Dear Will,
Wow! Here we are. On your fourth birthday. Four years old already. Almost a whole hand. You have been such a joy to watch learn and grow this year and we are so happy we were chosen to be your parents to get to witness it.
You just keep getting bigger and bigger. When you started school this year, everyone remarked about how you apparently shot up over the summer. We don't notice it, but after having a ton of people tell us, we decided you must have gotten a lot taller. So, we measured you. And lo and behold, you were tall. You had your official 4 year appointment today so the official measurements are 42 inches tall (85th percentile) and 35.4 pounds (50th percentile). It's official, you have left your sister behind at the same age at this point. Not surprising being that you are a boy and you have quite a few tall people in this family bringing you up. You are still riding the tall and skinny train, for sure. As a matter of fact, your BMI is at 4%. The doc made sure to say you aren't underweight. Just tall and skinny which is great. Your blood pressure was also perfect. You wear a 5t in pants but your waist is tiny so you usually wear a 4t in shorts (boy shorts are long) so that they fit your waist better and even some of those are too big in your waist. Actually, most of them are too big but we usually find adjustable waists for you. In shirts you usually wear a 5t or an XS to S in kids' sizes depending on the brand. You wear a size 11 shoe at this point but you have some growing room. You still need lots and lots of hair cuts. Every month or so in fact we tend to get one for you. You still love to brush your teeth and take baths. You are ticklish though so baths are sometimes crazy. We have to hold you in place to wash you because you collapse in giggles. We are still working some on night time potty training. You wake up dry randomly and we hear you get up at night to go potty sometimes but you aren't waking up consistently every time you have to go. We are getting there though and I think we will be there soon enough. I figure that if we keep at the current pace that within the next few months you will be ready to ditch pull ups all together. It's all developmental as far as night time training goes so neither Daddy nor I are pushing it. We are working on your schedule. Your smile has gotten more contagious if that is even possible over the last year. You love to smile and laugh and people are always remarking about your smile. The cute cheeks help, too. You also have really expressive eyes. (Which are still the most amazing blue.) You can tell an entire story with your face. You give us the funniest looks sometimes and we love it. You are overall a very healthy kid. We attribute a lot of that to Kenzie bringing home all the germs when you were younger but we also think that the active lifestyle we encourage you to have helps. Fresh air does the body good and you spend a lot of time outdoors moving and shaking. You ran a random fever about two weeks ago. As is typical with you, it was on the higher end (it hit 102 a couple of time) but as is also typical, it was gone in a day and you were perfectly fine. Something about your body likes to run fevers and knock out sicknesses faster than normal. Other than that, I don't recall you being sick at all in the last 10 months or so. Even when you had the flu back in December, it was over in about 24-48 hours for you. So quick in fact that we didn't realize that was what it was until others in the family started getting it too.
Speaking of funny... you are the epitome of it. You have definitely learned to play to an audience. You continue to try to make others laugh non-stop. While you are still shy around new people quite often, you warm up quickly if you think they find you funny. For those people you know, you are often found putting on a show. You do it for us all the time. You have already picked up on the art of a punchline, it seems. You seem to understand when to reign it in though and you aren't (yet and hopefully not really ever) a class clown or anything. You are also extremely helpful and kindhearted. You like to help others and usually if we ask you and your sister to do something, you are the first to jump to do it. That is not always the case, of course, but we appreciate you not arguing as often as your sister does. That arguing is likely coming with time though and we know that. For now, we are going to revel in your willingness to help. You are very polite and more often than not remember to say "please" and "thank you". One of my favorite things is listening to you order at a restaurant. We don't order for you guys at this point and haven't in some time. You pick out what you want (let's say chicken tenders, for instance) and you will say to the server, "May I please have chicken tenders? With fries/applesauce/etc, please. And also a water? Thank you!" It often catches servers off guard but we have had more than compliment on your manners when we are out in public so I will take it. I hope you always remain like that.
This is your second year in school. You are now in the 3-year-old class at school. You are the oldest again, I think. That is often going to be your thing, but it is working for you. You had a rough start to this year as far as separating from me and you cried when I dropped you off for the first month or so. Then one day, it stopped. A lot like last year. When you finished last year, you were fully comfortable and loved going to school. Despite starting the year off with some tears, you still loved going and always told me about all the fun things you do during the day. Your teacher is always telling me about the things you say that catch her off guard. You speak like a much older child (language wise as you are still sometimes hard to understand as far as your speech goes). This is something we already knew though. You crack us up sometimes with the things you say. The other day we were picking up race packets and as we were leaving you ran back to the desk, leaned over it to the ladies working, and said, "Thank you very much for helping us with all of this." They cracked up and exclaimed how cute you were. I laughed because it sounded so funny coming out of such a little body. Your class has worked on a few letters already this year as they do one a week and you are able to identify those letters (and a few you already knew well) and tell me their sounds. You are also getting pretty good at identifying initial sounds in words if it is a sound you have learned. You are also pretty good at telling me words that begin with a specific initial sound. If I help you segment sounds in words, you can sometimes even spell simple CVC words as long as the sounds are all ones you already know. Like CAT. If I help you hear each sound, you can tell me the letter that makes the sound and "spell" the word with me. You are working more on learning to write the letters. Your control is not amazing yet with a pencil but you mostly get the mechanics. You can write your name with no help... just Will as we haven't worried about teaching you William yet. You can count to 20 at least and often can go higher as long as we keep helping you figure out the next tens place (30, 40, 50, etc). Your sister has been working to teach you some simple addition and you can add numbers usually between 1 and 5. You are able to identify numbers 1-10 with some issue with 6 and 9. You are also working on telling us which numbers are bigger or smaller if you hear two numbers but that is still a developing skill. You are mostly right when we ask you to identify your right or left. You know all the cardinal directions and can name them but don't know how they all go together. You memory is great so when you hear Kenzie learn something new that she talks about a lot, you can often regurgitate the information. You just haven't picked up the meaning behind some things. It's been an interesting year because you are now 4 but still in the 3-year-old class. The academic skills you have picked up have not been attributed to me teaching them directly to you too often (though we are working more at home this year than we have been to prep you for VPK) but because you are older, you are ready for them and pick things up really quickly. It is so different than Kenzie as she is smart but always one of the youngest. So, at times, she wasn't ready developmentally whereas you are ahead of the game in some things. It has been an adjustment in expectations for us this year. We have to remember that although you are four, since we haven't pushed too much in a formal manner, you are still learning some things that at four, Kenzie knew. If that make sense. You are doing amazing though and your little mind amazes me. Your memory especially. You remember everything you hear, it seems. As far as handedness goes, I have noticed you switching some to your right when writing. I'm almost wondering if you may switch to your right. You still favor your left to eat and color but you seem more comfortable at times writing letters and numbers with your right. That being said, I still see you write letters and numbers with your left at times. We don't push you one way or the other as we know you will eventually choose which one works best for you but it is interesting to watch you go back and forth. You have developed quite a mixed handedness lately so we wonder if that may stay to a point. You have a lot of left handedness in the family but your Uncle Rick is actually fairly ambidextrous so there is no telling which way you will go. We will just continue to let you feel it out. (Sidenote... if you decide you want to bat left, that would be awesome. Left handed batters are a hot commodity. Haha!)
As far as eating goes, you started off so well... then it all went downhill. Haha! It caught me offguard when you decided back at about two that you were going to be picky despite eating just about everything up until that point. At this time though, we are used to it. You are even pickier than your sister was at this age. Which is seriously saying something. Your favorite food is, by far, pizza. If we ever ask you what you want, pizza is always the first thing out of your mouth. We haven't made it back to you eating veggies yet, but we can sometimes convince you to at least try them. We have a loose agreement (after chatting with your pediatrician) that you should try a leas one bite of everything (and sometimes you play along). If you don't like it, you don't have to eat anymore but you have to try it every time I make it. We discussed with her how tastebuds have to learn to like foods sometimes and they "change" for lack of a better word. So, we are working on it. You are super typical in that sometimes you eat us out of house and home and sometimes refuse to eat just about anything. We have stopped worrying as much and know you will eat when you are hungry. You love almost any fruit you are given (though you have a weird aversion to grapes right now and those used to be your favorites) but applesauce is your absolute favorite. You like chicken nuggets or chicken tenders, mashed potatoes, pasta, chili, any soups, salads, eggs, and just about any typical kid food (pancakes, waffles, hot dogs, etc.) You love when we have breakfast for every meal. We make you eat what we eat though so there are some days you go to bed without eating much (or randomly not eating at all). You tend to just eat more breakfast the next day. Peanut butter sandwiches are your jam (though ironically you don't like jam... or jelly). And gummies. Oh the gummies. We limit you to a maximum of one small package of the fruit type ones a day but you would gladly eat them all day long every day.
Cars and trains are still some of your favorite toys. You have gotten more into building with blocks or Legos recently but you don't often go out of your way to do it. You LOVE to run a restaurant. You make us sit down at the table and use the play kitchen to make food and serve it to us. You go as far as busing tables and cleaning dishes before putting them away. You aren't really into art at this point but you do ask to paint sometimes or use the chalkboard. You more so do it if you want to make something for someone or use the chalkboard to play "school" with someone. You LOVE LOVE LOVE to read. You have memorized some books so you will read them to us but you often ask your sister or one of us to read to you. Your sister learning to read has been one of your favorite things. You love her so much already and then to have her be able to read to you. You are in heaven. You like to play with the dollhouse BUT you insist we use the big Maui doll and play "giant" with the house. Basically you use Maui to stomp towards the house and then try to scare the dolls in the house. Paw Patrol is your favorite TV show right now and you love all your Paw Patrol toys. You also LOVE LOVE LOVE The Greatest Showman. You are constantly requesting to watch it or listen to the soundtrack in the car. It's not a movie we thought a 3 (almost 4)-year-old would like but you love it. As does your sister so that works out well as you both often want to watch it.
Being outside remains your favorite place, I think. Now that you are four, you are old enough to play sports with the city. Our plan is to put you in teeball for the next season (spring, maybe?) as you already missed fall. If you don't like it (though you love to play it outside with your sister), we may try soccer next. When we play outside you love to ride your plasma car. You are still working on nailing down that whole pedaling thing for your bike but we are getting there. We haven't had a lot of time lately to work with you on that so it's partially our fault. You have done a few kids' races now when we run and you even earned your first medal recently. You still have us run with you but you seem to enjoy them well enough. You love any playground you set eyes on. One of your favorite things now is to play in the backyard. You and your sister often find big sticks and play all sorts of pretend games. I love to watch it. Now that it should be getting cooler again, you guys will hopefully get to play out there more often. It's nice because I can stay in the house and work while you guys play. You don't need me to referee fights as often when you are outside. Something about it makes you get along better. Fresh air maybe. One of our family goals is to make sure you both stay as active as possible. We want to instill that love of all things active in you while you are little so it will hopefully carry through to when you are older. As of right now though, being outside and running around and playing are your favorite thing, for sure.
You love to go to Disney. Your favorite ride right now is probably Test Track. Riding in a car that you created and going crazy fast around the track... definitely your favorite. You are more of a thrill seeker than your sister so you also like things like Barnstormer. You love to see the characters and get autographs. You also love when we go to the beach. You like to go in the "deep end" and do "up downs" aka go to where you can't reach and have us jump waves with you. Your swimming lessons went really well this year. You did some crying, but you are even better at swimming now. You love to have us take you away from the stairs in our neighborhood pool and let you go. You will swim underwater to the steps and often try to get sinking toys off the steps on your way. You are on your way to becoming a fish. I think by next year (or maybe the year after) you will be swimming entirely independently.
I'm sure I could sit here for hours and come up with amazing qualities you have and more things to say about you, but I'm going to leave it at this. You are seriously an amazing little man. Your daddy and I are so happy we get to watch you grow and learn. You amaze us all the time and we hope you keep your sweet personality and hilarious outlook on life. You are going to go far, buddy. We love you.
XOXO,
Mommy
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