Now we are 4...

Let me tell you about Malakai.

Malakai is... the most 3 year old boy you have ever met. Sweet and funny and cuddly one moment, wanting help with everything. The next minute he says he "CAN DO IT MY OWN SELF!"   whether or not this is the case.  He is... a surprise.

The way he moves through the world is so different from my daughters. His obsessions  interests baffle me.  Cars. Planes. Trains. Fire trucks. All things noisy and fast. He has little patience for art projects.

The girls will sit for an hour, contentedly drawing, cutting and gluing.  He scribbles and tears for 3 minutes and then starts to purposely irritate his sisters. Yet, he will sit for hours to be read to. He brings me stacks of books and listens intently while I read, long after my girls have gone off to play circus, hospital, or the ever popular "dropping the baby off at daycare" game. 

He incites riot where ever he goes, counting on his admittedly charming smile to keep people from being annoyed with him. 

He makes people love him.  Something about his stout, sturdy little boy body that has so recently begun to emerge from his baby self as it hurtles through his world with abandon is so endearing. And terrifying. And amazing.


Kai is always injuring someone, either himself or someone around him. He doesn't observe the wide world, focusing instead on his narrow interests. He frequently walks into walls (and most recently got a giant goose egg from walking straight into a lamp post) and steps on toes, hands and tail.

We have started giving him talks about how powerful his body is, and how careful he has to be to be gentle to the world around him.  And he is so gentle at heart.  Tonight after giving me a bloody lip (you would think by now I would have learned to keep it out of reach of his large, destructive noggin), he spent 5 anxious minutes pulling my lip down to peer at the damage. Trying to kiss away the hurt he accidentally caused (which is difficult when the hurt is on the inside of my lip).

He loves babies and spends a large portion of his day following around the smallest children at daycare, trying to keep them safe and happy... and frequently accidentally knocking them over.  I have never seen anything so sweet as watching him baby talk to a baby not that much younger than he is.

Kai is a boy who loves fashion and has serious ideas about what clothes he is going to wear each day, although I am not exaggerating when I say that at least 85% of the time at least one of his articles of clothing is on either backwards or inside out.. because that's how he WANTS to wear them.  He almost always has sparkly purple or pink finger and toe nails (the boy needs some brothers. For reals) and loves purses of all shapes and sizes. 

He loves to dance and to make people laugh.

Know what else? My quintessential 3 year old boy? Not 3 anymore.

                 

Today... today he is 4.  I can't wait to see who my sweet, silly, astonishing boy becomes.

I love you, Malakai Melese.