Liam: 4 yrs.

Wow!  Liam is 4 years old now!!  He has been doing well in school.  Although, we did have his parent/teacher conference a couple of weeks ago, and sadly I wasn't too happy about it.  They did it open house style instead of apt. like last year.  The first time I went over there, there were about 4 people in line ahead of me on the sign up sheet.  It said on the sheet that each family had about 10 min. to meet with the teacher.  Needing to finish up work, I decided I did not want to wait 40 plus min. so I went back later that evening. Then when it was finally my turn, since there was a line behind me, and it would be ending soon, his teacher only gave me 5 min.  She didn't tell me much about Liam, and didn't even know what class he was in :/  Although she did give me some good advice on a learning DVD to buy, which the kids LOVE to watch.  Then a week later we got an e-mail saying that something came up, and that Liam's teacher would not be able to finish up the school year.  I was sad for Liam because he really likes her, and he will miss her.  And I do hope nothing serious happened to her as to why she can't finish up, but part of me is glad for him to have a new teacher.  His new teacher is Miss Kelli, and she has worked at KV for many years with the older grades.  The first day she was there, she knew who Liam was, and was very happy to see him.  She asked how he was doing.  And when I picked him up, she said he did very well.  Don't get me wrong, Miss Raya was nice, but I often felt a coldness from her.  For example, early in the school year we got to school about 3 minutes before it technically started.  We started to go into the room, and she said can you wait a few more minutes before coming in, this is my time to be with my kids.  Ever since then, I felt a little weird around her, and not very welcome.  So anyway, I do wish Miss Raya the best, but I am happy for the new teacher, and Liam seems to be doing very well with the change, especially since it's 1/2 way through the school year.

So I probably should back up since it's been a while since my last update.  Liam had a wonderful Christmas.  He and Rowan just loved seeing all the Christmas lights?!  We took them over to Thanksgiving point a couple of times to see the lights there. They loved that.  I still am torn about the whole Santa story.  The poor kid is probably pretty confused over it.  We did fall back on the Santa story a couple times to get him to behave...but after I felt really bad about it because it just made him sad and mad.  We did leave milk and cookies out for him the night before...but that is about as far as we took it.  We will never embellish on the story and tell him he goes down the chimney or around the world.  Maybe that takes all the magic out of Christmas, but I just don't like the whole lying aspect of it all.  And after reading some comments on a thread about Santa on Face Book, I was glad to know that we weren't the only parents out there that agree.  Anyway, as he was opening each cool gift, all he was hoping for were those 99 cent match box cars. He has so many, and gets them often, that we didn't even think to wrap any.  I distracted him, while Mike grabbed a few from our room to put in his stocking.  He was pretty excited about that, and we wished we would have saved a bunch of $, and just wrapped those up ; )

So during our vacation, Rowan decided to climb, or rather fall out of her crib.  So we decided that we needed to hurry up and get Liam his big boy bed, so that Rowan can convert her bed to a toddler bed when we need to. We did decide to turn her crib facing the wall to buy us some time, but we figured we should get his new bed anyway.  We got it at RC Willey on a sale, and at first he didn't like the idea of it, but after he saw it, he was super excited!  It is really high off the ground, so we were glad we already had purchased a safety rail.  We ended up getting a body pillow too, to help keep him from falling off. So far (knock on wood), he hasn't fallen off, thankfully!  I bought him about 3 sets of sheets, and he totally loves them, and gets excited when I change them, like getting a new bed all over again.

It seemed he took a few weeks off of his imaginary friends, but they seemed to have popped up again in the last week or so.  He often will say, I have a new friend, his/her name is such and such, and he will make up a silly name or sometimes it's totally normal.  Ainey is the first friend, and she is kind of the ring leader of all the rest.  She is not a very nice friend, and she has kind of a dark side too.  He has said some disturbing stuff to us lately, and we are unsure where this dark side of his is coming from, but sometimes it really worries us, and we wonder if we should take him to a therapist?  Anyway, we are watching it carefully, and will do what we need to help him.

Unfortunately, Liam has started to display behaviors that indicate that we have totally spoiled him, and he feels that he is entitled to a new toy like daily.  I tried to explain to him that money doesn't grow on trees, and that we need to start earning things.  It didn't go over so well, but we are still working on it. Last weekend I had him help me do some chores around the house, and we gave him some money for his piggy bank. He seemed pretty excited about that, and was very happy to help out.  Anyway, that is something that we really need to work on with him.  

So, all in all, regardless of some of the bumps in the road, he has been doing very well these past few months. He continues to love his sister, and help her.  And he's been eating well, and trying new things!  He's got his new bed, he went to the dentist, and did very well with that too.  Also, I did forget to mention that he has started his 4 yr. old 'Why?' stage a few weeks ago.  It was almost like it happened over night.  And some of the questions he comes up with astound us?!  Like, one time he asked me why trees grew on the mountain. There were some others that totally surprised us too, and I can't think of them at the moment, but I will have to be sure to note his more interesting questions in the future.

comment by mom/grandma on 01/26/2012
He's a darling boy. His behavior is pretty typical of little boys and he is super sweet. We love him so much.