Dear Merritt,

Today is your third-and-a-half birthday. And we're supposed to be celebrating with cake, but you kicked the dog last night. Like, full-on attempted to punt him through uprights. Which means Mommy and I don't get to gorge on 8,000 calories worth of pumpkin cake today. Thanks for being SO three-and-a-half.

You still had to consume some form of breakfast, and seemed pleased enough with my waffling talents.

Fortunately, your self-expression extends beyond random violence against canines. Lately, you've been wearing two different shoes to school/the grocery store/anywhere we'll let you. Which is everywhere. Because, hey, personal style.

You also got a new pair of flip-flops to wear to swimming lessons and are so fond of them that you pleaded to nap in them. That went about as well as the day you were convinced you could put your booster seat in bed and sleep draped over the top of it.

Mommy got a new pair of noise-canceling headphones and gifted you her old ones. You're delighted to sit down beside her and "work" while also yelling at the same decibel output as a jet, "I LOVE YOU!"

But you don't require the headphones to amp up the volume. Last week you were wandering around just hollering "POCO! MARCO!" Perhaps at swimming lessons we can get you squared away on how you actually say/play that. Or perhaps your brain will just keep doing what it does, like when you're telling a story about how "Momma was in a neighborhood and she got 'pletely-com' lost!"

Many moons ago, you picked up the knack of saying "ya" (yuh) instead of "you" with certain phrases. It's not quite Minnesotan. It's definitely not Canadian. It's certainly Merritt. You showed up the other day complaining about being itchy where your underwear had been in its Magnificent Wad™ position, and so I fetched some lotion. (Sidenote: Some kids do Band-Aids. You do lotion. You like a Band-Aid just fine, but lotion is your go-to healing device.) So I was preparing to apply the lotion when I discovered the crease in your skin where your mangled underwear had been cutting into you for an undetermined amount of time and you announced, "See? I warned ya."

And when we tell you we love you, you like to tack on the addendum, "But sometimes I frustrate ya."

Oh, Merritt. I realize it can seem that way. When Super Grover's helmet "somehow" breaks and while fixing it I accidentally super glue myself to it and then end up covered in glue and blue fur and then I give up and wrap the break in masking tape and color it silver, I can see how you might sense some frustration. Or when Mommy says, "All that noise is unnecessary," and you respond with, "YOU'RE unnecessary," yeah, that's grounds for some genuine frustration.

But when it's five minutes until bedtime and you sweetly ask, "Can I watch some baseball with you guys?" and then you snuggle up with us and get into the game, that's not even a little frustrating. And when you think hunting for dinosaur eggs is infinitely cooler than hunting for plain-old-Easter-eggs, and then you give all your new dinosaurs awesomely adorable names (Scot, Nipper, Cookie, Backpack, and Turtle), that's totally not frustrating. When you wake up from a nap a bit early and stumble in to find me watching Chopped and you want to know all about the rules of the show and what "mystery basket ingredients" are, and then you ask, "Can you pause Chopped while I go potty? I don't want to miss anything..." that is the very opposite of frustrating.

No. All of that is perfect. Seriously.

It's not frustrating that your vocabulary is bigger than the dictionary, and that you are smarter than a fifth grader, and that you love harder than anyone we know.

It's encouraging.
And satisfying.
And affirming.

What you need to understand more than anything else in the world is that we love "ya." Period.

Love, 

Momma & Mommy