Young, Wild and Three!

His last night of being 2 years old!

It is really hard to believe that Walker is 3 years old!  Time continues to fly by with him in tow.  I feel badly that I don't document his milestones as well as I did with Bennett and Preston, but I want to try and summarize him in a blog post today because he has changed so much in the past year, particularly the past 6 months.

Walker is FULL of personality!  He makes a ton of faces (much like his older brother).  He is very expressive with his face, mannerisms and voice.  He stomps around, yells back at us and his siblings, puts on dance shows spontaneously, sings along to all of his favorite pop songs on the radio, and is by far our most defiant child.  He has a very strong personality, and when he is adamant about something, he tries his hardest to attain it.  Of course he has learned a lot from Bennett and Preston (and us), but he doesn't let much get in his way.  He will push furniture around to reach something he can't quite get on his own, sneak something and then run and hide, climb inside of the fridge, dig in the cupboards, or do whatever else he needs to do.

Happy 3rd Birthday Walker!

Walker spends hours in his "office."  Every morning he pulls out bags and bags of crayons, markers, gel pens and paint along with coloring books and paper and "works."  Since school has been out, he has spent countless hours at our kitchen island.  He can draw a few letters (W, E, P, B and O), several shapes (square, triangle and circle), and knows all of his colors.  He is OBSESSED with sharpie markers!  Sadly, his daddy got frustrated with his lack of potty training, and took them all away until he is potty trained.  But his Mimi has bought him every single color of sharpie, and he loves to go there and play with them for hours.

Like most toddlers his age, Walker repeats a lot of what we say.  However, he has said a lot of clever things on his own that we get the biggest kick out of:

1. while watching the DVR, if the cable flickers, he gets frustrated and yells that it is "scratched," like many of the DVD movies he watches
2. whenever something doesn't work, he says "it must need batteries"
3. instead of saying "I'm mad at you," he used to say "I have mean eyes"
4. another obsession of his is "lipstack" otherwise known as chapstick
5.  he hates talking and not having the attention solely on him, so he says "look at my eyes" when he thinks we are distracted

Due to all of the surgeries of his family members, it ended up being just Walker and me for the majority of his birthday celebration, but he didn't seem to mind.  He awoke to orange juice and donuts, got to choose where we spent a couple of hours (he chose "Let's Play" inside gym), and he colored and snuggled with me a lot.  That night everyone was up for ice cream, so we ventured out for one last rendezvous.  Though he didn't open any presents from us (we plan to celebrate him at 3.5 years old), he truly was okay with the way the day went.  Walker knows that he is loved.  And he is correct, we all love him and he truly completes our wild and crazy family.  We love you buddy!!

Walker's smile says it all!