Andrew is 5 years old!

I can’t believe it has been 5 years since I became a mother.  Wow.

Andrew is getting so grown up.  He is not a huge kid (we’ll see his stats in a couple weeks when he goes for his well-child visit) and I could definitely see he is one of the smallest boys in his class today during the Mother’s program.  He definitely talks with the best of them, though.  He loves to talk to adults and tell them all sorts of things.  About his life, about fun facts he knows, gossip, stories … whatever he can think of.  Today, out of the blue, at our mother’s breakfast he said, “My teacher at Primary at church got divorced”.  Well, yes, but, hmmm … what do you say. 

Andrew is not a rough boy – at least, when he’s not at home.  He has the gentlest soul, and so he tends to love the girls.  Last year, his preschool class was perfect because the other boys were kind of gentle, too.  I could see with the boys at his birthday party this year, though, they were a lot more rough and just didn’t click well with Andrew.  We went to a birthday party earlier this month and the kids were watching a movie.  The parents had rented out the entire movie screen and so it was just about 7 boys and their parents.  Near the end, the boys had had enough and were running around the whole theater, wrestling, and running out the exit doors.  Andrew just sat and watched the entire movie, completely transfixed.  Afterwards, he sat and ate his pizza while the other boys were wrestling and goading each other.  He is just a different kind of boy.

Until we get home – and then, oh, boy!  He and Seth have been wrestling and fighting almost non-stop lately.  It’s enough to drive me completely nuts!!!  And Andrew is drama queen at home.  Heaven forbid he get a little hurt or not get his way.  I have been really trying to come up with ways to come Andrew down when he gets into his disobedience craziness – he will just throw and spit and scream and say naughty things for sometimes hours at a time.  I’ve found, it usually helps if I stick him on the couch or in his room with some books and force him to look at them.  After about 5 or 10 minutes, he will get engrossed enough in what he is looking at to finally calm down.

Let’s see – little things.  Andrew loves Magic School Bus and Ms. Frizzle books.  He is also obsessed with books where you have to find things on every page.  He likes Animalia and this book written by a friend of a ward member called “An Armful of ABC’s”.  He loves the new toys he got at his birthday party – the legos, the Pirate Playmobils, and the army toys he got from us todays.  He likes to build elaborate battle scenes using Lincoln Logs for cannons.  He is learning to spell things out.

He is very interested in recycling and reusing and reducing after learning about it in preschool for Earth Day.  He likes to pray about recycling (even at the snack prayer in preschool).  He prays almost every time that “the poor people will get money” and that the “dead people will get better” – not sure how that will work.  He loves to read Bible stories and Book of Mormon stories and gets excited when he sees stories he knows (he recognizes the Pharaoh, parting of the red sea, Daniel, Good Samaritan, etc.).  He is learning his phone number at school – tricky since the first few weeks they had him learning the wrong one!

He loves his friends at preschool, but is no so sure how much he loves preschool.  He secretly really enjoys preschool even if he doesn’t realize it.  He is sort of scared of the dark, and tries to get people to turn on lights for him – usually Seth, whom he often treats as his personal servant.  He is very excited about kindergarten and bringing his own school supplies.  We had to have a long conversation about why he has to bring things and then was excited that we can use the money we were spending on preschool on other things (since kindergarten is “free”, though we did talk about taxes and such).

He had a lot of fun at his birthday party, even though it was hot, hot, hot.  We had it at the park with some friends from school and church.  They just ran around the park and playground and decorated cupcakes, and then, at the end we opened presents.  I made him write fill-in-the-blank thank you cards.  He wrote the names and I filled in the rest.  I loved his “why I like it”.  They were usually something like this “It is cool and it looks fun though I already have something like it (I edited out parts like that) and I love you.”

Andrew had fun on our trip to Michigan and really loved playing with Jonas.  Sometimes I wish we could have stayed in Ann Arbor.  I really think they would have stayed best buddies.  He loved staying at hotels.  When we got home he told everyone about going to Holland to see the tulips – which was funny since we did that for about 10 minutes.  But I guess since it was the last part of the trip, it was the easiest to remember.

Happy Birthday, my baby boy Andrew!

Fun Things This Month:

• Opening Day for the Cardinals.  We thought only one boy could go, and Andrew just couldn’t decide whether he would rather go to eat Chinese with Mom or Cardinals with Dad.  In the end, both boys went so it was a moot point.  It was pouring rain and the game was delayed for 90 minutes plus they had gotten there quite early … so it was a long time, but Andrew had so much fun.  They found a playground to play in while they waited for it to start, they loved all the snacks and watching most of the game. 
• Trip to Michigan
• Playing with friends in Ann Arbor (basically killing each other all day long for three days and learning to do a scooter), seeing Grandma and Grandpa.  Andrew always loves seeing Jonas, so that was really fun, plus the appeal of all-new-toys.  Grandpa and Grandma didn’t disappoint – especially going to a Chinese buffet all together.  
• Seeing Mom graduate … not sure he was actually excited about it, but it was the reason for the visit.
• Staying in a fun hotel in Traverse City with two floors.  Andrew thought it was pretty cool and enjoyed lots of veg time with Mom and Dad watching Mythbusters.  He really enjoyed it, surprisingly.
• Hiked the dune at Sleeping Bear with Dad and collected rocks along the seashore.  Andrew hiked up the large dune twice.  Once all the way up with Dad and once just part way with Mom.  He was getting a little winded the second time, I could tell, but he was so excited.  He loves proving how strong he is.
• Playing at the park in Traverse City.
• Running around like crazy at the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.  Loved the mazes and the Children’s Garden especially and tolerated our seeing the sculptures in the rest of the Garden.
• Sort of enjoyed the Ford Presidential Museum.  He was always interested in trying to find pictures of armies or soldiers – and of course, in history, that never disappoints.
• Liked looking at the flowers in Holland.
• Really missed his friends at preschool and was ready to come home, I think.
• Birthday Party at Shaw Park – Andrew had lots of fun playing with his friends and eating junk food and getting presents.  What can be better.
• Mother’s Day presentation at school and celebrating his birthday at school all in one day.  Plus, the little boys both fell asleep in the car, so we sat and talked and read for over an hour, just the two of us.  Plus, with cupcakes, and movie night with Andrew’s favorite pizza (mushrooms, ham, and pineapple), and looking through all of Andrew’s photo books, and presents – it was a fun day.