Seth Turns Three

Seth is a little confused about turning three. Since we neglected to ever tell him that he was two, we crammed during the last few weeks trying to teach him that he was now two and that he would soon be three. Or rather, he was two fingers and was going to be three fingers. So now he goes around saying he is "Two Three." At least he's got the fingers right.
We spent Seth's birthday evening at Chuck E. Cheese's as a family. The pizza's terrible but it was fun to watch Seth play the games. His favorite game was to put the tokens in the slot. Any slot. Often it was in the slots of games he wasn't tall enough to play, so at least he was happy to watch us play. He kept going back to a little car that barely moved and took a tiny, grainy, black and white picture of him riding with Chuck. I don't think he even cared about moving, he just wanted to sit in the car and pretend, which didn't take a token. He can (and does) do that in every grocery store. We have yet to put a quarter in any of those so he doesn't know they move. Aren't we sneaky (and cheap)? Towards the end of the evening when Benjamin had had enough, I played a few games of Ski Ball and racked up fistfulls of tickets to take to the counter. So for $20 we had a large pizza, 3 drinks, lots of rides in an almost-still car, one too-scary encounter with a rocking monster truck that earned us 3 bonus tokens from the girl working there, lots of aimless wanderings amidst the very tall machines that did things he didn't care about, and a fistful of mini tootsie pops due to mom's awesome Ski Ball skills. All in all a successful birthday evening for the average American three year old.

After that we went home for chocolate cake and presents. One of our presents to Seth was a boy baby doll. He didn't get one when Benjamin was born and probably should have. Our hope is that it will help Seth learn how to be more gentle in showing affection (or otherwise). It's obviously no substitute for a good car in your hand, but he does seem to like having Baby around and often takes him to bed (with one or two cars).

Since he's a sleepytime baby with eyes that shut when you lay him down, Seth had to explore that feature. Not so much what we had in mind, since that's one of the real habits we would like to avoid with Benjamin.

Seth also got a vehicle stamp set which he's played with a lot so far.

And the beginner train set we got him has proved quite popular. Unfortunately it doesn't set up well on the carpet, so our coffee table is nearly always commandeered as a train table.

A pretty good birthday. And now I am counting the days until he turns 4. If you don't understand why, thank your everlivin' stars, count your blessings daily, and give thanks to God for His grace and mercy. And when your child turns 3, I will pray for you.