Will's bath pictures: 3 years

Today is Will's birthday! Believe me, he knew it too. We've been talking about being three for more than a month. We had a great day today, some fun activities, great presents, and a rocket cake. We got some pics and videos which will be posted soon. So here is Will in the bathtub on his 3rd birthday. As he gets older, it somehow gets harder for us to get him to both look at the camera and smile long enough for the thing to take the picture. So we got a couple good pictures tonight, and to supplement, here are some pics taken a few weeks ago when Hallie first joined Will in the tub in her bath chair.

So this post is sort of the beginning of a new era of bath pictures with both kids. Not only is it more efficient to get the kids ready for bed, but it's more fun for both of them - Hallie loves having her brother there to smile at her, and Will likes helping us wash Hallie.

Three-year-old Will is a very big boy. Since the last bath picture post he has started preschool, which he loves. Next weekend we're having a birthday party for him and lots of his school friends are coming to our house for the first time, should be fun. Here's the biggest news: he wears big boy underwear now! Last week we successfully completed an intense 3-day potty training "boot camp", and for a week now he has been peeing and pooping exclusively in the potty. We're very proud.

He's still very much into swords, pirates, fishing, racing, and motorcycles, all kinds of dude-stuff. He loves watching Spongebob and several more educational TV shows which we let him watch, most notably a reading show on PBS called Superwhy. Even though he doesn't know much about them, he also loves Spiderman and Superman (he has pajama-costumes of each and likes to fly in them). He is getting quite good at reading, recognizing his name everywhere (you'd never guess how many times the word "will" appears on signs in public places until you take a walk with Will), and also several other key words (like what "I-O-W-A" spells - it helps we have several shirts with that word on it, and that when the Hawkeyes score a touchdown the crowd chants the letters). He sings songs all the time, often making them up on the spot and often involving "tooting" or "poop" - sung over and over to see if dad will laugh or scold him. One thing I've found as a parent is that sometimes there's a very fine line between things that you can have a good laugh at, and those that require discipline (here's a good example).

Will is a very caring big brother, he loves making Hallie smile, and he's good at it.

As of this post, there have been 19089 views of Will and Hallie's page. That's over 10,000 views since this time last year.