Wow, it's been awhile since I've done an update on my firstborn. I guess he gets mentioned in lots of Lydia's updates so it's okay. Dylan started preschool in September and loves it. He turned four a couple weeks ago and had a Hot Wheels birthday party with 20 of his closest friends. Dylan is much more the social butterfly than his parents combined. He's the kid at the playground who says, "C'mon guys, let's do this!" and kids actually follow him. He's proving my friend Janice right when she said he was a natural-born leader when he was less than a year old.
Dylan and I went to Pine Springs Camp (Pine Screams Camp as Dylan calls it) in June together for Moms and Tots camp. He was the second-youngest kid there but he hung out with all the 5-year-olds in our cabin and had a blast. He still calls those boys his new friends and remember their names. He wants to talk about camp all the time. I think the structured time was a little much for his age, but the counselors dealt with it happily. For example, he wasn't keen on sitting and listening to stories or staying with the group (especially when the cool wide open woods were so near by) so the counselors and directors had to often run after him to get him to come back. This was during the time of day when the kids were with the counselors and the moms were off drinking tea and have Bible study. They all thought he was cute and they only lost him once and he was found quickly. (I think I got the laid-back Mom award that week. The counselor thought so at least. She was so impressed that I let Dylan dunk his chicken in his milk - anything to get him eat!)
Dylan's preschool class is comprised of 8 boys, 2 older by a month or two and the rest younger by up to 13 months. I have a parent-teacher conference next week so I guess I'll know more then about how Dylan is doing. But from what we gather, he likes being at school and likes the boys in his class but never seems to do any of the art projects, which the teachers make optional. He talks about the guinea pigs a lot and tells us he wants a pet (oh, and all his stuffed animals are "pets.") I kinda feel that the stuff they are working on in class now (colors and learning about family) is stuff he's known for a long time but I need to remember that I specifically chose this preschool because it wasn't too academically focused. I think the biggest thing he's gotten out of it is learning the routine and learning to take care of his stuff and eat his lunch away from Mommy. I think it will help with his self-sufficiency (I think I like that word better than independence but I'm not sure).
I'm really glad that I decided to send him to school this year. I remember reading Bringing Up Boys by James Dobson when Dylan was little and something in there prompted me to think, oh, maybe he won't be a kid that will do well in a traditional school structure and so maybe we need to think about alternatives. Given how active Dylan is and given his above-mentioned difficulty with sitting still, I later continued to think about whether school would be a good thing for Dylan. But despite all that, I do think it is working out well and he is thriving in that environment. Things may be different when he is actually required to sit in school but maybe by then he will be ready for that. I think he actually does like the structure and the new experiences within that structure. He participates in the "mandatory" stuff without complaint.
I think one of the reasons Dylan's doesn't like art projects is his low fine motor skills. I think Lydia has better fine motor skills than Dylan. So hopefully that's something we can work on. I think in exchange he got a double dose of gross motor skills. He's athletic and fast and has great balance. And the kid is actually what I would call "smooth." Last weekend we were at a wedding and Dylan was dancing and running around the dance floor and then he would slide across the floor in this perfectly smooth motion.
I think Dylan has gotten a lot of phonics though I don't think they work on it at school yet. We talk about a different letter each week and each week he can tell me words that start with that letter and he makes the sound of the letter before coming up with the word. He doesn't know the clusters yet and trips up on the hard ones sometimes (like g, j, c, s, k, z, u, x, but I do think he's got w).
We've been trying to get Dylan to come to "big" church with us for a few minutes before taking him down to Sunday school. He's done pretty well especially if Grandma and Grandpap or visitors are with us in the service, or if Daddy is doing sound and he gets to sit up in the sound booth and put the headphones on. The goal is to get him to sit until the sermon and we are working up to that. He seems to be doing better each week.
So here are Dylan's stats from his doctor's appointment: Height - 38 inches (10th percentile) and Weight - 32 lbs (25th percentile). He doesn't know that he's short yet. He hangs out with kids that are almost a year younger and 6 inches taller but he doesn't think anything of it which is good. The weight this is a little annoying for me (he's just now starting to fit into 2T pants in the waist! and they are still way too short for his legs), but better than the opposite problem of having an obese kid. He's wearing 3T shirts. Size 9 shoe right now (he was a 7 last winter and then an 8 around late spring and started wearing 9s around the end of summer).
Accidents have become less frequent but still frustrating because he waits till the last minute to go and that's why he has the accident. Dylan has been really good being dry at night (he's been out of nighttime pullups almost from the time he was potty trained). We did have a few nighttime accidents right in a row around the time preschool started but I'm hoping those are behind us now. (I'm finally to the point where I think the energy that I put into Dylan's potty-going is low enough that I might be able to handle starting Lydia potty-training, but still going to wait on that until after her birthday.)
Dylan still likes trains and cars and trucks. This happened a while ago (maybe a year ago) but he started talking about the "daddy trucks" and the "big boy trucks" if two trucks looked alike but were different sizes. Dylan also got into Dinosaurs and learned a lot of dinosaur names watching Dinosaur Train on PBSkids (like argentinosaurus and giganotosaurus). He really enjoyed visiting Dinosaur World when we went on vacation. We also pretend to be a family of dogs or T-Rexes or lions. Or Dylan says "I'm you guys' big dog" and then goes around the house pretending to be our dog. Dylan likes dressing up with our costume box and also playing games where we have to guess what he is after he gives us clues (he calls this the Halloween game - guess what he's dressed up as). We play this a lot at dinner. Getting Dylan to eat is still a daily struggle. The Halloween candy hasn't helped because he wants to eat candy instead of dinner. We try to use it as incentive but that doesn't always work. He goes through some days though where he eats everything (I even got an email from his preschool teacher saying he ate all his food and was still hungry one day). But then the next week he's back to not hardly eating anything even in his lunch at school. I guess this is normal but still frustrating especially when you're trying to get him to eat healthy.
For a while Daddy was telling Dylan "Dylan the race car driver" stories before bed. On his birthday I told him his birth story and so now he wants to hear that before bed. Nighttime routine goes something like this - time to get into pajamas...noooo!...yes, dylan, c'mon on....let's go potty first....nooo!!!.... - and after we use all our "tricks/discipline" to get him to do these things, we pray and if he's still and quiet he gets to hear a story. We sometimes read a book but haven't really lately. We ask him who he wants to pray for and he goes over to the picture frame I have in his room of pictures with all his friends and tells us he wants to pray for "me and anna," and "me and richie" and "me and jeremiah," etc. I think I want to teach him the Lord's Prayer so we are also going to start saying that at night too.
This is a lot but I'm glad I typed it all out. I'll be glad I did in a few years. Thanks for reading!
