4.5
I am pleased to report that the threenager stage has finally ended, school angst is significantly lessened, and Henry is back to being a super cool little boy. He seems much more like an eager kindergartener than a silly preschooler now. And he looks like a boy-child. The toddler softness is gone, gone, gone.
All kinds of big-kid stuff going on for this guy --
He's having a major growth spurt. The pants I bought him in September still had to be cuffed up at Christmas, but now they're an inch too short. He's so long and lean now.
He mostly gave up the pull-ups at night. We realized he was staying dry almost all the time and he switched to underwear without much fanfare. We tried to push him on this last year with rewards and counting dry nights and he just wasn't ready. He still has accidents but doesn't get too freaked out. If he has several accidents, he switches back to pull-ups for a couple nights, then returns to underwear when he's ready.
School deserves its own post, but suffice to say that he's doing great. He had a major breakthrough right after Heidi was born and is much less angst-y and getting so much more out of it. I feel like school is finally a net positive in our lives.
While he still whines about going to school in the morning, it's clear that he is enjoying it once he settles in. Montessori has been a good fit for him. He is much better at identifying something he wants to do and focusing on it for long periods. Major credit to his school experience on that one. He likes a challenge and it suits him to have a lot of materials that he can work through at his own pace. We spent a lot of time last month doing addition and subtraction problems during dinner. Mostly they took the form, "If you have [x] somethings, and Ingrid steals [y] of them..." It's an easy situation for him to conceptualize. He's pretty good with number combinations up to ten.
Right now he is working really hard on letters and sounds. I try not to get too excited because I know these things don't always follow a steady course, and I don't want to pressure him, but I think he's *thisclose* to reading. He likes to sound out the city names on our coffee mugs.
He also has a really nice group of friends at school. His teacher has a reputation for fostering a very warm community in the classroom, and it seems to be well-earned. The core group of boy buddies right now are Owen, Hersh, Surel, and Musa, but we also hear about some of the other kids pretty regularly.
The flip side of having a regular social circle is that he's very aware of being outside that circle. We loved and admired his ability to walk into any playground and make friends with whoever was there. Now if he doesn't know anyone, he's very shy about approaching people. I took him to a birthday party for my friend's kid, a girl he doesn't see very often, and he didn't know any of the other kids there. He hung by my side for a very long time until he worked up the nerve to join some people on the trampoline. He's also very sensitive about social slights. Yesterday Max said he wasn't his friend anymore and Henry wept on my lap for 10 minutes.
He is super goofy and wants to show off his goofiness. It's an art and a form of humor. Now our main problem is that he's so exuberant that he can't turn it off when it has stopped being funny.
He's great fun to be around. Four is excellent.
All kinds of big-kid stuff going on for this guy --
He's having a major growth spurt. The pants I bought him in September still had to be cuffed up at Christmas, but now they're an inch too short. He's so long and lean now.
He mostly gave up the pull-ups at night. We realized he was staying dry almost all the time and he switched to underwear without much fanfare. We tried to push him on this last year with rewards and counting dry nights and he just wasn't ready. He still has accidents but doesn't get too freaked out. If he has several accidents, he switches back to pull-ups for a couple nights, then returns to underwear when he's ready.
School deserves its own post, but suffice to say that he's doing great. He had a major breakthrough right after Heidi was born and is much less angst-y and getting so much more out of it. I feel like school is finally a net positive in our lives.
While he still whines about going to school in the morning, it's clear that he is enjoying it once he settles in. Montessori has been a good fit for him. He is much better at identifying something he wants to do and focusing on it for long periods. Major credit to his school experience on that one. He likes a challenge and it suits him to have a lot of materials that he can work through at his own pace. We spent a lot of time last month doing addition and subtraction problems during dinner. Mostly they took the form, "If you have [x] somethings, and Ingrid steals [y] of them..." It's an easy situation for him to conceptualize. He's pretty good with number combinations up to ten.
Right now he is working really hard on letters and sounds. I try not to get too excited because I know these things don't always follow a steady course, and I don't want to pressure him, but I think he's *thisclose* to reading. He likes to sound out the city names on our coffee mugs.
He also has a really nice group of friends at school. His teacher has a reputation for fostering a very warm community in the classroom, and it seems to be well-earned. The core group of boy buddies right now are Owen, Hersh, Surel, and Musa, but we also hear about some of the other kids pretty regularly.
The flip side of having a regular social circle is that he's very aware of being outside that circle. We loved and admired his ability to walk into any playground and make friends with whoever was there. Now if he doesn't know anyone, he's very shy about approaching people. I took him to a birthday party for my friend's kid, a girl he doesn't see very often, and he didn't know any of the other kids there. He hung by my side for a very long time until he worked up the nerve to join some people on the trampoline. He's also very sensitive about social slights. Yesterday Max said he wasn't his friend anymore and Henry wept on my lap for 10 minutes.
He is super goofy and wants to show off his goofiness. It's an art and a form of humor. Now our main problem is that he's so exuberant that he can't turn it off when it has stopped being funny.
He's great fun to be around. Four is excellent.
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