A Little Older

 I think Mathieu woke up last week and decided he was 3 years old.  The first clue he gave me was this:

Coloring: Sure, Mathieu did this previously,(like 3 minutes at a time ... umm..5xs a  year), but in the past week, Mathieu has colored for 30 minutes everyday! I give him scrap paper with one side blank, and he swirls, colors in deeply, and then adds stickers.  Sometimes, using scissors, he cuts the paper in order to make a card. He likes to draw roads, attempts to make the letters "M" and "D,"  and envisions elaborate objects like airplanes and school buses.  When I asked him how to draw an airplane, he swooped down the crayon onto the paper, drew a large oval and declared those to be the wings.  He then spent more time making dots and dashes for his landing gear, and made another squiggle to denote some windows. As all these dashes, dots, and squiggles are landing on the paper, he's explaining to me the many different parts of the airplane.

Another difference is his desire to fill bigger spaces with color.  Before, Mathieu would scribble with a few crayons and then be done.  Now, he picks one color and intently tries to cover up the Winnie the Pooh on the the coloring sheet found at the library.  

Second Clue: Puzzles 

Ever since Mathieu was 16 or 17 months old, I've had a few age-appropriate peg puzzles for him.  They were challenging, but not too frustratingly so, but Mathieu just wasn't interested in them very much. We introduced a regular,12 piece, interlocking puzzle 6 months ago that was met with minimal success.  Then, Mathieu received an interlocking 24 piece firetruck floor puzzle for his birthday, and we've been doing both interlocking puzzles every day!

Third Clue:  Napping

Where is the time coming from for all these new coloring and puzzle interests? Mathieu has always been a great napper.  Two hours every day.  Well, Mathieu is not napping like he used to. The good news is that he's not cranky or hyper  as a child is when he clearly needs a nap, but didn't take one, and he's been going to bed earlier at night. This affords me the liberty to use the same napping routine with him everyday (in case he does take a nap), but just transition the nap time into a rest time.  So far, that's been working for about 45 minutes a day where Mathieu is quietly playing (or loudly singing) in his bed.  In this way, I am still able to have a  little bit of time to myself, and Mathieu can have a predictable "down time" every day.   

What hasn't changed: Many hours, both morning and afternoon, OUTDOORS 

The past three afternoons have found Mathieu and me at the beach.  Someone dug a gigantic sand pit well above the high tide line, and Mathieu has been a busy guy with his dump truck and shovel at this "construction site." 

Mathieu finds sticks and pretends he's planting trees. Then we count them.