Will at 4 Years and 10 Months Old

My quarterly post is overdue by more than a month!

It wasn't an oversight.

There just weren't a lot of updates that stuck out in my mind. (I'm making an executive decision to do only biannual posts after age five.) Nor did I possess a camera that could take pictures I would consider update-worthy. :)

Not to say that this handsome little devil isn't interesting...

He definitely is. And he gets cuter all the time... in our humble opinion, of course. ;-)
However! In the past couple weeks, a handful of new points have come to mind about Sir William that I would like to remember at this age. And a few new pictures have made their way to my computer as well.

#1 - His feet grew! He's moving into a size 11 right now and they look so big to me! Still able to wear ALL size 4 clothes. In fact, he's just growing out of some 3T stuff. Size 5 is way too big.

#2 - He is very in tune with his routine schedule and days of the week. He knows where he goes and what he does on any given day and often reminds me of things coming up. He has a solid understanding of the order of days, months, etc.

#3 - Will still twirls my hair. The way he did when he was a nursing infant in my arms. And I LOVE it. Whenever I hold him for any reason or lean over him for a bedtime chat/kiss/hug, he immediately reaches for my hair and twirls it. I hope that never stops and it's one of the reasons I wear my hair long. :)

#4 - Will has begun reading, not only independently, but silently. The days of sounding out have been long gone for awhile now, and he has started kicking back with a book and reading it to himself, undisturbed by the constant sound coming from his sister in the background.

#5 - Not sure if this is in my head, but he seems to be gagging at the dinner table a little more. He's not choking and it's more annoying than worrisome. We know he can control it and overcome the urge mentally, but he's always had a sensitive gag reflex and now seems to use it to his advantage when he doesn't want to eat something on his plate. I wouldn't say it's often, but it's more frequent than I care to witness.

#6 - My boy seems to have become a whiz with nutrition knowledge. Proud mama here. :-) He always covers all his food group "bases" when meal planning (if I ask him what he'd like for lunch, etc.) and he can't be stumped with what foods belong in which group. Even tricky ones for a child, like: nuts, beans, vegetables with seeds, any grain, cottage cheese, etc. He knows the difference between 100% fruit juice and fruit flavored sweetened beverages - we talk about this a lot - and he loves drinking water. (Though his daddy slips him sips of all sorts of sweetened things from time to time. Will knows what an Arnold Palmer is and loves it. Haha!) And while he enjoys just about any treat or junk food ("sometimes foods"), he truly does understand and seem to respect that our bodies need and thrive best on healthy foods ("every day foods"). I'm pretty confident that while he may splurge and rebel a bit when he's out from under mama's wing (who doesn't?), he has a solid foundation for eating healthy for life.

#7 - We've been talking a lot about skills that Will needs to achieve before it's time for Kindergarten. Basic things really. And, though I know this is an accomplishment more appropriate for Sophie's age, Will has really started excelling at dressing skills: zips, snaps and buttons. I know I've mentioned this before: we've kind of babied our kids with dressing. Mainly because it's easier when we do it quickly on a busy morning. And as a result, they whine when we ask them to do something for themselves. But he's been doing these things independently lately and I appreciate it soooo much. He's practicing tying his shoe too!
Similar, but on a different note, Will is opening his car door in my Jeep and getting himself buckled into his car seat independently too. I only have to straighten/adjust/tighten the straps after getting Sophie into her seat and we're good to go! Again, I know these are probably things most kids his age have been doing for a couple years, but we tend to always do this for them.

#8 - Probably the biggest, most exciting accomplishment lately has been riding his bike without training wheels. He is just LOVING this new skill and wants to ride all the time. I have more updates about this which I will save for a later post, but to answer a comment/question from a previous post: Will is approximately 41 1/4 - 41 1/2" tall and is still riding a 12" bike. I think it has actually been a blessing for learning two-wheel riding and I'm hoping the time we have left before his fifth birthday will solidify his new found skills and prepare him to move up to a 16" (?) bike then.

#9 - This is just a random Will-ism that cracked me up the other night:
We were playing our usual "I love you bigger than ___" game at bedtime and he told me "I love you bigger than Mars". I replied "I love you bigger than Mercury AND Venus!" (intending it to mean both of them combined). He obviously thought I meant separately, because he gave me this one-scrunched-eyebrow and an are-you-aware-of-what-you-just-said? tone of voice and said "...whiiiich are both smaller..." LOL!! And then with a "duh" tone of voice, followed that up with "I said MARS". Haha!! That kid will call you out on ANYthing you say wrong or "not nice". ;-)

#10 - Oh! What about karate? We still go every Monday evening, of course. And Will loves it! Occasionally, after a long day away from home, he'll gripe about having to leave the house again. (I can't really blame him.) But for the most part he looks forward to Mondays and going to class. His instructor and all the assistants are awesome and they've learned to stay on top of his constant talking/interrupting/distraction to keep him on task and attentive. They compliment him each time he seems to improve a skill (LOTS of praise going on in this class for ALL the little dragons) and they encourage him to keep trying. He's most definitely got down the kiai, though! That's the yell that's done with any kicking or punching movement to increase force and encourage regular breathing during moves. Look at his wide open mouth as he yells in all these pictures. :-)

Less than two months until Will turns FIVE!

We are constantly teasing him about how he's not allowed to get any older. Craig suggests all the time that after his fourth birthday, he just start going backward to zero with each birthday so that we'd celebrate his third this year. :) Will knows by now that we're kidding, but he always says/yells "No!! I have to get older and bigger! I'm going to grow up to be like daddy!"

It blows me away that we will be putting him on a school bus, come fall, and that he will be playing on this playground with all kinds of new peers that we don't know well. He will continue moving forward on his path to independence from our careful parenting and become the grown up boy that God intends him to be.

He is truly a good boy with a good heart and an honest conscious.

I just pray that I can always be the parent he needs me to be. I know him so well and I know how he thrives. Under what praise and discipline he best responds. Under what way of teaching he can easily grasp a new concept. And I know how to LOVE him with all my heart. It isn't hard. But the older he gets, the more independent he will become and I want to be able to support him in the way that serves him best. I pray that God helps me know when to speak and when to listen, when to be lenient and when to stay firm. And I pray that we can always have a trusting relationship in which I don't feel the need to "hover", but that he knows he can come to me for anything he needs.

I love this boy. Every little bit of him.

Being his mommy is one of my favorite assignments that God has given me.

Look, Mom! No Training Wheels!

This past weekend has welcomed two major milestones! Or, at least, the interest and huge progression towards those milestones. And both of these things probably could have been successful much sooner, but Craig and I have just been putting them off and being lazy.

Sophie spent nearly the entire weekend in underwear (except for church and a baseball game... oh, and sleep time) with only two pee accidents! She is still uncertain about pooping in the potty and NEVER tells us ahead of time, but she finally seemed interested and proud to wear her Dora underpants and we really worked at staying on top of potty breaks. I know regression happens even after big steps forward, but this progress has sparked some major motivation in us!

And the second milestone was Will learning to ride his bike without training wheels!!! I don't know why we haven't really tried this before. As soon as I got him started he took off and did SO WELL the entire time we practiced. We were in the parking lot in front of the new elementary school and he had plenty of space to ride long stretches and stop on his own. He CAN stop and get his feet down to catch himself, but getting started and making turns is something we will continue to work on. He was SO proud and excited! He kept saying "Look mom/dad! I can ride without training wheels! I'm just like Jagger and Ryan and Griffin!" :-)

This was after nap time and before dinner and the day just continued to be gorgeous all the way to dusk. Sophie rode her tricycle and ran around the empty lot and got TONS of exercise too.

When he's pedaling, you can tell he is definitely outgrowing this bike. His legs are too long and his knees come up too high. But the height is just perfect for enabling him to stop and touch the ground safely. There is definitely a bigger bike on the shopping list for his birthday! And Sophie will be elated to get this hand-me-down with the training wheels back on. She already tries to steal it all the time before Will gets outside.

Way to go, Will!!!

I just can't even tell you how excited this made him. He asked to ride again as soon as we got home. Our driveway is long-ish, but still not as ideal as the parking lot. We're definitely going back.

After a lot of riding practice, I took the kids around to the back of the school to play on the playground for awhile. Seriously. TONS of energy burned this day. They napped well and crashed hard at bedtime. :-)

He loved hanging and dropping (and attempting a pull-up) on the pull-up bar.

It was kind of a big drop for his size and he was fearless!

Love these kiddos. With all my heart.

And I love perfect Saturdays like this one.

A Fun Lunch Outside

Another one of our friends had a birthday this past weekend and we got together again with our same group for another evening of game playing. We ordered pizza, brought salad and dessert, and played one of our favorite games: Q90. Guys vs girls. :-)

Craig is normally really intense with this game. He fires questions before anyone can get a word in and we all just laugh at him. Ha! Look at the serious expression on his face!

We stayed WAY later than I expected, but thankfully my parents were keeping the kids overnight for us, so we got to sleep in a bit. That almost NEVER happens!

The next morning, after picking the kids up, we all played outside for awhile.

The day was absolutely GORGEOUS! We ate lunch and dinner on the deck, played outside a lot, and I got a ton of house work and cooking done during nap. I LOVE days like this.

After awhile, the kids came inside to wash hands and clean up for lunch. I had a surprise planned for them that I saw on Pinterest (of course!) and I got it all assembled and hidden without them seeing. I'd already washed the plastic eggs and prepped the food so I just filled the eggs, closed them all and went outside to hide a carton for each child. I decided it would make much more sense to just leave the appropriate variety of eggs in each carton instead of hiding the eggs individually.

I also got a plate of food ready for Craig and I and beverages for all four of us set out on the table on our deck. Before we went outside, I told Craig to just act like he didn't notice that the kids didn't have food at their places. Well, Craig makes a habit of teasing the kids (especially Will) in a LOT of ways so Will got instantly defensive and upset when we told him we didn't know where his lunch went and maybe a bunny or a bird took it off the table and hid it!?!? You can see his pouty face at the idea that he were playing a trick on him even though we'd already suggested that the kids go hunting around the yard for their lunches.

Running out to the tree in the back corner of our yard.

But Sophie stopped short and Will ended up finding the carton that was sitting beneath the tree.

Finally a smile when he realizes this is kind of fun/funny! ;-)

Craig told Will he had to help Sophie find her carton or we'd have to split the one he found. :-)

Do you see Sophie's carton? She's about to discover it.

Yay!

Back at the table and cracking into each egg, both kids loved this surprise.

I just LOVE catching pictures of the way Craig and Sophie look at each other. I adore this bond.

Easter cookies for dessert.

I've got to come up with more ways that we can have "lunch hunts" this summer that aren't Easter related. This was so fun!