Our FOUR Year Old!!

Crazy how time flies...but Reid is FOUR!  He decided to come down with strep throat for his fourth birthday.  Boo!!  With all the craziness of my going back to work, having a 3 month old, and this very active guy's birthday on the last week of school, we didn't do a party this year.  He didn't seem to care one bit, thankfully, but I still felt kind of bad...  With his being sick, though, it's a good thing I suppose.  I guess this poor guy's birthday will always be that last week of work for me (translation:  CRAZY), so I'm going to have to get better about planning in the next few years!  Hopefully this year was the craziest one with Carter being so young, an entire week of training for me the week after the students were out of school (including my workday that Friday...so I had to stay after school several days and pack up my classroom), and getting ready to take the ESL certification test this week (yikes--please pray...this is the first standardized test I've had to take in 15 or 16 years!!).  But I digress...birthday boy was already starting to feel better after a quick trip to the pediatrician's office and some good antibiotics.  He didn't eat much, but wanted his piece of cake!

 

 

He got so many really neat gifts this year!  I love that all of them can grow with him.  He enjoyed playing t-ball and catch with his new wiffle balls and bat.

And we surprised him last week with a new big boy bed and room...which he immediately loved!!  I figured he'd be a little scared and want to get out of bed or want us to stay in there with him, but he slept like a champ and thoroughly enjoyed it.

In fact, he was so excited that it was quite hard to capture a non-blurry picture of him!

Oddly enough, I think what he was the most excited about was the cheesy little tent (I thought it'd be bigger) that was a last minute addition.  We told him he could only play with it during the daytime, so he was a good boy and crawled out and into bed.

When I got him up the next morning, the very first thing out of his mouth was, "It's daytime!  Can I play in my new tent???"  He brought it downstairs and insisted Carter play inside with him, which was very sweet.  I think the "newness" of Carter is wearing off sometimes because there are lots of things I just can't do with both kids at the same time...such as swimming.  I'm going to have to figure that out because it's not fair for Reid to not swim all summer just because Carter can't go in the water yet. 

 

I was in charge of both boys on Thursday evening after they'd both boycotted naps all day.  I swear they know when Jason has stuff going on and save it for me, lol!!   I knew Reid was getting to the no nap point, but I'm not sure what's been going on with Carter.  We had to change his formula last week because it was suddenly giving him tons of gas.  I'm not sure if that was the culprit, but all of a sudden his sleep has been all over the place.  He won't nap more than 30 minutes at a time and has been fussy randomly.  I think he's finally evening out, but it's been exhausting!  I was trying to multitask, so I decided to have them do a tandem bath.  Reid thought it was hilarious and kept sprinkling water on Carter.

Then he decided to try out the baby tub once I had Carter out.  I *think* he's a wee bit big for it.  He disagreed.

It seems like time has flown by since Reid has been a part of our family.  I'm so thankful for our crazy boy and pray that I'll be just the mommy God designed me to be for him.  I certainly can't imagine life without him and his silly antics each day.  Happy birthday, Reid!