Happy 1/2 Birthday, Forest!

Forest turned 4.5 this week! The Fours didn't start out so fabulous but now that he's hit 4.5 I have to say, this is probably the most fun phase yet (knock on wood). He's super independent and doing so many things on his own, yet still a total momma's boy and generous with the cuddles. His energy continues to be above and beyond kids his age but we've been able to channel it into swimming, bike riding, soccer, gymnastics and other activities. I can even sit on a chair and throw a tennis ball into the pool for him to retrieve, so it's just like playing fetch. Minimal energy output from momma, maximum energy output from child. That's the dream, folks. 

Here's a little snapshot at life and developmental at this stage. 

Favorite Book: Forest continues to be a total book worm. He especially loves Mr. Popper's Penguins, Classic Berenstain Bears and his Octonaut adventure books. He also loves non-fiction books, especially about sea animals and outer space.

Favorite TV show/Movie: His current favorite TV show is Octonauts for sure. But this tends to change every few weeks. Before Octonauts was Rescue Bots and before that was Daniel Tiger. His favorite movie tends to be more consistent, and Wall-E is still reigning supreme. 

Favorite Toy: Forest is a very creative little chap and doesn't need many toys to keep him occupied. He does have a few Octonaut toys that he plays with the most, and he loves his Wall-E and Eve robots that my mom got him. 

He also loves his 'Stinker Toys' (Tinker Toys) and is an amazing builder. He can look at a picture without any instructions and recreate it easily. 

I'm hoping this means he got his Dad's/Pop's/Aunt Jamie's engineering mindset. He's already better than me. He'll ask me for help sometimes and I'll say 'hmmm, I think that goes like this' and he'll usually say 'hmmmm, no I don't think that's right. I think it's like this.' 

Favorite foods: He's a good eater but is picky about what he eats. Luckily he likes lots of healthy foods so it's easy to manage, but don't you dare swap his vanilla yogurt with dried fruit for honey yogurt with granola. Lesson learned. His favorite dinner is 'chicken with mac and cheese and steamed vegetables'. Same, dude. Same. 

Language Development: Not a lot of language development but lots of social development recently. He's started to tell me made-up stories and we'll often just take turns making up stories to tell each other. At school, he and his friends have very complex pretend play scenarios where they all have different roles to play (very much 'good guys vs bad guys' pretend play going on at this age). He's always been quite verbal but he's just now gaining some confidence socially.

F and his best bro.

 Cutest Sayings: Literally everything he says is adorable. "True Story" and "Let's google it." are funny ones. He also says 'Oh, sure, sure." which cracks me up.

New Skills: It might not look like it, but starting to swim better freestyle and backstroke (Though he swims much more efficiently under the water!). 

Pretty darn close to fluently reading. I'd say he's at 2nd grade reading level. 

Starting to write more letters/words without any prompting and using appropriate upper/lower case letters in names. 

Drawing much more detailed pictures (Mostly of Wall-E). 

Stats: 44.5 inches (95%), 43 lbs (81%), size 12 shoe. Moving solidly into big kid sizes. Waaaaaaaaaah!!! 

Schedule: We don't adhere to a strict schedule anymore but Forest has a light in his room that doesn't come on until 7 AM. He has to stay quietly in his room until then, though sometimes he is up much MUCH earlier. We put him down for a rest time at around 1:30 and he has to lay down for 30 minutes. He rarely ever falls asleep anymore but a break still helps him to regroup. He goes to bed around 7 pm and sleeps anywhere from 10-12 hours. 

Activities: Summer is coming, so lots of things are ending but for now he is in soccer at the Y, Gymnastics, AWANA, Bible Study Fellowship, and 3 days of preschool. 

He says AWANA is his favorite extra-curricular. This summer we plan on doing soccer and gymnastics along with several VBS and science camps. We joke that currently Forest goes to church 4 days a week. He's such a Baptist kid and asks some theological hum-dingers. He loves him some Jesus.

 

The Gospel According to BSF:)

The struggles: Forest's shyness continues to be extreme and worrisome. But yet everytime I make up my mind that it's time to seek intervention, he'll have some breakthrough that makes me want to give it more time. He would certainly meet the criteria for selective mutism if we wanted him diagnosed, but so would I have at his age and it was something I got through on my own by the time I was 6. I'm definitely a little gun-shy in terms of labels, especially when his social inhibition gets worse the more we shine a spotlight on it. 

Basically, he will talk your ear off if you're someone he's comfortable with, but after 8 months he barely talks to his preschool teachers at all. He never initiates conversation with them and will only sheepishly answer any questions with  gestures or one word whispered answers. One time he needed help with a craft and instead of asking for more paint, he just went and put the paint can in his teacher's hand and then grabbed her other hand and lead her to the craft table. 

While the other kids in his class seem to be desperate for the teachers' attention, he actively avoids it. He has made some great buddies at school and seems to talk to them freely at school but if we run into them in another setting, it will take him a few minutes to warm up and sometimes he will even run away or hide behind me if they tell him hello. 

But on the other hand, he's not bashful about ordering food at a restaurant, reciting his memory verses at AWANA or answering questions about easy topics. It's just spontaneous, off-script, or face-to-face conversations that seems to totally whig him out. But he's made HUGE strides in the past 6 weeks or so and all of his coaches and teachers have made comments about him talking more recently. 

For him, he's doing amazing, but compared to his peers he's definitely still drastically more inhibited. I'm nervous about a break from school for a few months, but he's scheduled for soccer, gymnastics, and lots of fun camps so hopefully he'll continue to get social exposure and gain confidence and start Pre-K on a high note. Thankfully he has a whole 18 months to develop and mature before Kindergarten. He's academically ready now, but even as far as academics go, I think he'll be more successful in Kindergarten if he feels like it's a review versus learning a lot of new concepts in addition to adjusting to the social demands of full-day public school. 

 There is a class clown hiding under that shy exterior. :)

With all the growth and development that's happened in the past 6 months, I can't even imagine what 5 year old Forest will be doing! I wouldn't be surprised if he's both taller AND smarter than me by the time he gets to Kindergarten.