Monday 12 May 2014

Charlie at 4 years

4 year olds are fun... and full of beans, highly strung, argumentative... I could go on. C knows his own mind and lets us know. The best days are ones where we've given him plenty of time to run around and burn off all his excess energy. He is very loving, giving hugs and kisses unprompted and will most times say please and thank you without prompting.

He loves his friends, little miss M and little master B at nursery are his best friends and it's lovely watching the three of them play together. There's lots of hugs, kisses and chasing round and round.

He's pretty much grown out of Thomas the Tank Engine, no longer wanting to play with train tracks - a fixture of our living room for the past 2.5 years! But he still loves going on train trips and reading The Little Red Train books. Toys he loves at the moment are - mini plastic dinosaurs, castle, knights and dragons he got last week for his birthday, play house and shop - pouring tea in the tea set, selling toy food through his new toy till and cooking toy food on Mummy's old toy cooker at Granny and Grandad's house, the alien hammer game (like whack'a'mole) and Dino Bite (taking eggs from a dinosaur nest before the dino bites!). Plus scooting on his scooter, he's not got he hang of his bike yet and prefers scooting in the garden or on the way to the park. In the garden he loves having a bowl of water and washing his plastic animals or pebble collection and he adores blowing bubbles for the cat to chase.

He still loves reading, our book choices at the moment are those about having a new baby and starting at school. He also likes Peter Rabbit stories and haunted house books, including Funny Bones and Creepy Castle. On TV his favourite shows are Wooly and Tig, Alphablocks and Peter Rabbit, films he loves are The Frog Princess, Rapunzel and Totoro.

He loves our cat Baxter, it's a love/hate relationship between the two, but it's nice to see the two of them interacting, first thing in the morning Baxter will weave around Charlie's legs as he gives him a nice stroke.

He seems to like the idea of having a baby sister and will kiss and hug my bump. We talk a lot about when the baby get's here and the different type of things we'll do.

He's still a fussy eater but manages to get a balanced diet. Carrots and cucumber are vegetables I know he'll eat, along with apples, grapes, orange and melon. Tomato and cheesy pasta is one of his favourite dishes and he loves a good old ham sandwich with ketchup.

He recognises lots of letters and can say the alphabet, he also recognises some words, his name and 'no' being the main ones. He can count pretty much up to 100 and can do simple additions.

He sleeps from 7pm to 6am and we've just got a sleep trainer clock. He knows that he needs to stay in bed when the stars are showing and that he can get up when the sunshine comes out.

Toilet training is pretty much complete, he has a very occasional accident, but now get's through most days without needing to change his pants.

He can be painfully shy at times, he's fine with his friends at nursery and family,but if there's lots of people in one place (at birthday parties, or the parents coming to the nursery Easter parade) he doesn't like it. He'll become hidey and clingy and stick to me like glue.

Favourite clothes are his turquoise Verbaudet hoodie (it has velcro smiley or sad faces and says 'This is how I feel today' - C loves choosing, but ALWAYS chooses the very happy face :)'. He also has a spiderman hoodie he likes to wear, stripy socks, a pink and a white long sleeved T-shirt and a grey top with dog faces on. He has a pair of cream coloured cargo trousers which say 'Beware the Lions in Africa' which he is crazily attached to! He likes his green dinosaur winter coat and navy blue gilet with grey hood. He has navy blue clarks shoes with flashing red lights and little red trainers with stars on from M&S. He's a shoe size 7.5 and has moved from an F-width to a G.

His memory is excellent, often talking about things I would have expected him to have forgotten.

4 may sometimes be a trying age, but he's still at heart a polite, loving little boy. He has a killer giggle and is happy most of the time.


Sunday 11 May 2014

4th birthday celebrations

On Thursday it was Charlie's 4th birthday. He's such a big boy now and it's lovely to see him interacting with his friends.

He's very shy in large groups (as we've found out at all the birthday parties we've attended recently) so we did lots of nice little things to keep him from getting overwhelmed. On Wednesday night we had tea and birthday cake with Nana and Grandad. C had helped Nana make the chocolate cake earlier in the day as he spends Wednesdays with them.

On Thursday we opened presents in the morning before nursery and then took in cakes for all his friends. We bought an M&S chocolate caterpillar and a vanilla dolly mixture cake and C got to eat the caterpillar's face as he was the birthday boy.

On Saturday we met up with Granny and Grandad, Uncle S, Aunty N and cousin I on the Watercress line steam railway and had a lovely day going up and down the railway and looking in at the engines being fixed in the engine shed. C even got to go into the signal box and pull down the levers to change the points. I made a steam train themed birthday cake which we had at the end of the day with a cup of tea whilst C opened his presents.

Today we had a bowling alley birthday party with 5 friends, 4 from nursery and cousin M who's just turned 3.


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