Jake's 4 Year Pictures

Just a quick update with some of Jake's 4 yr old pictures... and a word to the wise...don't even think about sending any comments about how old he looks...LOL

"Yeah, I'm 4!!!" "And I'm still bad to the bone"


"Yep, I can spell it for you"

That's our boy!!! Hope everyone is having a GREAT week!!

Gina

Special...Even Without a Reason

Just a short post without any special reason or any reports of some unbelievably special things Jake's done or said (though, there were without a doubt, a bunch today)...

Just a couple of pictures of the love of my life...lying there sound asleep (paci free!!) and looking like the very best thing any mommy could ever wish/hope for.

Hope everyone has a great week...

The 4 Year Check-up: The Good, The Funny & The Painful

Yesterday was Jake's 4 year check-up with our pediatrician. Overall, the pediatrician said he looked GREAT and was progressing incredibly well. His assessment of the whole event wasn't quite as positive...First he told me that he didn't know he had to pass a test to be 4 (based on all of the questions she asked him and the things she asked him to do). Then he said "mommy, it hurts too much to be 4, if I give all my presents back, can I go back to being 3 again?" Thus, the inclusion of "The Painful" in the title of this post...

The exam started with a review of nutrition and we all know how expansive (NOT) Jake's diet is. Although she at first seemed a little concerned about the fact that he eats little or no meat, when she subsequently took a glance at this height/weight chart, she agreed that we were, indeed, still growing a "big'n"!!! LOL LOL

As far as the stats go...Jake's ratio continues to trend in the right direction with his weight (41.4lbs) in the 85th percentile and his height (43.25") in the 95th percentile. The nurse remarked that at least his height was back on the chart this time...well, a little bit anyway. All sounded good to me!! And for those keeping track...this means he gained 7.4lbs in the past year and grew 3.25"!!!!! He's been consistently growing over 3" a year, let's hope that slows down just a tad, eh?

The next part of the exam included a series of very interesting questions regarding developmental progress, including:

• What is a banana? (He gave several very funny responses before she convinced him that she was looking for a serious answer)
• What is a lake? He mentioned something about seaweed and she asked him to tell her more and so he continued on to say you could swim in the lake or fish in the lake and that means that fish live in there and swim around in stuff that looks an awful lot like seaweed. Seemed to be enough of an answer for her.
• She asked him if he could draw a face and when he did with his hand, she asked him if he had drawn a circle. He said no, and she tried to lead him back towards a yes until he made it clear that only Mickey has a circle for a head, we all really have ovals. Hmmmm, she wasn't sure what to make of that one and decided to move on??
• She asked him to point to a circle in the room and he not only did that, but he showed her an oval, square, rectangle and then began to show her the difference between acute and obtuse angles in some triangles. At that point, she gave me quite a look. I just shrugged, what could I say?
• She asked him if he could count to 20 and he asked her if she meant in Spanish or regular? And then preceded to do both. He told her that he was still working on backwards from 20 to 1 in Spanish, but he got mixed up once in a while. Then, when she didn't respond, he asked me if he did it wrong because she really wanted him to count by 10's or 5's or 2's?? I didn't even look at her at that point.
• Next came ...What are curtains? To which he replied "the things that keep the sun out when mommy wants to sleep late on Saturdays". I think she was feeling much better about the appropriateness of that answer right up until he felt the need to ask "Dr. Prosswimmer, did you never know that curtains go east and west and blinds go north and south?" She wasn't quite sure what to make of that so she said something like "uhhh, no, I'm not sure I understand"...so he used his hands to show her how one goes East and West (and yes, he somehow knows that East is to the right and West is to the left, and North is up and South is down...I think I was about 20 when I learned that...LOL)

At that point, she said there really didn't seem to be a reason to go much further...clearly he wasn't experiencing any developmental delays!! And we both had to laugh!! (Me more at the fact that she hadn't even really hit on the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what he REALLY knows...what is a banana?!?!? Come on now...)

After watching him walk, skip, hop on each foot, jump (at which point he told her he could jump much higher on his trampoline...to which she responded by covering her ears and saying she was going to pretend she didn't hear that) and gallop, we were off to take the hearing and eye test. He passed both of those with flying colors and then we were on to the "painful" part of the event...the injections.

Now, for those of you who have never had to go through taking your child for immunizations, let me tell you it ranks right up there with having a root canal withOUT novocain. I slept very badly the night before just thinking about what this was going to be like...because, for some ungodly reason, they felt compelled to tell me when I made the appointment that there were "quite a few immunizations" at the 4 yr appt. I felt like saying, "hey, thanks for that, and what exactly am I going to do with that advance knowledge besides dreading and worrying about it?!?!" As it turned out "quite a few" equated to 4 - 5 shots. I chose the flu-mist option to cut it down to 4, but holy cow, was that bad enough!!!!!!!!!!!

The way this horrible event plays out is that you lay your unsuspecting child down on the exam table with his little legs hanging off one end. All the while, he's looking up at you innocently with eyes that say "what's going on, mommy?" and the complete and total trust that comes with that period during childhood when you never think your mommy would EVER let anything bad happen to you...oy vey.

Then the nurse asks you to lay across him and hold his arms and at that point, he stares at you incredulously like...WHAT'S GOING ON, mommy??? Then she proceeds to stabs him with 4 injections...2 in each leg. Needless to say, after the first one, all hell breaks loose and for the remaining 3 you are forced to try to ignore the begging and pleading of the little love of your life to "STOP HER MOMMY, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NO MORE, MOMMY, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!! With intense crying and screaming interspersed in between the pleading and begging. Oh, talk about a mommy low point...it feels like a trip to the confessional in needed after that act of sabotage!

He was a real trooper and although I believe he would have surely pummeled the nurse had I let him go, he was content to let me carry him out of there while still softly crying. I had promised him a trip to the little store right next door to pick out a few "comfort toys" and a snack and so off we went. The trauma began to wear off once he saw all of the floor puzzles he had to choose from (he picked a solar system one...no surprise there) and carried it up to the front of the store. There he found 2 beanie babies which he asked if I could buy for him so that they could lay on his two boo-boo legs in the car and give them kisses the whole way home...no way to say no to that one! (These have subsequently been named "Honey Bear" and "Bunny Bear" because he likes calling them "Honey Bunny"...very cute)

Then came the Jake line of the week...as he handed the bears and puzzle to the lady at the counter she said "well, you must have done something pretty darn good to have earned all of these nice things"...to which he replied, "I just got shotted!!!" When she said, "Excuse me??" He said, "that bad girl next door shot me 4 times!!" I had to quickly explain that we were talking about "shots"...as in injections. This continued as we went to Shoprite to pick out his bday cake (cake #4) as he insisted on telling everyone he ran into that he had just gotten shot 4 times. Needless to say, I had a LOT of explaining to do...LOL

Well that's it for now! Still praying for sunshine on Sat!!!!!!!!!!!

Paci Free...One Week and Counting!!

I'm not sure who missed the paci more, Jake, Nanny or me. One thing I am sure about is, no paci has ever been loved more...LOL It looks like we're going to make it, though, as we've been "paci free" for over a week now and there's no looking back.

For those who weren't here for the paci send off, it was quite an extravaganza. Captured, as always, by our Posse Photographer, none other than Aunt CC (the person responsible for 99.99% of the photos of our boy and 100% of the good ones). We tied 3 balloons to it (initially we thought 2 would do it, but alas, the paci was a heavy weight and required a third...LOL) and sang a song created by CC and Aunt Bear for the special occasion...Bye Bye Paci, Paci Bye Bye, Bye Bye Paci...it's time to say GOODBYE!!! (Hey I thought that was pretty darn good with about 3 minutes notice) Then Jakey took one last suck on the thing and off it went to the Paci Fairy.

Up, up and away!!

We all stood and waved and clapped and cheered (and laughed) as it floated off into the sky. Then, two days later, the Paci Fairy returned the favor by delivering a gift back to our doorstep again using balloons. Leaves you to wonder...just how long will we get away with things like this?

Later that night, Nanny and I were sure that we were in for hours of neck pinching (which was his second favorite thing after sucking on the paci)...but we could not have been more wrong! I'm SOOOOOO happy to report that there has been VERY minimal pinching of the waddle going on. Seems it must be something that goes along with sucking on a paci...sort of like cheese and wine, without the wine, who the heck wants just the cheese? Let's hope anyway, then I can stop saving for my neck lift and put the money back into his college fund...LOL

We're still hopeful that the weather will cooperate for take 2 of his bday party next Saturday. I've decided to stop checking the weather forecast all together because it literally changes daily...one minute it says thunderstorms, then the next day it says it will be sunny and beautiful, then the next day, we're somehow at rain all week...not checking again until Friday!

Montessori school starts up again next Monday and although I was worried he wouldn't want to leave camp (since he never wants to come home at night), he seems to be excited about going back. Personally, I just can't imagine what he's going to learn in his first full year in the primary class?!?!? The things he learned in the first 6 months still blow my mind!

These days, he's very much into planets and can tell you the names of all of them and on the model at school he even knows which is which (yet another thing I can't do). So I ordered him one of those projectors that he can use in his room so he can see the planets and some of the constellations on his ceiling and I'm planning to take him to a planetarium sometime in the near future, because I think he'll get a real kick out of that. Especially since this past week, while driving home from school, he asked me if I could take him to see Saturn because he wanted to see the rings. Try explaining to a 4 yr old why you can't take him to Saturn...trust me, not easy.

The other thing he learned about this week, was that some quarters have states on them (and not the "dragon" which is what he calls the American Eagle...and check it out, it does actually look a lot like a dragon). As I would tell him the name of the state, he would tell me where in the United States that state actually was and what states were next to it. For example..."mommy, did you never know that Arkansas is next to Texas?" Scary smart...that's all I can say.

Earlier today, he was "testing" JJ and I by drawing a line on his chalk board and then using 2 wooden sticks to add onto that line to make different shapes. One was a plus sign, and it was hilarious because he even felt compelled to give me a hint..."mommy, it's the same kind of thing as an equal sign...and starts with a ppppp sound" Then he started on types of triangles and JJ was out of there...LOL

These days it's so funny to hear the little bits of slang that he's picked up along the way...for example, when asked if there were a lot of hornets on the newly discovered nest in our front tree, he proceeded to tell me there were "a ton of them". When I asked him what "a ton" meant he told me it was one hundred one hundred...so I asked if that meant 200 hundred and he told me no, momma, that means one hundred thousand. I stopped asking questions at that point...

He also told his Pops that something was "redilicous" this weekend, which we assumed was his version of ridiculous...was very funny to hear coming from him. Then at the pool yesterday, he told a little boy who insisted on throwing toys at him even after he asked him to stop that Santa was watching and he was never ever getting any toys again. When that didn't work, he pummeled him...was hard to yell at him, because the Santa thing sounded like fair warning to me...LOL

Tonight while eating dinner, he decided he wanted to put his bowl onto a paper towel to keep from spilling anything on the table. (He was eating a bowl of rigatoni with tomato sauce) Well, I guess he didn't realize that I had put it into one of those bowls that has the suction thing on the bottom and when he tried to pick it up to move it...in the spirit of being extra careful not to spill anything...the suction cup gave way without warning (I'm guessing here, because I didn't actually see it happen) and the bowl flew towards him and he ended up wearing all but 2 pieces of the macaroni and all of the sauce. After a shriek, all I heard was... SORRY MOMMY, I'M SORRY!!! I turned to find sauce all over his face, his forehead, his shirt and pants, the floor, the table. Even Quincey, who normally circles the table ready to pounce on any crumb that might fall, ran into the other room and hid.

And although I wanted to scream, and then cry at the thought of cleaning up the mess, I had to laugh. Especially since he was already melting down, sure that he was about to be in HUGE trouble...since minutes before I had said "Jake please eat over the table and be careful, mommy just washed the floor"...LOL If only I had been quicker with the camera, because it was definitely a sight to see!!!!! Ahhh, such is life with a 4 yr old!

Hope everyone had a great long weekend and PLEASE PRAY FOR SUNSHINE ON SATURDAY!!!!!!!!!!

G