Three Years Old.

Leo at three is sensitive, curious, joyful, and mischievous. He seems to fluctuate between hyper crazy running around the house giggling and pushing every button he's not supposed to, to sitting quietly on the couch listening very intently to his music, that he still calls "minic," probably the only baby word he has left.

He sits in the back of the car listening to music and asking over and over again - "what instruments mama?" until I detail exactly what instruments I hear in every song, often a real challenge for me. He loves his grandparents' baby boomer music and could be overheard recently trying spell out "I love James Taylor" quietly to himself with his magnet letters. He wants to sit with me or Eric for long stretches on the couch with his "songbooks" or his dad's while we sing song after song after song. Sometimes he accompanies on his ukulele.

His best friends are an animal trio - his "animal friends" Tulip, a stuffed parrot, Nemo, the fish, and ho-man, basically a rag that used to be a stuffed snowman. The friends have started to take on Leo's personality traits and feelings - "Don't be scared ho-man" when a loud truck goes by and "Leo says he's sorry for yelling, Dada."

He loves to talk and ask about how things are made. A recent favorite while taking a night time walk staring up at the stars - "Dada, how do you make the moon? The moon has a beard."

He loves his new school at Temple Beth El - runs enthusiastically inside every morning, gives me a happy goodbye, is learning to be more comfortable around other kids, he loves his teachers' guitar music, snack time, and the special toys he plays with there.

He cried real serious tears when he broke two strings on his ukulele and realized it was going to have to be put away on a high shelf until we got it fixed.

Leo still talks of Chicago often. "Do you remember that Mama?" He asks about his favorite places and friends there. He loves to discuss the Chicago museums he used to visit when he was younger. "What do they have also at the corn museum?"

It seems like he's grown up so much since we've been in California - he sleeps pretty well and comes happily into our bed in the mornings, mostly at normal hours, still takes a great nap, is almost completely potty trained, goes to school, isn't afraid of loud noises anymore, we can have real long conversations about how the world works. We had many, many long conversations last week about church bells after we heard some on the street outside Fenton's with Grandma Fizzus. Where are the church bells, how do they work, do you have to climb the ladder to get to the church bells, can we lift him up to see the church bells. ...

Leo has memory, and independent experience, he loves his nightly baths with his dad, is newly interested in letters - knows all his letters and numbers and even some sounds. "How do you pell that?" Not much gets past him these days - he catches me and Eric breaking the house rules all the time and alerts us to our own hypocrisy. After I was caught eating in bed he said: "I want to do that when I'm a mama."

He's ready to be a big brother in lots of different ways and feels old enough to be able to understand and grow from the upcoming changes in our family. On the morning of his birthday he came running into our room asking "Am I three yet?" Later in the day he asked if now that he was three, he was old enough to drive our blue car. Not quite. But close.