Here’s how it went.

Sam: Today is Julie and Grace’s birthday!

Me: Are they turning four?

Sam: Yes! They are twins. They were two eggs.

Me: Wow, they’ve really stepped up preschool curriculum these days. Were you an egg too?

Sam: Yes, and then I opened my eyes when I was in your belly, and I popped out and I was Sam.

Me: That’s pretty much how I remember it, too.

He has brightened our lives and brings us so much happiness every day.

Happy birthday, Buddy. You are our dream come true.

Isn’t that nice of him?

Episode 1: The Phantom Menace is out now, and let’s just say it’s not going to go down with Cleopatra and Titanic as one of the greatest movies of all time. Frankly, it sucks.

Fortunately for all of you, you won’t need to go see it. Sam’s going to sum up the movie in one minute, saving you not only $51 in tickets and $18.50 in snacks, but also two and a half hours of your life that you’ll never get back.

You’re welcome.

May the force be with you.

Kate, who is much hipper and also much better at understanding three-year-old-ese, informed me that my interpretation was wrong. Pretty sure there was some eye-rolling going on.

Can you tell what he’s saying?

Potty humor.

He was playing in the sandbox at school last week, and announced upon my arrival that he was making “poop pie.” Today as we were driving home, I asked him what he had for lunch. His response? “Poopyhead!” I thought I didn’t hear him correctly at first and asked him to repeat himself – sure enough, “Poopyhead!” I said that wasn’t a nice word and I didn’t like it, and he said “It starts with an S so that means it’s not a bad word.”

Yeah, we still have some work to do on letters. And apparently also on logic.

As you may or may not have noticed, Jenny has no problem with disgusting topics (ok I have to stop linking to posts within the category “bodily functions” before I lose my lunch). I, however, prefer not to discuss such matters. I use curse words way more than Jenny does though so I’m in no way claiming vocabularial (I made that word up, but I like it) superiority – I just think it is revolting, and saying words that Jenny will freely title a blog post with makes me physically uncomfortable.

So anyway, what am I going to do with Sam and his new fascination? I want to make it stop!!!!

Last week, when I picked Sam up from school, I asked his teacher how his day went, as I do every day. She responded that he had a good day, and she does every day. But then she threw a zinger at me.

“I did have one question for you,” she said. “Does Sam know his letters and numbers?”

Sam’s three and a half. He’s been recognizing and pointing out the letters in his name when he sees them around, and I thought that was a pretty good development. Other than that, I hadn’t given it any thought.

Until that moment.

As I stumbled around for an answer, the teacher continued, “When I ask him, he doesn’t seem to know them, other than the letters in his name, and I wasn’t sure if he was just being silly or what. He’s so smart, I figured that he’d know them already. Does he know them when you work on them at home?”

When we, uh, work on them? At home?

CRAP.

Teaching him letters and numbers had not crossed my mind. (I can’t believe I am admitting that.)

The kid has known the entire St. Louis Cardinals line up since he was barely two, and he can recite Star Wars and/or Lord of the Rings characters or plot lines in his sleep.

He is smart. I really didn’t think I needed to teach him stuff.

Needless to say, after that conversation with his teacher, I immediately freaked out and determined I had ruined his academic future. As I drove home, I made a mental list of all the things I needed to google – methods, apps, flashcards, you name it – to get him back on track.

I broke the news that Sam was academically challenged to his dad gently when we got home. Andy said, “She wants him to know his letters and numbers? I’ll teach them to him by tomorrow.”

Then he broke out a pen and paper and started to drill Sam. I hadn’t even googled anything yet! He wasn’t even using the iPad! I was appalled.

Until I realized that Sam was indeed learning his letters and numbers right there on the spot.

So there, preschool teacher.

Anywho, this is a long and belabored way to get to the point – Andy’s old fashioned method actually did work, but I’m still on the look out for toys/videos/apps/games that will reinforce his letter/number knowledge.

So, readers, what worked for you and your kids? How can I get Sam back on the right academic track before he becomes a preschool slacker?

But, since he had decided he was ready, I wanted to move on it. His crib is one of those that theoretically makes a toddler bed and then a double bed, and for some reason I had in my mind that make the conversion was going to require serious deconstruction and reconstruction of the whole thing. As it turns out, the “toddler bed” is the crib minus one side. The directions said to remove two screws. Even I could handle that. So, Sunday evening, we got him all set up.

He was so excited.

(Shout out to my good friend Beth and her son for the sweet bedding!)

I, however, was a bit sad. He is my baby. And he’s not sleeping in a crib anymore. Which would lead to the inevitable conclusion that he is not in fact a baby, but I refuse to acknowledge that.

He’s my baby.

Sunday night, after we had read books and said prayers and sang lullabyes and rocked for an extra long time, I carried him over and laid him in his big boy bed.

In his sweet, almost-asleep voice, he whispered to me, “I still need you, Mama.”

Oh, my heart.

Kate’s spending the weekend with Aunt Anna at church camp. Anna wants to indoctrinate these kids into camp at an early age! I am really excited for them both and I know they’re going to have a great time. I can only hope Kate comes back from camp with a pine tree tattooed on her back like Anna did one summer.

Andy and my dad are spending the weekend in Chicago, on their annual baseball weekend trip. I can only hope they don’t come back with anything tattooed anywhere.

So, that means I get to spend the weekend with this guy.

And I am pretty excited about it.

I’ve been trying to think up fun things we could do, just the two of us. All Sam has requested is that we go to “Chick-a-lay.” I’m thinking we may stop at Cosi – I loved it as a kid but haven’t been for many years. I’ve never really taken Sam anywhere like that, just the two of us, and I think it would be fun. Besides – we’re going to need to do something to break up the 5-hour car ride we’ve got in store with us that day! I think we might go to the zoo on Sunday, as well.

Either that, or we’ll stay home and play super heroes. Regardless, opportunities like this don’t come along very often, and whether he’ll remember a weekend with his mom to himself years from now, I know I will.

And then I saw this.

And then I googled “What happens when you eat uncooked corn on the cob?” (Apparently nothing. Sam lived to tell about it.)

Boys are gross.

Yes, Sam. The one who turned three at the beginning of April.

I’m all about leaving a kid in a crib as long as possible (clearly), but even I am wondering if this is going on a little too long. We switched Kate to a big bed at about 2.5, but we had a good reason to – we moved, so doing a new room/new bed made sense (and setting up her crib in the new house did not!). But we’ve had no reason to move Sam, so we haven’t.

He’s not climbing out of the crib, he doesn’t mind being in there, and he is a wonderful sleeper. Frankly, I hate to mess with it!

The fact remains, however, that he is nearly three and a half and still sleeping in a crib.

So tell me – what would you do? Let sleeping babies toddlers preschoolers lie, or break out the big boy bed?