Four

I've never wanted a child to stay three so badly.  With all the previous children, I've been very ready to move past threenagers.  But no, not the baby.  Not the last, small, chubby, ridiculous three.  Also, it turns out three isn't so bad when you don't simultaneously have a one-year-old and a fetus.  

I might have gone overboard expressing my dismay.  Fritz sometimes cries when he talks about turning four.  But then he says he's turning nine and that's okay.  

COVID meant he spent a LOT of time with Henry this year.  Henry really deserves an award for including Fritz in so many of his activities.  When Henry is playing video games with his friends, he regularly gives Fritz a turn with the headset so he can talk to the friends.  Fritz genuinely believes he is one of the gang.  Alas, he now has the vocabulary of a ten-year-old boy.   So much talk about their junk.

He loves tickles so much that it has turned into a form of terrorism.  At least twice a day, he says to me very sweetly, "Mom, I thought we could have some tickles."  And I comply, because it's adorable.  He's ticklish all over and squeals with delight.  But then he wants to tickle me too.  I'm not that ticklish, and four year olds aren't that good at tickling, so mostly he stabs me in the armpits.  If I fail to fake laugh, he shouts, "Feel that?  FEEL THAT!!!!" 

Fritz loves movies and gets very intense about one special movie at a time before moving on and never speaking of the previous movie again.  Recent favorites included The Sandlot, SharkBoy & LavaGirl, Jaws, Homeward Bound, Pooh Bear, and Christmas Chronicles 2.  His passion for Benny "the Jet" Rodriguez was so great, I had to order a freaking Dodgers hat and jersey, green raglan undershirt, vintage straight-leg jeans, and two different pairs of Chucks, before we got the details right.  Reminds me of how exacting Henry was when he wanted to dress just like Karl.

Likewise, he had a series of intense attachments to individual outfits.  If you peruse my albums, you will notice the "bluey clothes" (shark shirt and blue shorts), which he wore nonstop this summer until the shirt was full of holes.  That has eased lately, and his usual attire is 100% performance athletic wear.  He refers to this material as "sweatskin" and his group of preschool buddies has adopted term.  But when I was switching in the summer clothing bins, he discovered the suit that Henry wore to a bunch of weddings when he was three and four, and fell in love with it.  He insisted we go on a date so he could wear it.  So we dressed up and went out to breakfast (outside in the blazing heat; thanks, COVID) and it was one of my favorite moments this year.  I also planned a whole photo shoot around that suit.  

School was going very well until it shut down.  I was worried about Fritz going back without Heidi this fall, but he marched off like a pro.  Every day on the way to school, we listen to his playlist of favorite songs, which includes Baby Got Back, I Believe I Can Fly, plus Amish Paradise and Fat by Weird Al.    He is very devoted to his buddies Nico and Joey, and had just adopted a new girl as a friend, when school shut down in November.  He has zero -- ZERO -- interest in Zoom school.

He learned to pedal a bike this summer, and I think taking off the training wheels next summer will be a breeze.  He was allllllmost swimming independently by the end of the summer as well.  Swimming is hard when you're extremely dense and have a head like a bowling ball.  It's too bad pool and cabin season ended just as he was learning to paddle along for a few feet at a time.  

Among his funny quirks right now: His diction is better than most kindergarteners, but he occasionally switches into Tiny Gremlin Voice.  He says "the end" instead of "the beginning."  He lies about taking snacks when he isn't supposed to ("I accidentally opened these crunchy balls, Mama.") but says it with a twinkle in his sweet, sweet eyes and knows he's getting away with it.  He fixates on a phrase and repeats it or sings it at dinner until we can't take it anymore ("There was a fat guy walking by and his name was...THAT GUY!").  He loves headphones and dancing -- even if there is no music playing in the headphones.  He remains our only kid who anthropomorphizes his toys and will play alone with "guys" for extended periods.  He was my best helper in the garden and kitchen this year; he always tasted the tarragon and checked for ripe tomatoes as we worked our way around the yard.

At this age, Henry had moved on to Karl and doing dude things all the time.  Fritz has been spending more time with Henry and Karl in recent months, but he is still very much a mama's boy.   If Heidi dares to cuddle me too long, she shoves her off and says, "MY mama, you Daddy!"  That's my tiny adorable violent thug.  Four is not really a baby at all, but this one is always my baby.