My First Born

Garrett is

•almost 5 years old! How is that possible?!

•thoroughly excited about his upcoming birthday. When he asks how much longer, I always tell him that Daddy's birthday comes first, then his. He wants to argue this point every time. His birthday must come before Daddy's.

•busy cleaning for his birthday party. Ever since we cleaned house for Bible study last week, he walks around the house with a baby wipe, cleaning things and saying he's cleaning because his friends are coming over for his party. (It sounds like we never clean based on that, but we really do.)

•a non-stop talker. He always has a question, comment, statement, announcement, song, or taunt to share. I'm already praying for his kindergarten teacher to have patience, but be firm with him. There are moments when I just have to tell him that he cannot talk because I can't take it.

•itching for a constant play pal. Cooper is still too little and relatively inactive for him to be a good option as a play buddy. He usually ends up getting hurt when Garrett tries to really play with him. I've told Garrett that once Cooper is walking really well (which should totally be by the time he turns 10 at the rate we're going) then he should be able to play with him more. At least then he'll have another participant in the "run around screaming" game that Garrett loves to play all day every day.

•blessed with a great imagination. If left to his own devices in his bedroom (by force because otherwise, he wants to be around people all the time), he is always capable of coming up with some game involving lots of activity and people needing help. He thoroughly enjoys wearing all of his dress-up clothes, at once if possible. As you can see in his picture on the right of my blog, he has a Batman mask, Superman cape, and Buzz Lightyear gloves on. Sometimes he wears the entire Buzz outfit, sometimes just the gloves or wings, sometimes the Woody hat with bandana around his neck, carrying his toy machine gun, but rarely does a day go by where he doesn't dress up at some point.

•a very picky eater. At the moment, he's forcing himself to eat a few more bites of Chicken Spaghetti. (The only way he's eaten as much as he has of it is due to the "bribe" of an ice cream sandwich. I'm totally not above bribing my children when necessary. And thanks to the bribe, he's seemingly enjoyed eating this dinner. Mostly because I showed him how to twirl his fork to eat the noodles. It's better than when he gagged on a piece of raw broccoli the other day.)

•smart. Super smart. When he wants to be. I think he could probably tie his shoes and maybe be able to read some by this point if he cared. But he doesn't right now and I have no desire to push for something that he doesn't want to do.

•able to read some signs. Though I said above that he hasn't shown any desire to read yet, he can read lots of signs and has been able to for years. Since he was 2, at least. He knows the Walmart sign (even if we're not at Walmart and he just sees a semi-truck driving down the road with Walmart written on the side). He knows Stop, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell (which is weird because we truly do not eat at Taco Bell, but he knows that's what it says), Chick Fila, and probably some others. He can also read and write his name (just first name).

•a handful at times, but really does not like upsetting or disappointing people. If he knows someone is mad at him because he's not behaving, he always says "I love you" and if you don't instantly repeat it back to him, he asks if you're still mad at him.

•extremely good at remembering things. He can remember the most vague things from quite awhile ago. He also already knows his way around town and can point directions I should turn in order to get us where we need to go. He recognizes places we go to and never forgets them or why we were there in the first place. When we drive by a theater, he immediately points it out and says the most recent movie we've seen there (we have a lot of theaters in our area and have seen movies at 4 different ones in the past year). He knows where people live, even if we don't go to their house very often. It's crazy.

I would end this with a picture of my almost 5 year old, but I'm on my work computer, which is a MacBook (Steve, it's your old laptop!) and I have no pictures on this computer. My apologies!