(I wrote this a while back and forgot to post it)

8/01/2009

Dear Asher,

Happy Birthday my little man! 3 years old already – I can’t believe it! Part of me feels like we were just bringing you home from the hospital yesterday, but another part of me (the bigger part) can’t remember what my life was like before you came into the world. Watching you grow up these past 3 years has become my favorite pastime. I still can’t believe I have such a wonderful son, and I can’t, and probably never will be able to, describe in words how you make me feel. I can only hope you get to be a dad yourself someday (in the very, very distant future).

You got one heck of a birthday present earlier this month when your little sister Avery was born. You love her so much and have been the best big brother in the world. We have a video we took at the hospital of the first time you met her and it is the cutest thing ever. Like any three year old, you sometimes have trouble being gentle with her, but you try really hard to be careful. You are already very protective of her and you always try to make her feel better when she cries. I feel sorry for Avy’s future boyfriends… you and I are going be a protective force to be reckoned with.

As I write this, you are sitting 3 feet from me on the couch playing Star Wars Battlefront II on our Playstation2. It’s a perfect example of how you shatter my ‘pre-kid’ ignorance on a daily basis. If someone had told me three years ago that before my son was three he’d be able to play Star Wars on the Playstation2, I’d have told them they were crazy. You are more intelligible and composed than I am most of the time. For the most part, you are completely autonomous. You can dress yourself, go to the bathroom by yourself, get yourself food and eat it by yourself, surf the internet by yourself (only pbskids.org of course!), use the TV remote control, and a TON of other day-to-day things. Each and every one of them is simply amazing to me. I had no idea that a kid would be able to do all these things at three. You were somehow able to completely bypass the terrible twos. I think I can honestly count on one hand the number of terrible moments you had in the last year (although your mother might have a LOT more being home with you all day).

We went to see the doctor today for your three year appointment and Avy’s three week appointment. You were so brave and you knew it too because you kept telling everyone on the way in “I’m brave”. You handled all the poking and prodding like a champ. My favorite part was your eyesight test. They have a poster on the wall with shapes instead of letters and they make you stand on a line and tell the nurse what the letters are. Thankfully you have terrific eyesite and could see all the shapes with no problems. The nurse would point and you would get all worked up and yell the name of the shape. As she moved down the poster, she pointed at a moon shape and you yelled “crescent!!” Seriously? Crescent? You are soooo your mother’s child.

Your vocabulary continues to grow and you say some really funny stuff. One of my favorite Asher-isms from this month happened the other day when you were playing with your fishing pole. I asked what you were fishing for and you told me “seahorses Dad” like duh, what else would you be fishing for. So I asked what kind of bait you were using. You thought about it for a minute and replied “Seahorse treats.” “What do they taste like?” I asked. Again, you thought for a minute and said in a deadpan voice “M&M’s.”

Love,
Papa