4 years old - BLM

Bradley turned 4 on 12/20, so a little over 2 months ago! Better late than never! He's really matured a lot over the past year. To think where we were this time a year ago, seems like he has made leaps and bounds. I remember we were so worried about his speech and lack of vocabulary. Now, we can't get him to stop talking. From what I hear, he has become a mini me. Not only does he just go on and on and on, but he's loud! Guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!

Here we are celebrating his actual birthday!

I finally took him to the pediatrician a few weeks ago and got his stats:

Height - 42.5" (88%) exact height as Ryan

Weight - 38 lbs. 6.5 oz. (68%) over 3 lbs. less than Ryan!

Pretty much as expected, considering he could probably wear 3t pants for his waist but his 4's and 5's are literally falling off of him. That being said he wears 5 tops and 4t bottoms usually. His shoe size is an 11.

This kid loves life, and loves to be the life of the party. If there is a stereotype for a middle child, he fits the mold. He likes to be the center of attention whenever he can. He tells me that he just wants to be interesting and funny. Those are his current life goals. He likes to learn about random and obscure things. I would say that things like math, learning his letters, etc. just does not hold his interest. He's a deep thinker and is more interested in learning how things work, why things are the way they are, cause and effect, etc. more so than book smart type of facts and concepts.

He wakes up in the morning rearing to go, and could go nonstop all day everyday. He has so much energy, I have no clue where it all comes from. He thinks life is just one big party and is always up for a good time. He does throw one major fit though. He can melt down on a dime for basically no reason. I've mentioned before, he can go from one extreme to another in a split second.

He loves clothes, fashion, and just looking put together. He is always complimenting me, even on the smallest thing, like he likes a necklace I am wearing or the color I had my toenails painted. He is so observant, and it has definitely rubbed off on his brothers. Even Charlie will just start repeating things Bradley says like, "I like your shirt mom, and your pants, and your shoes, and your hair..." You get the picture! He saw a commercial around Christmastime advertising Skechers and ever since then, he was wanted some. He says they will make you jump higher and run faster. I finally ordered him some the other day, and this is him showing me how excited he was I finally let him pick some out. He asked every single day for a week when they were going to arrive. I made the mistake of telling him that morning they were coming, and he was literally counting down the hours.

He has such a tender heart and sensitive nature. He really loves babies. Loves everything about them. He's obsessed with his two new cousins. Loves to hold them, care for them, give them pacifiers, etc. It's pretty cute. Here he is with Harris at Christmas.

As far as routines go, he has been a really good napper as of late. He went through a period in the fall where he was basically refusing naps. After about the first week of school in the fall, he stopped napping at school even though most of his friends would nap. So, I made sure to make him nap on the days he wasn't in school. That worked well for the first month or two. By October, he would maybe only take one nap a week and the other days would just sing in his bed which then turned into screaming, which then turned into letting him watch his iPad so he didn't wake up Charlie. When it came time for Christmas break, I decided I was going to try and start putting him back down everyday. The kids were driving me crazy, B was acting out, and he clearly needed downtime. Well, I put him down on the first day, and about 10 days later he had gone 10 straight days of 2 hour naps. All of a sudden we were back on track with napping. He's continued it now for about 2 months or so. I had to actually let him drop 2-3 days a week of napping because he was starting to sleep so much he wouldn't go to bed at night and he comes home for naps instead of staying at school for them. He was just wired. I think for now, we have found the right balance of sleep! Woo hoo!

He goes to bed by 8:30 and they are usually up by 6:30 now that we are in our new routine in Alabama and the boys are sharing a room. Ryan has to be up for school by 6:30/6:40. As far as eating goes, he's still pretty picky. He doesn't just discriminate against healthy foods. Certain chocolates, snacks, juices, etc. he doesn't like because they are too spicy, too nutty, too chewy, you get the point. He is very specific about what he does or doesn't like to eat. He's not good about eating vegetables. Sweet potatoes are about the only veggie we can get him to eat, or the pureed zucchini in his "cheese pasta" which is ground beef, marinara, ravioli, and zucchini. That is a staple meal in our house. Wes makes a HUGE batch on Sunday that will feed the kids at least 2, usually 3 nights of the week. Most other meals consist of Chick-fil-a, chicken nugget and sweet potatoes, pizza, lasagna, BBQ, hot dogs, you get the drift. Here's a perfect picture that captures not only his crazy personality, but also the infamous cheese pasta.

I told him how I used to like to sprinkle sugar on a lemon and then suck it. Of course, all of the boys wanted to try it. Here's how it turned out for him.

He was not a fan!

We it comes to where he is education wise, he can almost write his name without assistance. Sometimes the letters aren't always in the right order, or the d is a b, but he's getting there. He can count to 20 except he almost always skips 16. He at one point could recognize all of his letters, but we have somewhat been slacking on practicing and I think he has forgotten a little bit. He has been great about wearing his glasses, and we have started putting his patch over his glasses to help strengthen his left eye. There hasn't been much change when it comes to his current status, although they did switch his right lens to just a piece of  plastic with no prescription in it. We are going to be more diligent about the patch and go get checked again this summer.

The kid loves to be outside and I think will have quite a bit of interest in sports. He loves to run around, throw the ball, kick the ball etc. He seems to have so much pent up energy, sports should be a good outlet for him. He's got a good arm, so I think baseball should suit him well. He played in the fall and is playing again this spring. 

He still has continued with his swim lessons except for about a 2 month break with the move. We started back up again just this past week, so hopefully he will pick back up where we left off as he was swimming across my parents' pool with both arms out of the water and coming up to breathe when he needed to. Here he is swimming before Christmas at Houston Swim Club.

Here he is jumping into the pool and swimming today at the YMCA in Daphne.

Here's the list of questions I try and ask the boys at least once a year without any prompting.....
Favorite color: Orange
Favorite food: Lasagna, Pancakes and eggs for dinner, and all the candy in the whole world
Favorite toy: My rubber chicken (he recently caught this in a Mardi Gras parade)
Favorite show: Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol
When I grow up I want to be: A people that's dressed up. I want to work for the Mardi Gras. I asked him if he couldn't be that what he would want to do and he said work for dad's work
Favorite thing to play: watching Charlie do bad things, playing with beads from Mardi Gras, Magna Tiles, paint pictures
Favorite animal: a fish (go figure - not surprised since most animals terrify him)
Favorite thing to wear: Khakis shorts and a baseball jersey
Favorite book: I want to get a Mardi Gras book (can you tell what has consumed our house as of late?!?)
Best friend: Harper and Hannah - they're silly he says
What you sleep with at night: my lovey
Favorite song: The Pledge of Allegiance
What are you really good at: telling Charlie not to do bad stuff, hitting the baseball so hard
Favorite thing to do with mom: Going to do fun stuff like the eye doctor (?!!?) and going out to eat
Favorite thing to do with dad:  I like when mom is out of town so they can do fun stuff with dad like play football, having fun desserts
Favorite sport to play: football, baseball, and basketball
Favorite place to go: the candy store, the beach, and he wants to go to California (don't ask me why!)
Favorite place to go out to eat: The new pizza place in Spanish Fort, El Jarrito and BB's Cafe in Katy

I had him put on a coat before school the other day. He got it all tangled up, and when he turned around to show me, I immediately had to get my phone out. My mind instantly went to Chris Farley and "Fat guy in a little coat" I couldn't stop laughing!

It's harder to tell in the picture, but that whole jacket was bundled up between him and his backpack.

I took a few snapshots of the sweet scrapbook B's teachers made for him. They usually give these out at the end of the year, but went ahead and gave us ours through January when we left. They were so, so sweet and really captured his year so well. I love looking back at it and seeing just how much he loved school!

His best friend was definitely Hannah, we sure do miss her!

 His other little girlfriend from school, Harper

B and Harper, the only two not napping. Even his teacher's were impressed the 3 days of school he ever napped!

 Celebrating his birthday at school

Christmas party time!

We love you B and are excited for our next adventures with you in Alabama!!!

Christmas Programs and Parties

So my goal, is to get this caught up before next Christmas, haha! We've clearly been so busy, I haven't had a spare moment to get the blog caught up. I am trying to commit to doing it, so that I don't let it become too far gone and just give up! The little ones had their Christmas programs right before school let out for the holidays. They always do such a great job putting together a cute show. Bradley had his program first, and Charlie was able to come watch.

A major change from the year before. Bradley was not shy, although not the center of attention either. He was very proud to be standing up there and singing. His hand motions were not always there, but there were no tears, so definitely a success. The front row, unfortunately, did not have the same luck. They peeled off one by one as they were a little sad.

Charlie waving to B!

The best view I could get of his whole class.

Partners in crime. Those two are inseparable....

Here are two short clips from a few of the songs

Poor little Jacob, just wasn't having it.

Little besties congratulating each other on a great show!!

Bradley is always looking for opportunities to pose with the ladies.

Love this sweet boy. Side note, the morning of the program, I came downstairs in my pjs and Bradley very sweetly asked me, "Mom are you planning to wear workout clothes to my program today?" Kind of anticipating where this was going, I just asked him why he was asking. He quickly responded with, "I just want you to wear a nice outfit, please!" At least he used his manners! The kid just really likes me to look nice, or better said, not in workout clothes (aka "my uniform"). For the record, he did approve this outfit.

    CoCo and B

The following day was Charlie's two year old class performance. He was pretty stoic most of the time, but there weren't any tears. Actually, none from his class, go figure. I was shocked! He stood there most of the time, but about 80% of the way through, he decided to participate a little bit.

Looking for me and my mom

Here comes the progression as to what most boys do when they are bored.....

....looking around to make sure the coast is clear....

.....lift the shirt....

...insert hands in pants....typical boy!

Singing two by two. Clearly we need some work on counting on your hands.

Trying to figure out how to make a 2 with his fingers!

Hold out until the end, you'll get a few claps!

Blowing some kisses to me!

This kid tests me beyond my limits daily, but it's hard to resist his sweet smile.

The best we could get of all three of us

That afternoon, we took the boys to the mall to go see Santa. Bradley was finally on board with wanting to actually sit near him and take a picture, so we had to capitalize on in it while we could. We got there and had to wait a minute because his lenses had transitioned and we needed them to go back to normal, haha! Not sure if it was a good or bad thing because it gave them more time to fret, but we did it anyway. B was pretty nervous, but finally worked up the courage and actually sat next to him and was excited. Charlie, on the other hand, was clearly not having it. Poor guy completely melted down, but rest assured it was only for about 10 seconds and I went in and swooped him up. The tears stopped quickly thereafter. B would NOT leave. He kept chatting and chatting with Santa and was not ready to go. We had to pry him away since Charlie wanted to get as far away as possible. He even told me later that we needed to go back because he forgot to tell him about a toy that he wanted, that he had just happened to see in a store!

We made promises of carousel rides and cookies after the pictures. As you can see, Charlie's mood quickly turned back to his happy self. He LOVED the carousel and was in heaven.

Funny story, we decided to walk to a few stores since the boys were in a good mood. We got into Home Goods, and B admitted that he had slightly pooped his pants. Mind you, this kid has been completely potty trained for over a year, with maybe 1 accident, ever. He said he ended up going a little while back in the parking lot on our way into the mall (which was about 1-1.5 hours prior to him admitting this). Not sure if the excitement and nerves of Santa had gotten to him, but that's the only thing I can think of that would've made this happen. Poor kid!

Here's a cute pic of Ryan on his PJ day at school complete with his reindeer ears.

Matthew, Ryan, and Ashley after school

That Sunday after school let out, we went to my Aunt's annual Mexican food Christmas dinner with the whole Hicks side of the family. Last year, My aunt Vivian started having the little ones act out some of the nativity scene, complete with costumes. We had 2 of the boys sick last year and B wasn't up for participating, but we got them all 3 to act in it this year while my dad read some scripture. It was pretty cute.

Porter and Charlie, the sweetest sheep you've ever seen!

Poppy and the boys

It's always fun seeing all of my cousins and their kids. They all have such a great time together. Such a fun time of year, next up Christmas lights hayride!