I don’t know if I’ve ever met a kid as easygoing as Ollie. Everybody always says, “Oh it must be so nice to have such an agreeable child!” Of course it is. But also some times it isn’t.

Ollie, do you want to eat this pickle dipped in sriracha? Sure. Do you want your sister to dress you up in girls clothes and conscript you into whatever game she wants to play? Why not. Did you just run face first in the wall? Honey Badger don’t care. Oliver, did you just pee your pants and sit in the urine for 30 minutes? ::shrug::

The problem with apathy is that if you are generally satisfied with everything, you don’t have much motivation. Sure, it’s nice not having to fight with him about eating veggies, or what clothes he’s going to wear, but it’s also frustrating when he’s happy to have you dress him every day, or doesn’t feel like learning what sounds animals make. He doesn’t have much of a drive to acquire new skills.

It’s often amazing to me that my two children are just the absolute photo-negative of each other. Evie has strong opinions about everything, and is very motivated to practice things until she gets them *exactly right*. She is always interested in doing things on her own and wants to know how to do everything, all the time. On the other hand, I have to fight with her every day because her clothes aren’t “beautiful enough” or “don’t feel right”.

When Oliver is older, I worry about people taking advantage of him. He’s so willing to give up what he has to make other people happy. If he and Evie are fighting over a toy, and they both end up crying, he will give the toy to Evie to help her feel better. He’s just such a big sweet ball of cuddles and self-sacrifice.

It’s not that he never wants to do things by himself, or learn something new, or have a toy all to himself without sharing, but by and large it’s not the norm. And considering he’s just going on 3, he’s probably in a stage where he’s about as selfish as he’s ever going to be.

An easygoing child is an embarrassment of riches, and complaining about it runs the risk of annoying all the other parents out there. I know there are worst problems to have. But it’s not always all it’s cracked up to be.

Lately, Oliver has decided he is a “big boy”. Like any good parent would, we quickly capitalized on this new attitude and began using it against him.

This has been manifesting in a lot of different ways, some good, some bad. He wants to do everything himself. Sometimes this is good, because he can go occupy himself for 10 minutes and come back with his shoes on (the wrong feet), which saves me from having to do that thing, no matter how small. Sometimes this is bad, because we don’t have 10 minutes to spend on putting shoes on. Sometimes doing it by himself actually results in more work, like when he goes to the bathroom by himself and you have to stand over him and remind him of each step as he does it.

Still, it seems like he has taken a big developmental leap lately, and I think it is primarily because suddenly he himself is motivated to do things, rather than doing them because he is told to do them. In addition to going to the bathroom by himself, he has been learning how to zip his coat, independently doing puzzles, and sometimes “saving his pee pees” at night. He’s also been drawing much more recognizable shapes, as opposed to random scribbles that he would interpret for you after the fact. Sometimes now I can say, “Oh, okay, this is an eye, right?”

I realized that we have been very lax in teaching him his letters. This is the plight of the second child. With Evie we were constantly sitting down with her, teaching her, helping her learn new things. Ollie’s mostly just left to his own devices on this stuff. Now that I am making a conscious effort to teach him letters, he is starting to pick up on them a little bit.

One very, very bad development along these lines, is that Ollie has started skipping his nap several times a week. What a disaster this is. I remember it being the same with Evie; maybe he doesn’t really need a full nap, but he can’t quite make it all the way to bed time without it. So late afternoon / early evening he is just a bear to deal with, especially after dinner during the whole getting ready for bed time.

But the good clearly outweighs the bad, as it’s fun to see him learning new skills and being proud of them.

I don’t know if it is related or not, but that boy sure learned how to talk. Hoo boy! From the minute his eyes open in the morning until the minute they shut at night, he’s got something to say. I remember when Evie used to talk like that (did she ever stop?), and I remember people saying, “Your second child won’t talk, just to make up for it.” Well people, you were wrong, wrong, WRONG.

After I put the kids to bed I just stand outside their door for a minute to savor the silence. And believe me, if I’m the one saying it’s too much talking, you know it’s really too much talking!