My big boy on his 4th birthday with his big chocolate cupcake!
Riding a bike by himself with NO training wheels! I'm still in a bit of shock over this, but he had been learning to balance on his new 2-wheel scooter and his balance bike, so when the neighbor kid offered to let him ride his bike, pushed him along and then Evan started peddling and riding, it was amazing! I was driving home from a work trip when it happened (it was in late July), so I missed it too! :( But John videoed it for me to see later. What a big boy! This helped us decide for sure that he needed his own big boy bike, which is what we then got him for his birthday.
Swimming lessons: Evan's been in swimming lessons now since February. In that time, he's learned to back float, front float, and be able to swim (just not gracefully yet) by himself without flotation devices. He passed Turtles (the first level) in one session, then was in Alligators (2nd level) for 3 sessions, and now is just about finished with his 3rd session of Seals (3rd level). I am not sure if he'll pass this level this session or not, but either way we'll be taking a break from swimming lessons for a few months while he starts soccer this fall!
Pre-K: Evan is now at a new school/daycare and just started this past week! Now he is not with Emma during the days that John and I both work, but he's with a lot of kids his age, and I hope this will help prepare him for kindergarten next year.
Getting himself dressed: I love that he can completely dress himself now! He doesn't button/snap/zip his pants completely yet, but otherwise he can get himself ready in the mornings after I lay out his clothes!
Growth and Development:
Evan is daytime potty trained, but still wears pull ups at night. He has an accident overnight about 1-2 nights per week. We'll let him overnight train himself on his own schedule I think, but he's really close (and has been for several months now). We're moving him into size 4T clothes now and ridding his closet of the 3T sizes that are clearly getting too small on him now. Some of his summer clothes that are 3T still fit, but I won't plan on him wearing any fall clothes in size 3T anymore. He needs the 3T shirts to be longer, and even the 3T pants are too short on him too. He's wearing size 10 toddler shoes, but I think soon will need size 11. We just went shoe shopping for him yesterday in fact, since he wants new shoes that light up "with different colors". His Lightning McQueen shoes that I got on clearance last year (size 10) that light up with red lights have been ripping along the velcro so he can't wear them anymore, and he's quite bummed about that. He is quite obsessed with shoes that light up though (he'll bang shoes he sees on the ground to see if they light up!). We were not able to find a good replacement pair yesterday, but I'll look online. While the light up feature is a bit of a novelty, we did find it useful this summer (4th of July time) when we were outside after dark. It was much easier to spot where he was with his red lights on his shoes!
At his doctor check up he weighed in at 38 pounds (71%) and 42.6 inches tall (92%). However, we think the nurse mis-read the height, because that put him in such a high percentile and is about an inch higher than what we've measured him to be at home. We think he's more like 41.6 inches tall.
Play time
Evan loves to play outside, either riding his "new" (2-wheeled) scooter (that he's had for over a month but still calls his "new scooter"), or playing frisbee, or playing with water squirters, or kicking the soccer ball. It's great that it's summer and he wants to spend it outside. He also still likes to watch TV. Current favorites are: the movie "Home", Fireman Sam, Mermaids, and Mother Goose Club Playhouse, the movie "Turbo". In recent months, he also watched a lot of Transformers Rescue Bots, Thomas, Leap Frog, among others.
He hasn't been playing as much video games/playstation lately (because he hasn't been asking for it!?). Though he does like to do the dance games sometimes or the sports games with the playstation move. He can do 12-24 piece puzzles all by himself. He likes to practice cutting paper with scissors. So far he switches hands and sometimes cuts with his left and other times with his right. He mostly writes with his right hand though, but still eats with his left.
He likes to play board games, like Candyland and can play a memory match game well. He also likes to play Zingo and Hoot Owl Hoot that he just got for his birthday. Evan loves silly words. He is all about making up weird things to say and then sometimes tells us he's going to call us that. I try to tell him it's not nice to call people names, but I don't mind if he wants to be silly and make up words. I think a lot of his silly talk is him making variations of the words "butt" and "poop". He is a boy after all. :) Nonetheless, I've started to crack down on his "potty talk", since I really don't want to be around a kid who's constantly spouting out those words (and then things that rhyme with them).
Meal time
Evan doesn't want to sit in his booster seat anymore at dinner time. Rather, he sits in a chair just like us. So, we just moved Emma into the booster then and we rid ourselves of the highchair seat! Evan is still pretty picky when it comes to eating vegetables. Sometimes he surprises me, but most of the time he won't touch them. He likes pizza, cheese burgers, pasta of all kinds (spaghetti, ravioli, mac n cheese), burritos/soft tacos. He started eating corn on the cob again recently. He loves ice cream cones for dessert (the little Drummie ones). And he knows what the ice cream truck is and whenever he hears it wants a pink ice cream from it. So far this summer we have not gotten any from it though. We had a big watermelon for his birthday party, which we had lots of left over, and luckily both my kids like watermelon...a lot. They eat that like it's going out of style. Which, it will be given that summer will soon be over...
A few common Evan phrases
"That was so much fun in my life" (after leaving the Bay water park/pool, or another place he had lots of fun at)
"I want to go outside to ride my new scooter" or "new bike"
"I want the green noodles for dinner" (referring to his choice for take out "treat night" dinner, wanting the pesto cavatappi at Noodles and Co.)
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