As of May 17th Julian is three years old and he has grown into such a little boy. Two years old seems so far away now. No more will I have a babe in my arms. I can still hold Julian but we have to be sitting down! A woman in our homeschool group had a baby girl last month and she brought her in to show her off. She was a beautiful baby and I could feel my heart beat fast when I saw her and when I heard the sound of that sweet newborn cry.

Julian's talking has improved by leaps and bounds. Next time we go visit Grama and Grandad I'm sure they're going to notice a difference. You can have a whole conversation with him now. He was slow to start talking, but you know how they say once your kid starts talking they never stop? It's the truth! I can attest to that. I'm especially pleased with the way sometimes he takes his time, really concentrates, and then speaks slowly, taking the time to enunciate each word. I can still remember my mother telling me when I was little, "You must E-NUN-CEE-ATE!"

I would think that all the energy expended to learn new words, pronounce them so others can understand, and assemble them into sentences others can comprehend would take up so much brain energy that simply learning to talk would be all he could do for awhile. But no! Human beings are quite remarkable in this respect. At the same time that Julian's speech is progressing at warp speed his imagination is blossoming. He has a (pretend) friend who is a mouse. It can get into his shoes, socks, pants, under a pillow, in a lollipop or in a loaf of bread. This busy little mouse shows up all over the place. I used construction paper and made a little mouse hole in the living room (just taped it on the wall). And when he asks, I use lipstick to make him a little pink nose and my eyebrow pencil to draw in some whiskers. Sometimes he's a kitty cat, or a mouse, or a bunny! Also, I got him some small super bouncy balls which he calls his "little chicks." He asks me where his little orange chick is or exclaims that he has found his yellow chick. I don't know how he came up with these but it's kind of cute. And speaking of cute. We were out shopping last week and I pointed at an outfit and said how cute it was and now he likes to point to this or that and say how cute it is. Hehe! My husband wanted to know where he picked up that phrase. From going shopping with Mommy of course!

He's begun to read aloud to himself and he even gets the story right. For his birthday we gave him two books. One was a Rolie Polie Olie book and the other was Chicken Little. Do you know that when he unwrapped the books he thumbed through each one and "read" both of them out loud from beginning to end? I got it preserved on videotape. It made me so happy! He put on those little Mr. Potato Head glasses to read them too. My husband says I ought to get him a pair of real glasses, but without the glass, that will fit him right. I might do that. I'll bet Julian would get a boot out of it.

I found a really nice classical music CD called Classics Greatest Hits which is put out by RCA Victor. If you're like me and not familiar with classical music but you want to play it to expose your child to it, then this CD is a good one. We really like it. I recognize quite a few of the classicals when I hear them, but I have absolutely no idea who the composer is or what the name of the song is. This Greatest Classics CD has Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and others and only cost about $8.99 at Tower Records. Such a deal! There's a whole line of these CDs with titles like Classical Music For People Who Hate Classical Music. Evidently they're selling really well. I'm going to go back and pick out another one. Julian liked it right off the bat. When I played it the first time he called it baby music. That caught my attention because when I was pregnant with him and my water broke we were listening to Mozart. Whenever I ask him if he wants to listen to his baby music he says yes. He doesn't like Carole King though. I don't know what's up with that.

A couple things we did this month was make a bird feeder and make our own goo. I was so proud of this bird feeder we made out of an egg carton and planned on taking a cool photo of the birds eating out of it but only about one bird has eaten out of it. I hear those darn birds chirping so I know they're out there but they're not eating out of our splendid egg carton bird feeder. I kept telling Julian to keep looking out there to see some birds and it took nearly two weeks for a bird to even find it and I don't know, but it might be just the same bird who keeps coming back! Shoot. Well, such is life in the densely populated city. He ended up playing with the bird seed for about an hour after we made the feeder. I gave him some bowls and measuring spoons and funnels and he had a great time with it.

The goo turned out very well and was oh so much fun. All you do is mix starch with Elmer's glue. I used four eight ounce containers of glue and refilled one three times (24 oz.) with the liquid starch. The starch you can buy at the market in liquid form. Don't get the powdered kind for cooking. That's what I thought was used at first because I had never heard of liquid starch. Evidently they used this stuff to starch petticoats and what not in the old days. I don't know who uses it nowadays! Anyway, you mix it and at first mine was very stringy but it got smoother after about ten minutes of handling. I started off mixing it with a spoon but it was easier to use my hands. Mine came out firmer than my friend's (I saw her make it first), so it didn't drip through our fingers as fast, but on the other hand mine stuck together better as a whole and so it was easier to keep together and clean off of little hands. It was still plenty goopy and gooey. It's so tactile. My husband said he didn't know who was having more fun, me or Julian. You can roll it, hold it, shape it and it just melts into itself.

Recently I finished reading a book called Living Joyfully With Children and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to meet with the authors, Bill and Win Sweet. I got to sit in a cozy little living room with about five other people and actually listen, talk, and exchange ideas with Bill and Win. It was great. They're very approachable, very friendly people. To sum up our meeting I will share this quote with you:

"Childhood is a second womb. We feed and nurture the uterus for the first nine months. We should feed and nurture childhood in the same way."

Isn't this so true? This statement is going to be the cornerstone for my goals and objectives for Julian's year three of homeschooling. These days children are robbed of their childhood. Too early they are told to stop crying, don't act like a baby. They're exposed to television programs with adult language and adult situations and violence at far too young an age. And have you seen the fashions at the mall for six year old girls? I've seen miniature hooker outfits with fake fur and all! It's terrible. My husband and I have decided to do all we can to prolong Julian's childhood and to have him enjoy to the fullest his years as a child. It all goes by so fast. The Sweet's book emphasizes the importance of play and it put the importance of playtime in a new light for me.

I don't agree with all aspects of their child rearing practices, but then I have yet to agree 100% on everything in any book I've read. And I skipped over most of the anecdotal stories since I already get plenty of that on the internet. Overall, it's a very good read and worthy of putting on your reading list if you're a reader of parenting books.