Happy 5th Birthday Jack!!

I'm a little late with this post, like almost a month, but I'll date it for the 21st of March, which is Jack's birthday. Better late than never...

Jack is awesome. He is a very, very bright little lad. He has this incredible natural ability to understand mathematics, it's pretty amazing. At 5 years of age he is capable of counting by 2's, 5's 10's, 100's, 200's etc... All the way to infinity and beyond, as he would say. I have actually watched him count to over 60,000 by 200's! He can also work out basic addition, subtraction and logic problems: Once he asked me what 1,000 minus 2 was and before I could answer, he shouted out 998! The other day we were driving in the car and Jack asked how long it would take to get to our destination- I said I wasn't sure but we could time it. I told him we left the house at 5:01pm and at 5:14pm he announced that we had been on the road for 13 minutes! Although we forgot to look at the time when we arrived, I am pretty certain he would have worked out our exact travel time.

Jack has an amazing imagination. Using any materials at hand (blocks, rocks, paper, chalk), he will often construct elaborate roads and ramp set ups for his cars or monster trucks. Last summer he was very keen on chalk and would create these huge roads and detailed cities for his cars. He kept our street and driveway both pretty much covered in chalk for the entire summer.

He also likes to write and create books. At the beginning of the school year, Jack went through a "book making" phase where he would produce about 3 to 4 books per day, mostly about rally cars. His books usually consisted of pictures and random letters, sometimes actual words, with numbered pages. He was always pretty good about his title page though- one could usually work out what the book was intended to be about because he would write things like, "Rally Car Book- 2009" on the cover. As of late, his book making seems to have slowed down- thankfully. Not that I want to discourage the book making BUT, he was burning through several reams of paper per week!

Jack is secretly learning to read on his own. When asked to read/sound out words he will not perform on cue but he pays close attention when being read to and sometimes, when Annabelle is reading a story and gets stumped on a word, Jack will tell her the correct word... He definitely recognizes many, many words.

Jack has recently discovered the world of video games, thanks Nick. He's not obsessed with them (yet) but he's getting pretty good at navigating his way around the world wide web. He likes to go on-line and play race car games or Webkinz, which seems to be "the thing" at the moment. He has been collecting various Webkinz stuffed animals... it's pretty funny watching him drag around his pink poodle with a bunch of monster trucks!

Jack is, for the most part, pretty easy going but can definitely be very strong willed about certain things, especially if it's something he does not want to do. At the same time, he can also be very sensitive- if he thinks someone is angry with him he gets very upset!

Jack is an extremely sweet little boy (except when angry!) and can be very cuddly, especially at bed time. Nick has, on occasion, referred to him as "kitten man!" Jack still sleeps with Teddy and Other Teddy- his stuffed bear friends he's had since birth.

Jack loves to swim. He has been taking swimming lessons for a while and is really getting quite good at it. Actually, he loves anything involving water, except drinking it!

Jack also loves music. When he finds a song he really likes he will often listen to it over and over again. For a while there, his favorite song was Playing For Change's version of "All You Need is Love" from a Starbucks compilation. One of Jack's teachers brought the CD to school for the kids and Jack loved it so much, he listened to that song whilst grooving in front of the CD player for an hour!

Several times I've asked Jack what he wants to be when he grows up and his response is always the same; "a Daddy." Currently, he has plans to have many children and a cat named Fisher. When he is a Daddy, he also wants to get a fat belly and lose all of his hair!

Jack's favorite color is red. Favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla. Favorite food is probably breakfast sausage, or just meat. At his 5 year check-up he was 44 inches tall and weighed in at 47.5 lbs.

Happy Birthday, little man! I love you!!

Wise Guy

So I go to pick Jack up from school yesterday and I find out that I just missed him mooning an entire hallway filled with people! Apparently, he was at the front of a line of students, heading back to their classroom from the activity room, when he decided to stop dead in his tracks and drop his pants!! It was right around pick-up time so the hallway was filled with parents as well... I feel so proud.

When I asked Jack why he showed everyone his bum he just laughed and said, "cause I wanted to and it was funny!" Although not the type of behavior I would want to promote, according to several witnesses, it was indeed very funny!

Monkey People

The girl on the monkey bars...

and the boy, looking like a monkey!

Morning Commute

On the way to school this morning, Annabelle decided to give Jack the run down on kindergarten... The conversation went something like this:

Jack, when you are in kindergarten next year and I am in 1st grade you're going to have to do REAL work. You're going to have to write in your journal, write REAL words, and you're going to have to sound things out. Can you do that, Jack? At the beginning you just have to write the letters that the words sound like. But sometimes when you're writing in your journal, the teacher gets bossy. She doesn't always let you write "I love" or "I like" you have to write other stuff and she can get REAL bossy about it.
"Does she get bossy to you, Annabelle?"
Yes. She doesn't want me to write things like, "I love puppies" anymore and that's bossy. But it's OK, I can write other stuff now. Also, Jack, when you get to kindergarten, you can't bring toys into school every day. Only on Friday, when it's share and care day. AND you can only bring in ONE thing!