Dear William,
On April 8, 2016, you turned 52 months old. You are 45-1/4″ tall and weigh 49 pounds. You are wearing size 5 (boys) pants, size 6 shirts (boys) and size 1 (boys) shoes.
Things We Did This Month:
Recurring things: Library storytime; Awanas; Aerial Arts; Ice Skating
Special with Grandma D.: She has been taking you to the beach during the day this past month.
3/13 – Legoland
3/19 – Green Dinner (Annual St. Patrick’s dinner at church)
3/26 – Breakfast with Elmo and Friend at Sea World
3/27 – Easter egg hunt at Grandparent’s house
4/2 – Breakfast at the Irvine Spectrum with friends
Monthly Interview of Favorite Things:
Color: Blue and Red.
Song: El Shaddai
Movie: Pinocchio
Food: Hash browns and Rudolph pancakes
Snack: My favorite snack is melon balls and peanut butter pretzels.
Dessert: Mmmm, good one. Rudolph pancakes. Uhhh, actually, my favorite dessert is mint-n-chip ice cream.
Fruit: Cherries
Vegetable: Broccoli
Class: Miss Robin’s class and ice skating
Teacher: Miss Robin
Store: Good one! Sprouts!
Restaurant: Good one! Denny’s. This one.
Vacation spot: Nebraska… Big Bear
Toy: My little toy garbage truck (he got it at Awanas Carnival night)
Favorite Park: Awesome park or the sports park
Theme Park: Disneyland
Best friend: MacKenzie (she is in ice skating class)
Favorite Story: The Prince and the Pauper and the bumpy little pumpkin
Favorite thing to do with Mommy: Go to Disneyland
Favorite thing to do with Daddy: Play doctor
Grandma: Go to the park
Favorite Shirt: Catalina Island shirt
What do you think about being 4? Four is good.
Classes:
Aerial Arts:
Overall you are doing well in this class, but you are consistently challenged. Your Grandma D. asked you after the last class why she kept hearing Miss Robin call your name. You responded that you didn’t want to do the hard things she was asking you to do. Grandma D. told you that if you do the hard things then they become easy. You responded, “Yeah, but then she gives me harder things to do.”
Ice Skating:
You are doing amazing in this class. You successfully completed the Tot 1 class on 3/11. The instructors said you were ready for the Tot 2 class and you said you wanted to continue with ice skating. So, I enrolled you in the next level. You have a friend, a little girl named MacKenzie, who is in the Tot 3 class (you are in Tot 2). After your class is over, you two seek each other out and practice skating together. If she’s not around or leaves early, then you’re not interested in continuing to skate.
Awanas:
You love Awanas. You learn your verse so fast that I find it hard to believe that you actually have it memorized, but you do. We watch YouTube episodes to reinforce the learning, and this past week I brought up the current episode and you told me you didn’t want to see that one because it is boring. I told you that you can watch whichever episode you want to as long as you tell me the verse. You looked at me and without any hesitation said the verse and then said, “Now I want to watch the episode where he’s hiding from me.”
On YouTube, someone created supplementary puppet shows with Cubbie Bear (the mascot for your age group at Awanas). However, they didn’t create one for the last three lessons, nor for Easter. So, we borrowed a stuffed bear from our Awanas teacher and filmed the missing episodes. You love being Cubbie Bear’s helper in the videos… and after they’re done filming, I’ve seen you go get the bear and “pretend” film the episodes.
One evening at Awanas, you walked around the playground and were drawing the letters “i” and “o” and happy faces in the sand.
Your father brought home some brownies that were leftover from a meeting at his work. I split one with you. I took the rest of them to Awanas for snack time, and you had another one there. When you got home, you told your father, “Mommy snuck me a brownie, and then Awanas snuck me a brownie, too!”
There was something that broke and I called your father’s name, “Tony!” but you misheard me and thought I said your Awana teacher’s name. Confused you asked, “Tawny? Tawny? She’s someone at Awanas. She tells stories. Does she also fix things??”
Your imagination again… on Awana night, you crawled into your car seat and started fake-crying. I asked what you were doing, you told me you were a baby. I snickered at you. Half way there you told me you were growing up. When we arrived, you told me you were all grown up as you could be. You stepped out of the car acting all mature and then reality struck and you took off to the sanctuary for the start of Awanas like the excited 4 year old boy you are.
We arrived home one evening after Awanas and your father’s car was in the garage. I hadn’t expected him to be there, because he’d had a prior commitment that night. You stared at it, and asked about it, and you went in the house and called for “Daddy” with no response. You burst into tears because his car was there and daddy wasn’t. I told you that maybe one of his friends came by to take him. You weren’t having that at all. We went upstairs and it turned out that daddy had been in the shower.
Things I want to Remember:
One morning you awakened early, and I went in and you requested to nurse. Relaxed, you went back to sleep. When I got up a couple hours later, I decided to leave for work without nursing you. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I wanted you to get the sleep you needed. Apparently, you woke up when you heard the garage door go up (your room is directly over it) and you ran down the stairs to try to go outside to catch me. Your father was still there, and when he got to you, you were sobbing and told him “Mommy didn’t goodbye nurse me.” I knew it meant a lot to you, but I guess I didn’t realize just how much it meant to you. I know now.
One Saturday morning, you inquired of us, “Mommy and daddy? Today is a William day… does that make you happy?”
You were playing and you walked over nonchalantly with a coin and dropped it in your piggy bank and went back to playing. I asked you where you had found it, you shrugged said, “I don’t know.” I guess if someone visits, they better not leave coinage out, or it’s yours!
Anything at all is a possibility for imaginative play these days… your etch-a-sketch was a map one evening, with the dots at each end of your diagram being a character running away from each other. Your Squigz all stuck together were “fighters” who were fighting each other.
We took you to evening mass one Saturday. During prayer time, you knelt and I overheard you praying, “Thank you God for cake, thank you God for candy, thank you God for cookies…”
I’m teaching you how to make my coffee and your own hot chocolate with my Keurig machine. Even though you’ve got it pretty much down, I supervise you because you forget to put the cup underneath. haha You like to call the K-cup that holds the hot chocolate “chocolate salt” because when you shake it, it sounds like a salt shaker.
I’ve had some problems with my car this past month, and your father was watching a YouTube to tutor himself in advance of changing the fuel filter. You parked yourself in the chair and watched the video of that on repeat 3 or 4 more times and informed me that you were going to fix my car in the middle of the night.
With my hair still wet from taking a shower, you cuddled me and suddenly started sniffing. You announced, “It smells in here… ” Curious, I asked, is it a good smell or a bad smell?” You answered, “A good smell, like mint and chip ice cream.” I laughed because I’ve started using peppermint conditioner.
Driving to LegoLand, we passed the nuclear power plant and you pointed and said, “That is the tents that look like nah nahs.”
You’ve been working on your beat boxing skills… you love to watch a video taken a couple years ago of us where your father and I are beat boxing while driving somewhere and it has inspired you to practice your beat boxing again. You have improved and are now able to make all the rhythm sounds, too.
You are working on phonetics these days and your favorite letter to say is the “P” sound. You do it all the time and it’s like a game show. “P P P brain, no that’s not right, cross it out… P P P Pot, yes, that’s right, I colored it.” You like to do the words that start with an incorrect letter just to make us laugh.
On our way to LegoLand, without consulting anyone in the car, your father pulled into Jack in the Box. From the back seat, we heard you say, “I don’t want this, I want an egg mcmuffin.” I shrugged. No one was behind us, so your father backed out of the drive-thru and we went to McDonald’s. You ended up eating 3/4 of it and finished the egg part completely, so I guess you really did want one.
The morning after the time change, I was listening to the radio while I put my makeup on. You were seated next to me and the DJ was talking about how to help your body adjust easier to the time change. She said, “Light exercise, keep hydrated, take a nap, but keep it short…” You immediately perked up, turned to me and said, “I’m NOT taking a nap. Do I have to take a nap?”
When I had changed to go swimming, I had left my earrings on the counter in your bathroom. You saw them and asked, “What are these?” I replied, “They’re my earrings…” You picked them up and carried them away. I followed you, and you reached up and pulled out my earring drawer and put them in there. It made me laugh, because I remember when you were smaller, you would relocate things all over the house to the wrong places. Apparently, you now do that, but you relocate them to where they belong.
One morning before work, you said, “Today I want to go to Grandma’s house … because of all the new foods.” Surprised, I asked, “All the new foods?” You replied, “Yes, all the new PLAY foods.” Apparently, your Grandma D. has been finding all sorts of new play foods at the Goodwill.
You, “I want to color Easter eggs and then eat the candy. Me, “Well, these are real eggs, not candy eggs.” You, “Oh…. OK, so buy me some WHITE play eggs and I’ll color them then and we can put candy in them and I’ll eat the candy.”
Grandma, “Do you know how to cook eggs so they don’t explode?” William, “I know how to color them without the shell exploding.”
Somewhere you’ve picked up the expression of, “Better get crackin’” and you use it all the time for starting something. Need to leave? Need to eat dinner? Need to read a book? “Let’s get crackin’!” You say.
You had a popped blister on your toe and I took a picture of it to show your father when he got home. The next day, I was flipping through pictures on my phone and you saw that picture and you said, “Awww…” in sympathy like it was someone else’s toe.
One afternoon we were out in the garage playing and I got the hiccups. Surprised, you asked, “Mommy? What is that? Do you have the hiccups?” An awful, gut wrenching hiccup sounded from me and I replied, “Yes, I do.”
Concerned, you said, ‘Oh dear, oh me. I guess you need a pill. Open your mouth.” You picked up a blueberry and put it in my mouth. We waited, I’ll be doggone if the hiccups didn’t up and go away! You said, “Well, I guess I’m a doctor.”
I handed down my old Razor scooter to you this past month and you’ve been working on your scootering skills. When your father came outside to hang out with us, you gave him your old, 3-wheeled scooter and told him, “Mommy gave me her old scooter, so you get my old, OLD scooter.”
We got in the car to go somewhere and I got you all buckled in and you asked me, “Do you have a surprise for me?” Confused, I replied, “No, why would I have a surprise for you?” You replied, “Welllll, because I like surprises…”
At the mall, we took the escalator. After watching it, you observed, “It’s sucking up the steps!”
You climbed to the top of your playhouse and with an impish grin said, “Daddy’s mad is getting worser!”
At Sea World, we took you on the Atlantis ride. It was pretty wild and we got soaked. We pulled into the unloading area and you said with a sigh and a little frowny face, water dripping off of your nose, “Well… that was exhausting.”
One Saturday morning we were making cranberry muffins for breakfast and you were helping me, you told me, “Oh, mommy… we’re having a love day!” After I bit, we had cleaned up, and I had put dishes in the sink. I put the muffins in the oven to bake and heard a clunk behind me, which turned out to be you, climbing on the counter, grabbing the bowl with the leftover batter to finish eating it… while sitting on the counter.
Text from your Grandma D. “Were discussing going to Miss Robin’s class right now. I mentioned a yogurt treat after. William said Mommy is his treat.”
I was texting with your Grandma D. and teasingly texted that I was going to eat your chicken wing (meaning your elbow). Grandma D. replied, “I asked William where his chicken wing is. He showed me one. Said the other is lost outside.”
Sometimes when you get hungry or tired, you’ll get upset and when that happens, I tell you that you need an attitude adjustment. One day you were particularly grumpy while we were driving and you headed me off when I turned around to ask you about it. You said, “I don’t WANT to adjust my attitude. My attitude adjustment fell out the car… absolutely, yes, it did, because that was a scary turn!!”
In the bathtub one night, out of nowhere you asked, “Is daddy home?” “No,” I replied, “He left 10 minutes ago.” Disappointed, you said, “Oh… well, I heard something squeak like *made a sound imitating the garage door*”
Another night, you heard your Aladdin book that was downstairs sitting on your toy box start singing. You asked, “Is daddy playing with my Aladdin book?” I told you that your father had left awhile ago… and I went and looked, and there were 3 cats all sitting around your toy box with really big eyes. Apparently one of them had jumped up there and accidentally stepped on the button.
At breakfast you made an uneven stack of the various jelly squares. You roared, “Who can fight me today?” You then explained yourself, “I’m stacking jelly like David and Goliath.”
Joking around at Walmart one day, you were pretending you were a toy on the shelf. Your father teased you and told you that you were an interactive toy and he turned the switch to off, so you had to be quiet. You started talking and said, “I’m defective, I turned myself on!” Your father teasingly started to take you to the return line and you were giggling so hard. We got in the car to leave and you informed me, “You are NOT returnable, mommy, because you have nah-nahs. But daddy is returnable.”
In the mornings when you wake, the first thing you say to me in your sleepy little voice is, “Oh mommy… I love you so much.” You love to stroke my cheeks and comb my hair. I told a friend who has a 13 year old boy about all these sweet things you’ve started doing the last few months, she smiled tenderly and said, “Ohhhh, you’re in THAT phase. He’s in love with his mommy.” I think she’s right and I have to say, I really hope this phase lasts a long, long time.
Love you forever,
Mommy
More pictures from this month can be found here: Link
Jammie J's Quest 