3 years

Dallin is 3 years old! He seems so grown up recently, and he definitely did a lot of growing up in a year.

This is what Dallin was like when he turned 2:

Dallin's food source was entirely low-calcium milk from a bottle. He had a breakthrough just days before his 2nd birthday and finally started eating solid food consistently. It all started with a chocolate chip cookie at Grandma and Grandpa Crapo's. The funny thing is he doesn't really eat cookies or sweets now. He slowly added more and more solid foods to his diet over the year.

Crawling was his mode of transport. Having just started crawling 6 months before, he was really starting to get the hang of it. Sometimes you could get him to balance and stand on his own for 2-3 seconds, but walking wasn't achieved for another 3 months.

He did not say any words. He knew some basic signs like more, eat and milk, but unless he wanted food he couldn't really communicate his needs.

He still used a pacifier when sleeping. I must admit, I was hesitant to take it away because I thought it'd be hard for him (and we all like our sleep) but he gave it up pretty easily not long after turning 2.

Now, he's grown so much and doing so much more. He advanced from a crib to a toddler bed, and then to a full on twin size bed when Connor was born. He eats almost anything. Bottles are entirely gone (as is the milk) and he drinks water from a regular cup. He takes a medication for high blood pressure and we used to mix it in his milk. But now that he won't drink the milk anymore, he takes the medicine straight into his mouth... voluntarily!

He runs, jumps and climbs on everything. He understands and follows commands (when he wants to...). He loves puzzles, and is learning colors and numbers (when you say "One" he says "two!"). He will repeat what you tell him to say fairly well. He knows many words, including...

"Rocks!" 

He doesn't take naps anymore. This is mostly because his preschool is in the afternoon so we had to cut them out. I'm surprised by how well he does with no naps. Although, some days he feels like he needs one.

We love our wonderful Dallin. I amazed at how far he's come in 3 years.