Our big boy is 6 today!  He (barely) consented to let me take some pictures of him this morning to celebrate.  We had a fun day filled with William kinds of things: we spent the morning at the Science Museum checking out their dinosaur exhibit with our favorite dino guy, Jeff.  We ate pizza for lunch, opened presents, played games (battleship and guess who?), we read books, ate dinner at the restaurant of his choice (Panera), and had cake and ice cream at home.  It was a good day.  Even with a crabby start.

William is super into dinosaurs right now and is just so interested in learning more about them.  I wasn't super excited when he was in to Thomas the train, but I'm not sure I'm liking this any better.  In my opinion, there aren't very many dinosaur encyclopedias that make very good bedtime reading - which is William's number one choice right now.  He is also interested in just about everything else for roughly 7 seconds.  If you can't make it exciting in the first few moments, then he is Done.  Game over.

In other staggering news, I had William put on a size 7 pair of jeans this morning...and they fit.  I about fell over. (William does NOT try on clothes.  He will wear what ever I ask him to most days, but he will not change clothes multiple times to see what fits or to humor his mother.  Even if he looks ridiculous.  Which, is why more than once I have sent him off to school with some very short looking pants in the last month or so.)

So, he appearently fits into size 6/7 in clothes and is getting all big and grown up.

William has weathered a lot of change this last year.  He gained a baby sister, started kindergarten, rides the bus to school, switch the room he sleeps in, lost a tooth, among other smaller changes.  I am always impressed how he just rolls with the changes and takes it all in stride.  I work hard to keep my worries and anxiety to myself and he just continues to make it all look so....easy.  I will say it isn't always perfect, but overall, William is a very flexible kiddo.

Kindergarten continues to go well.  From all reports, William is a social butterfly who knows and plays with everyone.  He enjoys seeing his new friends every day although I suspect he is somewhat bored by the curriculum at times.  His teacher and I have been together off and on to continue to challenge him appropriately.  It's a work in progress!

Oh.  And John wanted me to add that William requested a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting and vanilla ice cream.  Boring.  I considered it.  Really.  Then I found a recipe for chocolate, chocolate chip cake with powdered sugar topping.  Sorry buddy.  Your mama has a chocolate problem.  He rolled with it and I totally plan on getting him his vanilla-ey request for his small friends birthday party next weekend.  I promise.

Babble On

This last week Gemma has found her voice and put it to very good use. She is babbling a steady stream or vowels and a few consonant sounds. It is adorable. And loud. We may never have a moment of peace in this house again.

Today:

Gemma: aaaaaaaaaahhh....(raspberry sounds)
Amelia: mom! Mom! Gemma spitted on me! She needs a time out!*

*no time out is given

-----little later
Gemma: aaaaaaaaa.....gaaAaaaaaa.....dadadaaaaaa

Mama: (uh oh) no! Gemma! Say mamamama! Say mamamama! Not dadadaaaaaa!

Gemma: (giggle). Dadadaaaaaa!

Naughty baby.


Sent from my iPhone

5 for a little bit more

William celebrated his birthday at school today with his classmates. Lucky for him, it was also a school holiday- the 100th day of school. So, the day was full of special activities based on the number 100. I was fully anticipating the dreaded "bring 100 of something to school for sharing" assignment and had prepped with several options (Cheerios, pennies, milk lids, stickers). And alas, my time was wasted as no such assignment ever materialized. Tomorrow we have some Plans to do Fun things with our boy. Hopefully, he will agree because at dinner tonight, he informed us that the birthday boy gets to decide EVERYTHING on their birthday.

"Everything, mom. Really!"

This mama is not buying, but nice try kiddo. He will be able to pick his clothes, the meal tomorrow evening (from several choices) and a few other things. He will not, sadly, be able to drive the car as he is planning. We're so mean.

Giggly baby

Here you can see Gemma is wearing out or getting overstimulated. William on the other hand is still going strong with his silly antics. Anything to make his sweet baby sister laugh!

More giggly baby

More video from Monday night of silly William making Gemma laugh.

Giggles

Gemma loves her brother and sister. Her brother, in particular, can get her laughing so hard! They are so fun to watch together. This evening I was supposed to be putting away laundry and then reading to Amelia.

What happened? Gemma and William were being so cute, I didn't put any laundry away and poor Amelia started reading to herself (you can hear her in the background). This subject likely needs its own post, but Amelia is starting to read on her own. She has been very motivated by watching William work on his school work and read on his own. Not surprisingly, once Amelia decides to do something, you can consider it done. She is one determined little cookie.

Saturday night

Want a fun family activity to do on a Friday night? Replace your toilet seat! Fun for everyone!


Or, turn a quick job into something much more time consuming by

Child one: curious. Wants to know how it works. Is astonished that the toilet seat can be removed. Do not be surprised if you find toilet seat detached sometime in near future when he decides to try out his new skill.

Child two: curious. Wants to hold all the parts, pieces and tools. Also is concerned that her brother is getting some unfair advantage or allowed more turns at something. The situation clearly must be monitored.

Child three: hey! Everyone is in this room! I want to play too! What's everyone looking at? Let me see! Why does everyone get all worked up when I try and pull up to standing on the side of this toilet?

* sometime last week the lid to this toilet cracked. I can think of many more exciting things to spend my money on than a toilet seat, so I was planning on not replacing it. The situation quickly deteriorated and I changed my stance to toilets need lids with a baby around.