Happy Birthday, Matthew!

Matthew is one! A whole year! It kills me to think that it's been that long and that short. He's a fun guy to have around: curious, easy-going, sociable. Some of his favorite hobbies include eating crud off the floor and unwinding toilet paper. He's sooooooo good at unwinding toilet paper. Those little pincer fingers just keep creeping around the roll until he catches the end of it. Brilliant little man.

Matthew started his birthday bright and early this morning at 4:30am...45 minutes earlier than his usual unbelievably early wake time. Thanks, dude.

Snotty nose and a black eye. Being one is AWESOME!

Matthew had his check-up at the doctor today and appears to be healthy and growing on his own curve (15th percentile for length, 50th for weight, 85th for head circumference). He's sooooooo small compared to his brothers at this age. Matthew was 22 pounds 13 ounces today on his first birthday. Robert and James hit that weight when they were only 6-8 months old. Part of my reluctance to celebrate his first birthday stems from the fact that he's just too small to be 12 months old. Well, he's just not as large as I'm accustomed to my 1-year-olds being.

The doctor noted Matthew's precocious social skills. He points, makes eye contact, and vocalizes to direct your attention. Yeah, that's 18-month-old work. Add that to the fact that he's quick to warm up to new people and...I sense another extrovert in the making. Sigh. In other news, I detect a slight preference for his left hand, so I haven't completely given up hope on generating a lefty.

Matthew, like James, also has extra fluid on his ears. We're taking him back in 6 weeks for a follow-up. I get the feeling this doctor worries a lot about fluid on eardrums. My last doctor kinda fixated on another small potential problem and brought it up every visit, too.

Matthew has been walking almost exclusively, so we bought him his first pair of shoes this week:

Itty bitty shoes, just big enough to fit a couple of golf balls in. Can someone that small really need shoes?

The first day he wore them, he acted like I had cut off his feet...moaning and whining as he drag-crawled on the floor. Poor guy. But now he has the hang of them and can go pretty much anywhere he likes:

Check out my artsy-fartsy camera angle. I totally did that on purpose.

After a few immunizations, we came home to start on Matthew's birthday cake. I let James choose the design. He suggested a pool cake:

Bobby took a video, but I'm too tired to post it tonight (I got up at 4:30 this morning, remember?). Matthew didn't believe his cake was worth eating until he had smooshed it to crumbs with his bare hands. Then he tasted it and loved it and pointed/vocalized at the rest of the cake on the table. Yep, no problem telling what he wants.

Love that boy, snot and all. I wish he would let me sleep until 7am, but no one is perfect :)

New picts!

A friend of ours is developing her photography skills and she offered us a mini photo package for the family. I was excited to accept! It was FREEZING that morning, unfortunately, so we stayed in our coats, thus rendering all of my color scheme planning pointless. Oh well. I didn't spend that much time on it :)

She touched up the photos afterwards, so you don't see as many red, runny noses as you should. Here are a few of my favorites (in addition to the ones now adorning our blog page):

James-y is three!

This was the year of James' "magic" birthday...when he would turn three on the third. He's the first of the kids to have his magic birthday, so I was interested in setting up some sort of tradition. Something a 7-year-old boy and a 14-year-old-girl and a 28-year-old man could all enjoy on their magic birthdays in the future.

I finally settled on three wishes.

James' three wishes for his magic birthday were:

1. Lots of little kids running around.
2. A game where we throw candy at each other and then eat it.
3. um, um, uhhhhhhhhhhhh

I filled in the third wish with a surprise trip to our local gymnastics training center for Open Gym. The kids ran and jumped and balanced on all the equipment for an hour. It's one of their favorite places to go.

He also got to choose his birthday dinner and a cake (hot dogs and a strawberry cake with a rainbow on top, respectively).

The party with lots of little kids running around was easy. He insisted on NO big kids. I named every single kid his age that he could possibly be talking about and he settled on three girls: his cousin Sara and two girls from his church Nursery class. It was a free form play date with singing and cake:

Then right before the girls had to go home, we played a candy throwing game. Each kid threw a few pieces of candy at the backs of the other kids and got to keep the pieces that hit someone. For some reason, they all aimed at me. Every piece. And they were pretty good shots.

At James' 3-year checkup, the doctor declared him perfectly healthy except for some fluid in his eardrums that hasn't drained since his ear infection 6 weeks ago. The doc wants to see James in a couple months to check again. If there's still fluid, then James will be referred to a specialist for hearing tests and consultation. James was the slowest of our kids to speak, and the clarity of his speech lags significantly behind his peers at church, but he's recently cleared up some phoneme substitutions and refined his grammar a bit, so I'm not too terribly concerned about hearing problems.

He's still large (90th percentile for height and weight). He's still shy around adults. He's still a curious and confident kid who doesn't mind wandering off alone to follow an interesting idea. He really wants to go fishing and cut up a fish and eat it all gone. He remembers promises and holds you to them. He loves candy. And just in the last couple of weeks he's started playing with friends...one-on-one cooperative play lasting longer than a couple minutes with kids he knows well. We often wait outside with a few other parents while the kids line up waiting for the school day to begin. One morning, James left my side to go stand next to a 2-year-old and smile at him. They ended up chasing each other around a tree trunk.

I took James to meet the new preschool teacher this week. He was shy around her, but managed to answer a few of her questions anyway. James is SO excited to go to preschool. I was telling him everything I could think of about it and he sort of latched on to the idea of getting notes with candy inside them (Valentine's Day). I have conflicting feelings about sending him to preschool a semester early, but meeting the teacher and seeing James bounce off the walls with giddy excitement in that room has tipped the scales in favor of it.

During our visit, unfortunately, Matthew tripped and smacked his face on the doll house. He has an impressive black eye now :(

I love this little James (though he insists that he's BIG, BIG, BIG). That grin of his just gets me every time. I love being his favorite person. I love time with him while the older kids are at school. He's a totally different guy one-on-one. Sweet boy. So glad he's mine, er, uh, ours. 

Matthew picts

Crayon music

While working on another one of his symmetrical creature pictures, Robert stacked up a few crayons according to length. There was a long one on the bottom, three medium ones in the middle, and a short one on top.

Musing to himself, he pointed at the bottom crayon and sang a low note, then sang three identical medium notes as he moved his finger up the stack, and finished with a high note on the short crayon at the top. He kinda chuckled at his discovery and showed it to me.

Crayon length/position translates to music? Buddy, you're so cool! And kinda freaking me out.

Symmetry

Robert has long enjoyed drawing abstract, symmetrical, highly colorful things. I don't remember how many I've posted to the blog. He's very prolific, so perhaps I haven't taken the time to point it out. Anyway, a while ago, he learned how to cut shapes along a fold to get perfectly symmetrical creatures. I love how much time and detail he adds to each creation. I love the colors, too. And I'm always blown away by how symmetrical he remains in every detail.

Today, though, was a new development. He made a series of creatures for his Kindergarten teacher and decided to write his name symmetrically, too:

The front of his bunny-eared smiley man with red fingertips.

The back with his name written symmetrically...twice. You may have to click on it to see it larger. He put "RobertreboR" at the top and his full name on the ears. He was so tickled for figuring out how to do it on his own.

Trellis!

Here is the trellis now that the fencing panels have been added and the brambles are tied up to it. Yes, the brambles are especially roughed-up. Nothing a good leaf drop and spring regrowth won't fix...I'm hoping. I laid down a soaker hose under the mulch, too. Love it! I'm so pleased with how it came out.

With the plants up off the ground, there's now room for a path and something else. I'm leaning towards hardy kiwi vines on the fence, but I will need to ask the neighbor about it. She probably would prefer grapes :( James is in the background here for scale.

An unexpected benefit to this addition has been an added measure of privacy. The driveway feels so cozy now (if driveways can be cozy) and it's fun to work behind the trellis on the mulch path. I think that's the part I like best. The privacy. But it comes at a cost...lower visibility of the intersection and street for all the bike riders in this family.

Mopping

I pull the mop out this afternoon and my 3-year-old asks in horror, "What is THAT?!"

Guess I should mop a little more often.

Made my day

After school, Robert and James are playing on the playground. A boy from Robert's class walks up to me and smiles, "Robert is my friend," before running off to the monkey bars.

Music to my ears.

Take a breather

I haven't had half a second lately to reflect on any of the things going on around here. Haven't taken many photos, either. I feel like we've been going through some real milestones and I'm afraid this period of my life my be lost from record indefinitely if I don't put things on the blog, however haphazardly...

Matthew's first haircut...whoosh!

All four of the guys got haircuts the same day.

Love these boy-o's.

The first few minutes of his new 'do felt like I was finally seeing the child I had envisioned since the beginning. It finally fit. But every once in a while I would forget that we had cut his hair and suddenly see a perfect stranger in my house toddling around. No more shaggy locks. All business.

Primary Program in church...whoosh!

Robert actually spoke his part into the microphone. What courage! After their dress rehearsal the week before, Robert told me that he spoke his whole part to the empty chapel even though he was feeling shy in front of so many people he didn't know (meaning the kids and Primary teachers behind him). I wondered if he would pull it through on the actual day with 50+ more people staring right at him from the pews. He did it! And he was proud of himself for doing it!

Alice's sewing party...whoosh!

I taught Alice how to hand sew a simple pillow. Since she's always looking for a reason to gather friends around her, she suggested throwing a sewing party where she could teach all her friends the same thing...with finger sandwiches and a treat (*batting her eyes at me*). Well, I liked this party idea better than the last half dozen, so I finally consented. We invited 5 of her closest best friends and every single one accepted. Even the one currently living an hour and a half away. Erk. It was one loud girlfest, and they actually did some sewing. I eavesdropped on their chit chat, which was more like a series of loud interruptions, until the sewing broke down and the girls got into the dress up box. By the end of the party, they had used bricks and 2x4s and small sheets of fabric in the backyard to frame out a simple house for their imaginary play.

James also had his third birthday, but I don't want to post about that until I've figured out how to get the photos from Bobby's phone :(

And I discovered our shower is leaking into the crawlspace :( The plumber came out today and said the source of the water wasn't obvious. He's coming back in a couple days with a partner to do more sleuthing. Deep down inside, I'm hoping they also discover the source of that horrible moldy smell coming from the bathroom :)

And I broke, and then fixed, and then broke again, and then made-do with the power button on the clothes dryer. I felt super handy, then totally dumb, then just plain okay with things.

The blackberry trellis is just about done. I ended up strapping the 16-foot fence panels to the top of our van like so:

The tail end is being pulled down by a string that is looped under the car. It was a pretty snug fit. The front part flapped a little crazy if I went over 30 mph, so I stuck to the residential streets and school zones on my way home :) I spent a couple hours this morning installing the first panel on the posts, then tying half of the raspberry canes to it. I like it. I love it, actually, even if the plants look a little roughed up from all the messing around, and even if Matthew ended up playing in (and eating) a little too much dirt/mulch today. James found plenty of sticks to turn into swords, then tools to turn into toys, and a fence to turn into a jungle gym. For three minutes, the boys even played peek-a-boo through the fence. Priceless. Still more work to do before posting a photo up here.

Reading and 'Rithmetic

Two stories to share:

Robert has grudgingly worked on phonics and reading with me, but never really tried it on his own unless it was expressly assigned. Until today. We are walking home and he's staring off at something. I hear him whisper, "Sssss-t-op." Then he turns to me and smiles, "That sign says 'stop'." Later, Matthew walks by and Robert points at his shirt, "That says 'mom'." He's not asking. He's not showing off. He's just stating a fact. I playfully scold him for learning to read, and I moan loudly about how I will never be able to hide another secret from Robert because now he can READ! That makes Robert smile. He wants an example. I say, "What if I tell Alice to hide something behind d-a-d?"

"Dad!"

"Argh! You would know where to find it! See? No more secrets."

Then I spell other "secret" words and places and he loooooves figuring them out, too.


***************


We're walking home from school and we take a new route. It's a fun little side trail that meets up with our usual route about halfway. We turn onto our usual route and Robert suddenly recognizes where we are. Delighted. He wonders out loud if the new route is shorter than the usual route. A shortcut. I mention that maybe I could use my pedometer to compare distances next time. The next thing I know, he's explaining to me how I could take larger steps on the longer route to make it so the two routes would appear to be the same number of steps.

Seriously, Dude? You're 5 years old...and totally right.

I don't naturally think about the world that way. Alice doesn't seem to, either. Surprise! Robert's different (again). Moments like these are a thrilling peek into his perspective and a terrifying reminder that this mom thing is way more complex than I like to admit.