BTLA: f-I-V-E-R!

Saturday, December 21, 2019

f-I-V-E-R!

It's hard to believe that we now have a FIVE-YEAR-OLD!!!
Five feels so grown up, and puts us officially out of toddlerhood (I think?) with our oldest.
We became parents on the winter solstice half a decade ago!

Iver will finish up this school year in Pre-K and is slated to start Kindergarten (school TBD) in the fall.
He weighs around 35 pounds, and wears 4T shirts and ~5T bottoms.
He is still quite the spunky, spirited child.
He is energetic, intense, passionate (explosive at times), and persistent (although we have been having fewer power struggles as he gets older, and we have learned to better manage better his strong feelings and need for control in decision-making).
He is quite the negotiator, and has great brainstorming ideas to get what he wants (we are working on his asking respectfully rather than whining and shouting).
He is analytical and has a photographic memory (he can remember what he wore and on what weekday things were, years in the past!)
He loves board games and can outsmart us adults in UNO, Tic-tac-toe, and others.
He has quite an aptitude for math, doing several-column math with "regrouping" (carrying over), and double-digit addition and subtraction and some multiplication in his head.
He loves books, and is reading short and frequently-visualized words.
He loves dealing with time (he has a beloved Frozen wristwatch) and can calculate "how many minutes until..." in his head.
He loves art, drawing, and writing birthday and Christmas cards.
He did a little acting class this fall and loves going to musical theater shows as a member of the audience (acting in them may or may not be in his future, but certainly a few years off).
He loves routines and rules (and will call us out if we're one minute later than we said picking him up), and is somewhat slow-to-adapt to new settings and people, but has formed very secure attachments to several caregivers/teachers, friends, and family members.
He loves dressing up at home (mainly as Disney princesses, appropriating my tops as dresses and a hooded towel as "hair").
He chooses his own school clothes, and is partial to brightly colored tops and leggings, and one black and neon green hoodie sweater. He loves flip flops and sandals.
He loves to listen to and sing along to songs (mostly Disney, especially Frozen) in the car.
He likes to help in the kitchen and bake with me (even though I don't like to bake nor cook!).
He loves parks, bounce houses, monkey bars, climbing, and active play.
He can ride a two-wheeler without training wheels.
He's incredibly sensitive and will tear up at things like papa forgetting to play"chase" before school when he said he would.
He is sensitive to textures, and bothered by tags and certain socks if they don't feel just right.
He is an okay eater but loves to snack. His favorite breakfast foods are raisin bread, yogurt, cereal, and fruit. For lunch, he is partial to Hormel pepperoni slices, spicy sausages, and mac-and-cheese. His favorite veggies are peas, beans, broccoli, and carrots. He definitely has a sweet tooth (we allow dessert on two nights of the week, which he gets to pick). He loves to have an after-dinner snack if he eats a reasonable amount of normal entree food.
He definitely has severe "FOMO" (fear of missing out) and never wants to sleep ("I just lie there with my eyes closed!") or admit to being tired. Nevertheless, he sleeps from about 8:15 pm until about 6:15 or 6:30 a.m. without a nap (recently, we've had him sleeping in the guest bedroom as Niall wakes up, and sometimes wakes him up, sooner). He's been letting us check on him "whenever we want" after he's in bed (instead of previously five-minute intervals, which became problematic as soon as he could read and understand time because we'd try to drag the intervals out and then would get chastised). He ditched his night-time pull-ups at around four-and-a-half and we're working on him wiping his own bottom, which we've told him is a requirement for KG (even though it's probably not).
He likes bubble baths and end-of-day showers with Papa.

(Niall also turned 22 months last week. We took some photos of the boys together. I think you can tell from the first photo which child is the people-pleaser and which one has his own ideas about how/why things are done...)