I'm not sure I can call him a toddler anymore!

On Saturday my baby will turn 3! Only he's less like a baby every day.

And as it is for so much of parenting, it gives me conflicting emotions.

Joy at the little boy he's become and at all the things we can do together now that we couldn't when he was a baby. Yet, sadness over the loss of the baby he was, the days when I could carry him for more than a few minutes without my arm aching!

This post from last year, still pretty well describes life with my youngest boy except he is speaking a ton more clearly and I no longer buy Pop Tarts, that was one of the first processed foods I eliminated and I prepared myself in advance for morning after morning of the yelling, "Pop-Art!" over and over with me only able to say, "Sorry, we don't have any, but here is a homemade muffin." But, surprisingly he didn't really protest the loss of the "Pop-Arts"

In honor of your 3rd birthday, sweet boy, here are 13 things you love (in no particular order):

1. Meatballs!! (Every night as I fix dinner you run in the kitchen to ask, "Are we having meatballs?")

2. Your stuffed bulldog Big Duke

3. Your family

4. Playing outside

5. Using the doggie door to get outside

6. Pretending you are various animals and creatures (I'm sure nobody wondered why I was pretending to feed you flies at the park today while you pretended to be a spider on a spider web!)

7. Mud puddles

8. Scrambled eggs

9. Pickles

10. Salsa

11. Giving and getting hugs

12. Doing anything your big brother and sister are doing

13. God and Jesus (whenever I tell you how much I love you, you are quick to remind me to "say thank-you God for your babies"!)

And we do thank God for the gift of you!

Just recently at the end of one of your brother's baseball games as you stood there completely coated in muddy water, a friend said to me, "Just think how boring your life would be if you'd stopped at two kids!"

Exactly!!! Thank you for all the life you add to our lives!

Find more Thankful Thursday, Thursday Thirteen