Dear William,
On June 8th, 2016, you turned 4 1/2 years old (or 54 months old). You are 46″ tall and weigh 49 pounds 8 ounces. Despite it seeming as if you are getting lanky and your father thinking you were getting stretch marks on your sides (you’re not), you are wearing the same clothing and shoe sizes as last month.
Things we did this month…
- Finished Ms. Robin’s class with a great performance (Road to Rio). We are now taking a break.
- Completed Tot 2 Ice Skating Class; taking a break.
- Finished the 1st season of Cubbie Bears in Awanas; starts again in September.
- Took a vacation and went to Michigan for a family wedding.
Monthly interview of favorite things…
Color: I have no favorite color… uh, white and red.
Song: It’s about… Who’s Dory
Movie: Finding Nemo
Food: Chicken and chocolate
Snack: Melon balls
Dessert: Cake! Uhh, fudge, actually. And cake.
Fruit: Grapes … and plums. And peaches.
Vegetable: Broccoli
Class: Basketball
Teacher: My basketball teacher.
Store: Where they have lots of restaurants and a lot of stores in a building. A mall. All of the stores.
Restaurant: All of the restaurants.
Vacation spot: Michigan and Big Bear
Toy: Garbage truck and Big Buzz and Woody, and Big Jessie and Bullseye and Big Rex. But I couldn’t find him today.
Favorite Park: All of them.
Theme Park: All of them.
Best friend: That girl I found at the park today.
Favorite Story: The Sugar Plum Tree
Favorite thing to do with Mommy: Go to Disneyland
Favorite thing to do with Daddy: Go to church
Favorite thing to do with Grandma: Eat ice Cream
Favorite Shirt: All of the travel shirts.
What do you think about being 4 1/2? It’s good. But that girl I met at the park today was 4 1/2, too.
How did you sleep this month…
Sleeping has been great this past month. Even with the travel we did to a different time zone (East Coast), you slept great. I was so surprised when you slept until 9 AM at the hotel in Michigan our first night there. You had trouble falling asleep one of the nights when we were traveling, but that had more to do with the room, than you. You’ve had a couple nights where you had trouble turning your brain off since we got back, but eventually you did fall asleep on your own (I had to go take care of chores.)
Things I want to remember about this month…
You greet me when I come home from work with an exuberant, “Hi Sweetheart!”
We were using anything and everything as leverage for you to do well in your aerial show. We had a credit for 3 admissions at an indoor playground and I came home from work to you telling me this: “Grandma says she’ll take me to We Play Loud if I do good in my show!”
Our neighbor has a little dog that she carries in a sling when she is outside. The tiny dog is really old and her youngest son just learned to ride his bicycle without training wheels, so she was on her bike with her dog in the sling and her two boys were riding around her. You were on your “balance” bike and the only thing you were interested in doing is petting her little dog. She kept edging away, trying to get her boys back home, but she adores you and kept talking to you and you kept petting her dog. It was so funny to watch you reel her back to you so you could keep petting her little dog in the sling.
You have all these plastic bugs that your Godmother gave you when you were about a year old. You love them and role play with them now. You were putting them in the birdhouses that we decorated a couple years ago, and I don’t allow you to play with mine because I have tiny, breakable furniture in it. So you told it, “I’m sorry, Cricket, but you have to sleep somewhere else tonight.”
Monday mornings are never easy for you, or for us, as adults, either. Some mornings you sleep through our morning snuggles, or fall back asleep. One Monday morning, your Grandma D. reported this to me via text: “Mommy?” “Daddy?” “Oh. It’s YOU again!” — these were William’s words as he woke up a few minutes ago. I thought it was hilarious!
You like to watch the Signing Time videos, and sometimes they’re kind of like a game show spelling bee. One night, you told me, “Lollipop, it’s like you’re holding the stick and sucking on it. Lollipop.”
One of our friends has a new baby, so I asked you what you would tell a mommy who wants to nurse her new baby. You responded, “I think she should let her baby suck on the nah-nahs whenever the baby wants to. It’s very good.”
Your father and I always try to get as many snuggles from you as we can. You kind of skimped your father on the hugs one day and your daddy asked, “When will I get more snuggles?” You replied, “When I get dessert.”
One night you asked us, “Where are we going to eat tonight? Rubios?” Then you asked with a huge grin on your face, “Is it Taco Wednesday?”
We took you to the doctor to have your ears checked, because you were complaining of ear pain. Afterward, outside, you spotted a sea gull who was hanging out near the fountains. You started to chase him, and I admonished you not to chase the bird. You said, “I’m not chasing the bird. I’m doing a fast dance. See?”
You said to me, “Whoa, Whoa!!” I said, “What’s that?” You said, “It’s like a Spanish word.” haha
Driving down the freeway to a little petting zoo, your father said, “We’re almost to our exit on the freeway, and then what are we gonna do?” You replied, “Go to the zoo and poo!”
Just this last week, you told me, “I’m tired of summer. I just want it to be Halloween now.”
After our visit to Mackinac Island, you were playing with my five legged camera pod. You twisted and bent it all around and then told me, pointing at it, “This is the island, here’s the fort and the flag… We’re right here right now.”
Reading the menu on the airplane, you pointed at the picture and said, “I want the chocolate dinner.”
We went to breakfast one Sunday morning, and the wait for our food was interminable. You were looking for something to play with and you asked for some cars. We didn’t have any, and so you told your father, “Daddy, if you don’t go home right now and get my cars, I’m going to be a bad boy.” That threat didn’t work out for you at all, of course, but nonetheless, we found it to be quite funny.
Out of the blue last week, you told me, “I miss Awanas, mommy. I want to do Awanas again.”
There have been a couple of times this past month when I’ve purchased various items with the intention of doling them out as a treat, or I purchased some figurines on sale for the upcoming movie, Secret Lives of Pets, and I left them on my lounge couch in a plastic bag. The curiousness that is you has asked, “What are these?” I smile at you without answering and you ask, “Are they surprises?” When I answer in the affirmative, you happily walk away, without investigating further. This is an amazing thing to me, because it’s not something that I’ve really thought about all that much, but you are accepting of the fact that it’s a surprise, therefore you WILL get it sometime in the future, and you’re willing to wait until that time.
Another interesting example of this is that one weekend we went to Walmart with you on a Saturday, all three of us. You requested to visit the toy department and we reminded you of our rule that we take care of our shopping list first. Well, we didn’t end up visiting the toy department that day, because we ended up on the other side of the store and we all forgot about ti. We went again on Sunday, just you and me, and you again made your request about seeing the toys, and I reminded you that we had to take care of our list first. Again, both of us forgot about it. On Monday, your Grandma D. took you to Walmart and you requested to go to see toys, she took you to visit the aisles and you had the best of times… and you even thanked her for taking you to the aisles. I told her what had happened over the weekend and she was so surprised and so pleased that she had been able to make the time to take you. She shared that she had even asked you to go get her a shopping cart to help her out (watching you, of course, the whole while) and that your reward for doing that would be a visit to the toys. Of course, when your father asked you about your day, you told us that you hadn’t gone to Walmart. Furthering the cliche of what happens with Grandma stays with Grandma. haha
And, finally, it is noteworthy to me that life lessons start this young, as evidenced by this text my mom sent me one day about a couple of older boys who were being generally unkind to you (they took your shoes away from where you had left them to climb a structure, and then laughed at you when you got upset) and were just looking for ways to get into trouble… “William learned about trouble makers today…two little boys at the park. I tried to teach him about getting in with the wrong crowd as i took his hand & we left for a different park.”
There are times when all I can see in this world is the evil, the scary, the terrifying and the frightening. It can all be overwhelming sometimes as an adult. I’ve often made the joke to your father that the reason I don’t watch TV or the news is because I’m always left with the sense that it’s a miracle there are even people alive any more, and the news seems to revel in reporting the most horrific ways a person can lose their life. Horrifying stories about shootings, acts of terrorism and, even, devastation that crawls and wiggles its way into a family vacation in the form of an alligator in Disneyland, leaving a family bereft of a child that is younger than you. My reaction to these stories is to hold you longer when I put you to bed, to feel your heart beating more often, to seek to watch you laugh more often, I bend down to hear your words more frequently, I hold onto the miracle of the time that we have with you and each other as a family. I pray more passionately to God for your protection, for our protection, and that He will guide the path of our lives. I know that no matter the safety precautions in place that the very act of living, of having a heart beating inside a human body, is a miracle.
Love, Mommy
More pictures from this month can be found here: LINK
Jammie J's Quest 