Three Cheers for Gibby! — Nadine At Home

Dear Gibby,

You are three.

I’ve been struggling with this letter. Not because I have nothing to say. And definitely not because life with you is boring. Life with you feels…full. Rich. Exciting and hilarious and exhausting and, yes, I drank a pot of coffee this morning. Cool?

You’re growing up so fast. Too fast.

I promise you’ll have a nice birthday some year. You sobbed on your first birthday, vomited through your second, and had a global pandemic to survive on your third. We kept things simple this year: two spaced-out visits from grandparents, a handful of new toys and puzzles, a birthday cake with candles for you to enthusiastically and repeatedly blow out, and jelly beans — your specific request — to snack on.

Your sister decorated the living room with drawings of dinosaurs and planets. She gets you.

We made the uncomfortable decision to keep you home from daycare this fall. You love your school dearly — and your dad and I love it when you’re there, no offence — but sometimes sacrifices have to be made. And I’d argue that during this Covid era, the ability to keep your preschooler home with you is a pretty worthwhile one. Besides, this is my last year with you at home. You’ll be running off to kindergarten in no time. So maybe a final cozy/hectic year at home is the silver lining in all of this.

You are smart. Like, maybe genius-level. Paired with a stubbornness that rivals…your parents’. So that’s fun. We joke that there are four firstborns in this household.

You refuse to be potty-trained. It’s the final frontier. You know the rules: no school until underwear. And as much as you’re desperate for school, you’re also very loyal to your diapers and will not be swayed by a grownup’s enthusiasm for the toilet.

You also refuse any and all offers — bribes included — to get your hair cut. I’d be more frustrated by this if you didn’t have the most beautiful mop of bright red hair. Instead, you walk around with your head slightly tilted to the side, trying to whoosh the hair out of your eyes. You like hats and helmets, probably for their hair-containing properties.

Back to the smart part.

You can spell Gilbert Kalinauskas. And then intentionally spell it wrong just to crack yourself up.

You can put a 60-plus-piece puzzle together by yourself. You’ve memorised colours and patterns so you can glance at an out-of-context piece and know exactly where in the puzzle it belongs. And if there are no pieces for it to attach it yet, you simply state “It doesn’t have a home yet” and move on.

You make at least two puzzles a day.

You know all the planets’ names. “Earth is my favourite.” And often add “and sun and clumps and dust and gas and gravity” at the end of your list. You know, in case we didn’t know that space had other stuff in it, too.

You love dinosaurs, your favourites rotating between the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Triceratops and the Velociraptor.

You think Daddy should be a Spinosaurus for Halloween, and I should be an Apatosaurus. We are about to disappoint you.

You HATE it when we sing around you. But you sing to yourself all day long. You sing your ABCs on your scooter, a made-up song about training wheels — “Noooooo training wheels / weeeee!” — on the playground, and if Ursula comes home from school singing “Down By The Bay / Where the Pumpkins Grow…” you pick it up immediately and turn dinner time into an endless episode of American Idol. “Have you ever seen a ghost eating some toast?”

You don’t stop asking questions.

“What is law?”

“Do you know a goat farmer?”

“What is he doing?” (Asked every two seconds during movies and bedtime stories.)

“What is camouflage?”

“Daddy, what letter spells Shreddies?”

You can still be a little shy, but when you’re in a comfortable environment, you talk ALL. THE. TIME.

You still love books.

If it were up to you, you’d go to the park every day. Even when it rains. “The playground is clean!”

You recently started climbing all the playground ladders — even that tricky curved one with no sides — by yourself: “Look at me, Mommy! I DID IT!”

Nothing is cuter than the look on your face when you’re beaming with pride. You glow. And it’s impossible not to want to participate in that joy.

You can now ride the scooter all the way to the park and home again. Although you usually try to add a coffee-shop detour on the way home, mostly because you love being outside so much.

You try your hardest to convince me to sleep with you in your bed every night. It doesn’t work, but the effort is always adorable. “Close your eyes, Mommy…I want to smell your hair…Sleep with me…I need you.”

You’re left-handed. You love to draw and colour and you’re getting good at it — you drew an orange circle with a face in it today because you’re currently obsessed with jack-o’-lanterns — even though you’re frustrated that you can’t yet execute a lion or elephant the way you want to. Don’t worry, kiddo. That’ll come.

You like being tickled. I once tickled you in exasperation. You kept asking the same question over and over and I was tired of trying to come up with an answer, so I tickled you. Seconds later, you looked me dead in the eye and asked that same tedious question just so I would tickle you again.

You’re good at inside jokes.

Your memory is spectacular.

You squeal with delight when anyone comes home with a box of cereal. Christmas-morning levels of excitement.

You’re still an extremely picky eater. But you’re tall and gaining weight and we’re just gonna ride out this picky wave until you come to your senses. (You will eat real food one day, right? RIGHT?!)

For someone with little interest in food, you’re very good at stirring and pouring and mixing. (You were devastated to learn that the apple-oatmeal muffin batter didn’t turn into banana muffins in the oven. So I ate them alone.)

You love Cars and Frozen and Wallace and Gromit. “Cheeeeeese, Gromit!”

You don’t like cheese.

You’re an excellent mask-wearer. It’s a lot to ask of a preschooler, but you don’t hesitate to wear a mask when the park is crowded or when you join me to pick up Ursula at the end of the day. The mask goes on when we leave the house and stays on until we’re back inside. You never complain.

You do complain if I pick up Ursula without you. It’s literally the highlight of your day.

(“Picking up” is “pick-upping” to you and I will not correct you. Same goes for “wake-upping.”)

You love playing in piles of dirt. (Good thing, as that was all our backyard had to offer you this summer.)

Fortunately you also love baths, especially now that Daddy rinses your hair with the shower head.

You still nap for two hours every day. THANK YOU. And that nap-habit transferred from your crib to a big-boy bed. (Related: You rarely fall out of bed anymore.)

Our bedtime routine recently added “Animal Box Breathing,” something developed by Daddy as an evolution of a calming exercise Ursula’s kindergarten class used to do. We sit on the floor in a circle. We breathe in for five seconds, then exhale making an animal sound for five seconds. We take turns picking the animals. Lately, you started insisting on themes, like “pink animals,” mostly for an excuse to make us all stand on one leg like flamingoes. What should feel like meditation turns into fits of giggles, sort of defeating the point.

You still idolise your sister. It’s not rare to find you wearing her tutu or joining in on a manicure session. You want to keep up with her, play with her, and make her laugh. If you could, you’d go to school with her, too.

At the park, you adopt Ursula’s friends as your own. And you talk about her teacher like she’s yours, too. (When schools were shut down in March, you joined in on all the at-home learning stuff. So you’re probably halfway through kindergarten already.)

Social distancing turned you, a famously introverted toddler, into a social-life seeker. You beg for swimming lessons. (You HATED swimming lessons.) You want to visit your cousins. You say hi to the mail courier. You’re chatty during Zoom kids’ church, showing off your sloth jammies and roaring like a lion.

You roar a lot.

Yesterday, you were a cat. You crawled everywhere. I had to pet you.

You pick out your own clothes now. Which means, A, you have to “look good” at all times, and, B, you won’t wear that nice green shirt because you vomited in it the first time you wore it and now it’s your “throw up shirt,” apparently.

You make me laugh every single day.

I can’t refuse you when you quietly climb into our bed in the middle of the night.

And I will never not melt when you ask, “Mommy, come cuddle with me?”

Gilbert, in the words of everyone’s favourite Wallace: “I’m just crackers about cheese.*”

*By “cheese,” I mean “you.”

Happy birthday, buddy.

I love you. All the time and all the way.

P.S. This song reminds me of you.

I was reading Shel Silverstein while you fell asleep

Thinkin' 'bout cosmic generosity, it's a mystery

You roar like a lion, sleep like a lamb, watching your diaphragm

Breathing in and out, dancing through the clouds