, the other he cried for an hour.  Go figure!

One of the most entertaining parts of Kaleb's growth continues to be the things he says.  He still has some odd pronunciations for things (right now he mixes up the K and T sound like a Kag on the back of his shirt), like Applepus for Octopus, Hepitopter for helicopter, Armbow for Elbow, Elmo Street for Sesame Street, and Cheepahs for Cheetahs (that's our favorite!!)
We have worked with him to get the LMNOP part of the alphabet song, and his counting continues to get better, although right now it goes from1 to 11, then forteen, eleventeen, forteen... and he just repeats that over and over.  Some of his favorite things to say right now are the classic "I WANT" which we are trying to switch to Please, and of course everything is "Watch This!!"  He's also become obsessed with singing Old McDonald.  Some of my favorite things he has said recently are:

(When told what we will have for dinner) "I can live with that."
(When Sasha was yelling in the car) "Mommy, your daughter is screaming."
(When asked if he put his dinner dishes in the sink) "Um.. not quite"



We've been having Kaleb dress himself in preparation for potty training, and occasionally run into little mishaps (Both legs in one pant leg)

Kaleb has been such a little helper with the dishes lately.  Ammon taught him one night while I was out grocery shopping, and it has become a great little chore ever since.  Sometimes it's fun for us, other times it's just more work, but at least he's learning to do chores. 

 As he's getting older, we are introducing new games to him.  He still only has about a ten minute excitement/attention span, but it's interesting to see what he takes from each game (like Bingo, Chutes and Ladders, and Matching)

 In late April, Kaleb got to go on his first Fathers&Sons outing with all the Teller men.  Since he was the only little boy on the Teller side, he was able to get a TON of attention from everybody.

Uncle Rylan taught him how to ride his unicycle.

Grandpa (Papa) took him "On Walkabout"

Plus he got to sleep in a tent (on a deflating air mattress) and eat dutch oven cobbler... those two pictures didn't download i guess.  He was exhausted through the whole trip but talked about it for weeks!

With summer has come the chance to swim.  Gramma Teller has graciously bought a pool for the grandkids, and he and his cousin Lilly (usually with Tashina supervision) have a GREAT time!

He also had a chance to visit Brimhall Pool once already as well!

One thing we discovered randomly a few months ago is that Kaleb is allergic to fish.  He usually threw up every time he had fish, but we never put two and two together until a tune fish sandwich lunch back in April.  At least now we know.  Ammon has never been a seafood fan, so it doesn't do much to our daily menu. 

Kaleb has learned the fun of pretending.  He can play with his animal and people figuresand do little interactions with them.  He also likes to pretend talk to people that aren't there.  Like the other day he said something random, and I asked him what he meant.  He just said, "I'm talking to gramma.  She's right there." and he poinedt to an empty space in the room.


I love that Kaleb enjoys church and learning about church things.  Here he is all spiffed up and ready for a little gospel-learning!

Ammon and I observed a day in nursery (on his birthday, to take scrapbook pics and to give out birthday cookies), and it was so fun to see him interact with the other kids in such a wholesome environment.  It's also funny to see how much bigger he is than all the other kids (in spite of half of them being older)

We have started doing family home evernings most weeks, and we do a little lesson based on paintings in the gospel art book.  His favorite story by far is Ammon (go figure) and would request it every week.  I like to review the lesson from the week before to see what he remembers, and it still surprises me what he gleans from each one.  Besides Ammon, we have talked about Noah, Moses with the serpent on a stick, the ten lepers and Joseph Smith. 

You know your kid loves the spirit when he asks you to sing primary songs for his bed-time song.  He has heard one of them so much he asked to sing it by himself.  Thankfully we got a good recording of it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrhygW-uiGw