My Baby is 4!!!!

Each year it shocks me first that I have children after such a long road and second that the year has passed so quickly. Evan has grown up so much this year. He is such a little companion. We have such fun with him.

My mother in law came from SC to spend the week with us. It ended up working out really well my mom had some health issues and my MIL was able to watch the kids 2 days and volunteer at preschool with Sara. We had a huge party 29 people for Evans birthday. He had a blast and the kids played really well together. He did a great job thanking each person for his gifts and not showing any disappointment or telling them if it was a duplicate. We have talked about his numerous times since Christmas.

Evan has a ton of Cars toys, Legos and Duplos. He took the instruction book out for the Legos and put a few cars together himself. Evan was very proud of himself. I volunteered at his school on Monday to celebrate his birthday. During story time I heard him whisper Mom and he whispered I Love You. This kid melts my heart over and over again! I had his parent teacher conference, he exceeds all his classmates academically and is average in his coloring, writing, and rule following. His rule and procedures include not running in the classroom. The classrooms are huge and the kids often are reminded not to run. I guess if thats the worst he does I can be a really proud Mom. When I was there we did an activity where the kids had to match magnetic letters to a letter written on a heart. The majority of the kids struggled with this and couldn't recognize/name the letters. The activity was set up so two students could do it at once. Evan quickly did his and then other set and then took the sets apart to make his name. He was asked to color in a heart and wanted nothing to do with it, after a bit of prodding he did it as quickly as possible. Its funny that he is interested in letters and numbers but nothing crafty.

We still love puzzles Evan gave his Grandma some 24 piece puzzles and she struggled. His favorite puzzle is a 155 piece puzzle and he has done it more times than I can count. We have been working on a few 300 piece Charlie Brown puzzles together.

Evan is my pickier eater out of the two kids, he will eat chicken, turkey, roast beef or stew meat (cooked in the crock pot), hotdogs (not his fav), macaroni and cheese, chicken noodle soup, Fluff and pbutter sandwiches, ravioli, he will also eat brocolli, corn, peas, and squash(only if I bread it and fry it), sweet potatoe fries, rice, and mashed potatoes and gravy, he will eat most fruits. Evan still isn't crazy about milk. I can usually get him to drink 8 ounces each day and 1-2 drinkable yogurts. He won't eat cheese except on pizza. Of course he'll eat most snacks except fruit snacks. Whoo that is a list, but it feels like I'm making him the same stuff all the time. I'm estatic when he tries something new. He doesn't even cave to peer pressure during snack time at school. He'll go hungry if he thinks he doesn't like it. Hopefully we outgrow the pickiness, but our good friend have even pickier children so I guess it could be worse.

Tonight both kids fell asleep by 8:30, this hasn't happened in a long time. I feel like I'm on vacation for an hour or two :-) We started ice skating lessons last week and Evan cried for most of the lesson. Our neighborhood is hockey crazy with 40+ little boys that have a constant hockey tournament going on. A few neighbors have ice rinks when the winters permit. We've only had 24 inches this year, the only thing I'm missing is a snowday. So this week he promised he wouldn't cry. I watched him fight it a few times, and he made it about 25 minutes before he cried. He finally told his teacher his skates hurt his feet. He did much better getting himself up off the ice and skating across the rink and back with a walker. He let go of the walker and played a game. Hopefully we will improve. Secretly I want him to learn but not fall in love. Hockey is very expensive, the learn to skate program has cost us over $175, we had to buy used skates, a new helmet, another pair of used skates the first ones were awful, and the cost of the program. They also have a snackbar there so last week it was a bag of M&M's and this week a bag of popcorn. Six more weeks to go. Last week as we took off his skates he was crying and he told us he hates hockey he just wants to play Tennis. He loves to watch Charlie Brown and Snoopy plays Tennis!

I've rambled on and on but its been way to long since I posted. Next post will be a Sara update. One quick Sara not she tells me Snow White is Dumb (she heard my Mom slip and call some TV shows dumb) and she makes us pretend to put Cinderellas slipper on her foot, sometimes its a shoe, sock or just pretend.