Jackson at 4 1/2

Weight: 38 pounds
Height: 42"
Clothing size: 4T/5T
Shoe size: 10
Favorite TV shows: Truck Tunes (on Youtube), The Axel Show (on YouTube), The Octonauts, Curious George, Mighty Machines (on Netflix, he calls it "My 'Chines")

My favorite words:
mudium= medium
swow down= slow down (he's the worst backseat driver)
sweep = sleep
stunk = skunk
just attending = just pretending
cycling = recycling
my 'stake = my mistake
nemory = memory
'nember dat? = remember that?

Sleep:

He sleeps like a rock from about 9:30-6:30. He also takes a 2-3 hour afternoon nap.

Food:

He's not the biggest fan of vegetables, but he likes corn, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, and white potatoes. He will tolerate a bite of broccoli and cauliflower. He mainly likes chicken, pork, beef, salmon, dairy products, flour products, nuts, and fruit. So kind of picky, but there's a range of stuff he will eat. I make him take a "polite bite" of everything on his plate. He judges food by what it looks like and sometimes he'll like it if I make him try it. But I don't make him eat everything on his plate. He eats until he decides he's done and then he can go wash his hands and play.

vinegar and baking soda volcano

School Stuff:

• His teachers only had praise for him at the last parent-teacher conference. They said he follows the rules, he does things the first time he is asked (if only he was like that at home, ugh), he works well in a group and individually, and he is very independent. He is only going Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-11:30 this semester. I don't need it like I used to because he has mellowed out a lot and is rarely a troublemaker like he used to be. I let him go more for the socialization aspect.
• He has mastered the alphabet and phonics, so now we are working on sight words. He likes figuring out which letters are in words. He likes playing with language and inventing words (he has "invented" different curse words and I'm hoping he never says them at preschool). He loves saying rhyming words.
• He can count to 199 without help. He thinks 1000 comes after 199, so we are working on 200-1000. He can count by twos, tens, and hundreds. He has a tendency to read numerals from right to left, so I'm working on reading left to right with him. (For example, he reads 150 as "fifty, one hundred.") He can't do addition or subtraction problems that we give him, but he makes up problems in his head and solves them. For example, he randomly told me in a drive through, "We need 12 burgers. Two for me, two for Mika, two for you, two for dad, two for Oma, two for Opa. That makes 12."
• He can tell time on the hour.
• He understands the concept of half, and we're working on more fractions (mainly just quarters).
• He was really into connect-the-dot puzzles and handwriting practice in his workbooks, but I think he got burned out by that because he hasn't been doing it at all lately. I don't make him do workbooks, I just have them available and he does them if he wants. He likes to write letters on blank sheets of paper. He can write Jackson, Mom, Dad, and Mika without help. I'm still working with him on writing from left to right in a straight line. He likes to put letters randomly all over the page.
• Jackson and I are studying insects right now. We checked out a bunch of insect books from the library and read them before nap. We look at insects in the yard. We looked at insects in our "creature peeper." We made insects out of recyclable materials.

• He likes cutting with scissors, but he has a tendency to do thumbs down instead of thumbs up.
• He likes to draw people. He does the body, arms, legs, eyes, mouth, ears, hair, and sometimes a nose.
• I feel like I'm always having to catch up to where he is. He is always surprising me with what he has learned and can do. It's so crazy to watch these little humans grow up into big kids.

He made "stew" out of grass and mixed it with water that had collected in his race track toy. He is always trying to involve Mika in imaginative play.

Other Stuff:

• He likes quoting from his books. For example, I heard him the other day saying, "Miss Clavel turned on the light and said, 'Something is not right!'" from Madeline.
• He is suuuper competitive. It began when we started playing games like Candy Land and Go Fish. Now everything is a competition. He cried the other day when Mika finished her milk before he did. But sometimes it helps, like when I'm trying to hurry the kids out the door. I can tell him that Mika's beating him and he'll magically be able to find his clothes and put his shoes on by himself instead of whining for help.
• He asks me about 8000 questions a day. I feel like my brain is turning into mush from him rapid-firing questions at me all day long.
• He likes to be helpful and he wants so badly to be a good boy. Thank goodness. I was about to lose it until he all of a sudden stopped being so crazy. He rarely has to go to timeout. He's been pretty good since his last birthday.
• He is so bossy! He is constantly bossing Mika around, sometimes he does it to me too.
• He takes pride in his accomplishments and is always seeking my approval.
• He likes to help with chores. He can put away his laundry, scrub dishes, vacuum, wipe down the table, and mop. I'm enjoying this stage because in a few years I'll have to bribe him with money but right now I get it for free.
• He lies. He'll tell me things like he only at two pieces of candy when I know he ate three. He'll tell me a ghost did random things around the house. He tells me Mika hit him when I know she didn't. Etc.