Chatchu turns 4

Happy Birthday to our Charlie! 4 – how in the world has it been 4 years since you entered our lives! Charlie you have been such a blessing to us and how delightful it has been to watch you grow up into a little boy over these last 4 years. We are so thankful that God saw us fit to be your parents!

The sweet Charlie’s smile that we know.

He was so proud one afternoon when he busted this out. He said – “mom! I wrote my name!”. This is a something Charlie can do, but often times gets VERY frustrated over how his A or R looks so then starts over.  He has very high expectations of himself and does not like to mess up, which means we usually have a lot of “chA”s written on papers, but not the whole thing. I was so proud of him when he showed me this because he stuck with it. 

Charlie is a great big brother! he is uber sweet with other little babies too. Here he is sweetly holding Evelyn Dufendach.

Charlie loves his friends! Him and Addison have such a special bond. I also love Cayden’s smile looking on here. Charlie is very thoughtful with Cayden too.

today – Addison called to wish Charlie a happy birthday and when talking I heard charlie say “we’re best friends…right?” to which addison replied “yes!”. then their conversation continued on.

Some classic one liners:

Laura was home with just Charlie and Claire one morning and Charlie looked at Claire and said “Claire – are you claire?”. ha! he can mostly tell which sister is which, but it cracks me up that sometimes he just needs to check.

Charlie loves honey bunches of oats cereal which we call G.Pops cereal because my dad likes the cereal and charlie associates it with him. I asked charlie what he wanted for his birthday dinner and he said “g. pops cereal!”. sadly – I can only let him eat it once (maybe twice if he has a bedtime snack) a day.

Charlie is wanting to communicate more about his days with us. He will share a few more pieces of information with us and when Bill is home in time he puts Charlie to sleep. Charlie loves this and wants to drag on their time together so he will often say “dad, you want to talk about somping?”

The other day I had conferences with his Preschool teacher Mrs. Sohkitab and she raved about a little end of the year exercise she did with Charlie that went through sequencing, recognizing letters, numbers, shapes, order, etc. She said after she completed the exercise with him – he and his friend hank were having so much fun playing with the mind games she kept going and they did games for the rest of the class time and had a blast!  One weekend Bill & Charlie started playing a game where he would pick up a picture of an item and sound out what it starts with (ie: Apple – A, A) then he would pick out the letter it was. Charlie was loving the challenge of it and that he was good at it. He doesn’t do well with failure – something that I am sure he will have to work on as he gets older.

 

I decided to do a low key birthday celebration this year. Charlie decided on homemade mac & cheese for dinner and I made him a ski cake! It was so nice having such a relaxing celebration. He was actually able to play with his new toys after getting them.

last night I started in on the cake before charlie went to bed. he was thrilled to watch the crafting.

the ski cake at least before I went to bed.

I used these little lego skiers which I knew charlie would love.

I woke up Charlie up by singing him Happy Birthday and I should have recorded his face when I said today is your birthday and he responded with “am I 4 today?”. he was ecstatic when I confirmed it! he then ran upstairs to see his cake.   he was thrilled.

after getting the sisters up we had breakfast and charlie got to have candles in his cereal.

charlie then wanted to make the skier on the top be faster – so we moved him to the slope. love how his mind is always being imaginative.

then charlie had preschool and his first swim lesson with mrs. larson this spring. when we were walking into the RAC he would stop people and say “hi. it’s my birthday – I’m 4!!”. I was laughing so hard! when we arrived back at home nana had sent a little package. he was pumped!

 

thanks nana & g.pops. he loved it!

after naps we geared up for dinner. Bill was running late so the kids just ate.

burning time until Bill got home we had charlie open a gift he was wishing and wishing for “dragon eat” is what he was calling it.

love this sweet boy – messy hair and all.

happy.

charlie and bubba. check out that dragon eat car thing.

ellie was just sweetly “singing” happy birthday chatchu (she doesn’t really sing the entire verses – more just a few words here and there)

check out the action shot of the dragon eating the car and shooting the fire out!

another action shot of the car in the dragon’s mouth.

ellie and claire were so good just playing with charlie’s other toys.

charlie opening his razor scooter. he hasn’t ever said that he wanted a razor scooter so he was a bit confused when he opened this.

which explains this face.

but once I busted it out and showed him how it worked he was much more interested.

opening another fun gifty from bubba & pappy. water car toys.

bubba wanted charlie to have a teenage mutant ninja turtle like his dad used to have. charlie said “what is this?”

singing happy birthday to our sweet charlie!

love this kid!

love this captured high five.

instantly licked off the skis for the lego guys.

what a great dad bill is.

bubba had margit paint charlie St Judy’s comet because we have been singing Paul Simon’s St. Judy’s Comet song many times a day (nap and night time) since he was born. What a sweet gift. I love it!

charlie was more interested in his car toys.

oh and with the house clean out I found this white elephant gift we took home one Christmas and wrapped it up for charlie. we might as well embrace the gun thing because it is going to happen.

Charlie had a wonderful birthday celebration and it was fun to watch him take his time opening and playing with gifts. We love you Charlie!

Charlie had a 4 year check up a few weeks after his birthday. He weighed 40.48 lbs (83rd %) and 3.42 ft tall (68th %).