Hansinator
Thursday 
in mid-morning 
Mystie
Prepare to be Hansinated, to be disarmed by charm and a silly expression with Mommy’s squitty-eyed smile.
Hans is just past the three and a half marker. *Sigh* I was told and now I do believe that the three and a half mark is a milestone from which it gets easier. I’m not a believer in “terrible twos,” but the “draining 30 months to 42 months” would be more like it. At three and a half Hans has a little more life figured out and is able to go along with it rather than resisting it all the time. He understands more intuitively (taught through love and discipline, but now he’s got it a little more internalized) The Way Things Are. Yet he also has growing independence that is difficult to channel and develop. He’s not very stubborn, but he can be insistent — insistent that he be heard when he speaks, insistent that he spread his own butter, insistent that he do as much as possible to get himself dressed. I do my best to let him do all he can, but make him be polite and gracious about requesting what he would like to do and not demand it. He has actually gotten brave about dogs and let Grandma Blueberries’ three dogs of various sizes walk right by him and laugh about them this last Sunday. He is much better about talking to people he is not related to, although complete strangers in unfamiliar territory — like a checkout clerk — still get a blank stare. If he wants something, though, he’s up to the task of requesting it. No matter who it is, he will ask the Costco receipt checker for a smiley face on the receipt. He will also accept help from a stranger if it’s obviously ok with Mommy; he has often had someone else help him get soap or turn on the water in a public restroom if Mommy has her hands full or can only watch from the door because Jaeger in the cart can’t fit or be left. He has to be reminded, but he will even say thank you to them.
Hans is most often a chef in his dirt pile, and sometimes a construction worker with his trucks and blocks, but he is more a dragon-slayer than an engineer. He doesn’t carefully study what he’s doing and purposefully, deliberately attempt to figure things out and make them work. He’ll give it a go and if it doesn’t come to him he’ll leave it be or get frustrated and ask Mommy for help. Mommy does not often rescue him, though; if he won’t invest the time to figure something out, then he just can’t do it for the most part. I don’t want to encourage the habit of running to Mommy when something is difficult.
With the eagerness and unsullied enthusiasm of a 3-year-old, he is convinced — without me even intending him to pick up the idea — that he does school when he writes and draws and looks at books. He might perhaps have a scholarly turn in him; he does often show a sensitive side that, in a son, can sometimes be frustrating. I shall endeavor to encourage his outside play to avoid a pasty-faced, bookish monk and to let him get bumps and bruises and learn to be tough. I would love to have a wise, knowledgable, and logical son, who might turn lawyer or doctor or pastor — I wouldn’t wish politics upon him — but I shall insist upon physical labor and perseverance under stress and fatigue, for that is what — I believe — separates the men from the sissies, even if they be intelligent sissies.
Hans began at about 18 months to be my happy little helper, but he is beginning to realize that helping might not be fun after all. Jaeger is at that same eager and excited to help point, and Hans realizes that it’s time he move beyond it and not be like Jaeger. It is not so much work itself that he dislikes as much as it is doing the work Mom wants him to do. If it’s his idea, he’ll gladly fold the dishrags with relish; if Mom suggests it, it is a laborious chore. I have discovered that my tone and attitude is a key to the situation as well. If I talk to him as my competent helper who I depend upon to help things run smoothly, he will be much more likely to manfully step up to the plate and show me that he can be relied upon. If I talk to him with frustration or haste in my voice, I am sure to get resistance. I am sure to get my attitude mirrored back at me, amplified and magnified. Then how do you discipline it when it’s your own problem staring at you in the body of a three-year-old? You who are spiritual restore such a one. Time for Mommy to repent and start over — and make sure he follows suit as well.
Sometimes it seems that I have such a big boy, such a little man growing up here alongside me. Then I realize that he can’t even read yet, I look around at church at the other little boys at all the various ages and I realize that when compared to even a ten-year-old, he’s a pretty small little boy and we have such a long way to go. I really do enjoy the toddler/preschool stage so much, despite it being so demanding a phase. Yet Hans will sooner than I realize be out of it and he is closer in development to a Kindergartener than a baby. I’m going to have **kids** soon, and not just little ones. That’ll be weird.
(MCL)
with 
(personal library)
I agree about having kids and not little ones being weird. Bennett will be 4 next week, and I just can’t wrap my mind around that. I keep asking him to stop getting bigger, but he tells me he has to get bigger so that he can get a knife and then a gun. Boys!