Three Winters Old

Winters are important around here. To Keith it means another birthday, but more importantly, it means snowboarding and skiing with Cole. To me it means snowshoeing with the family. To Cole it means building snowmen and making snow angels, skiiing or snowboarding with Daddy.  This year - it took on a whole new meaning - a new addition to the family and Cole's third winter.

So, according to Keith, today Cole is officially three winters old.

Being that Bevin is already 4 months old, it is not hard to believe that Cole is 3 years old today. But at the same time it is hard to believe. To me, my son turning 3 is bitter sweet. He's starting to forget things he once remembered, and even though he will always remember nursing in his cells (as my sweet friend Allison reassured me) the fact that he is starting to forget that special relationship we had is sometimes hard to swallow. 

He and Keith have been connecting more and more, and it is a wondrous thing to watch their relationship blossom.  Cole will learn so much from his Daddy and he's fortunate to have what Keith didn't have - a loving and involved father, who's willing to make difficult changes so that he can bring himself closer to his son. 

Our relationship will continue to grow and evolve over time, and that is something to look forward to. All in all, it has been amazing to watch him grow and change so much this year, even if some of those changes have made me a wee bit sad.

He is such a loving, funny, smart, intuitive, and protective person that I am often struck by how connected we are to him and he to us. And, by us, I mean, Keith, Bevin and I. It's like he understands or knows what each of us wants or needs or feels because he is so in-tune with us.  His vocabulary is astounding, and long ago, I stopped counting the number of words he knew or the number of words in a sentence he used. Now I pay attention to his ability to carry on long conversations with us or other people. I listen to his unending quest for knowledge and understanding of this world he lives in. I see him playing imaginatively more and more every day at the same time that he is exerting his independence or his desire to do things himself. Did I ever think he'd be running down  a trail or climbing up a trail by himself because he wanted to do it alone? Not in a million years. But I know he is so capable and that makes me so proud.

It's funny, there are so many things I worried would or would not happen because of something I did or didn't do or something I said or didn't say. And, in hindsight, it was needless to worry. I can see clearly that he's growing up to be a healthy, exuberant, and intelligent little boy.

Pictures in the collage below are from

Cole's birthday hike (3.5 miles) to the Ver Nooykill Falls in the Catskills. 

Oh and he likes to sleep hard (but only at night -- naps are non-existent at home these days!)

Since the Blogger app insists on making every iPhone image I attach to it pixelated and hard to see, I've updated this post with photos from our real camera. They were taken the weekend of Cole's birthday party.