Piano!

We've been thinking about getting an electric piano for a long time.  Aaron showed an early interest in music and instruments and I played piano growing up.  We have a keyboard the kids have been playing with, and although it was a nice keyboard, it wasn't a full 88 keys and we didn't have a frame and seat for it, so I rarely played it.  Thom found a nice Casio piano online which we just set up yesterday.  It sounds great and both the kids love it.  I've even gotten a chance to play it.  And a nice feature is the ability to use headphones with it since my best time to get on there is when the kids are asleep.

I have some of the books I had when I was in lessons as a kid and I play to start teaching Aaron.  He puts a book of music on the piano and pretends he's playing it.  So far he can find middle C (on the piano, not the notation for it) and he recognizes a treble clef and bass clef on sheet music.

Aaron turns 4!

Aaron turned 4 last month.  We didn't do a party this year, but there were many celebrations.  We went out to lunch the day before his birthday with Grandma and Grandpa.  On his birthday we took him out to lunch at In N Out Burger, which was his choice.  We surprised him by inviting another family to join us, our friends Mark and Jill and their two kids.  And we brought a trifle cake from home.

And that afternoon, I took him to see a local band he enjoys that was playing at a coffee shop. And best of all, that evening, Auntie Lia and Uncle George joined us for dinner. Auntie Lia cut Aaron's hair and Audrey's bangs. Auntie Lia had come and cut Aaron's hair a while back and Aaron said several times that he wanted her to come back and cut his hair on his birthday. And she was happy to oblige. He had a great birthday weekend.

A few weeks after his birthday, we had his 4 year checkup.  He was a little over 40 lbs and a little over 40".  He didn't get his booster shots that day because he'd been having a fever.  He had a fever for 5 days for no apparent reason.  Mostly just in the afternoons.  In the mornings, it was generally between 99-100, but it would shoot up over 101 in the afternoons.  One day it went up so fast, by the time I was ready to give him Tylenol it was over 104 (I wanted to give it to him over 103 but missed it).  I had to force him to take the Tylenol even with a bribe of cookies, but after a dose and a cool bath, his fever was down under 102.  It was apparently some unnamed virus and other than a slightly runny nose and being more tired than usual, he seemed perfectly fine.
 
At four, Aaron is reading more regularly, pointing out words when we are out and about.  He often reads one of his bedtime stories now.  Also, since his pullups have been dry in the morning, he now has the option to wear underwear at night.  So far he's been going back and forth between pullups and underwear.  He only had one accident and that was when he had the fever.  Around the time of the fever there were a few nights when he woke up to pee, but other than that time, he's pretty much sleeping through the night.
 
Another big change happened around the time he turned 4.  For about 3 years, he had oatmeal for breakfast every morning.  Usually with a banana, sometimes with blueberries.  But for weeks he was eating really slow and goofing off with his sister at breakfast instead of eating.  It was an hour long battle to get him to finish his oatmeal that he used to eat willingly.  Finally we decided to stop doing oatmeal.  Now he eats cereal with milk, picking out a different cereal each morning.  Sometimes shredded wheat squares (Autumn Wheat), sometimes Kashi's Heart to Heart, or Puffins.  And he eats it quickly, without us having to remind him to eat his breakfast.  The end of oatmeal in the mornings felt like the end of an era in our household.  I thought he'd eat oatmeal every day until he left for college.
 

For some reason, we've been having more melt-downs and time-outs with him.  Baths and hair washing have become a struggle with him and he often doesn't listen to us.  He's always been a rule follower so we've had it pretty easy.  But suddenly he's trying to circumvent the rules or outright lies to us.  Or he'll pull an Oliver North and say he can't remember if he hit his sister - 2 seconds after it happened. 

 

Despite some of the problems of acting out with his sister, he is actually a very good brother.  He often asks her questions (like "Is it Monday, Audrey?") and then tells her the answer if she doesn't know.  Or he'll tell her things (like "Look, Audrey, there's a bunny.")  I think it helps her to learn.  And he also tries to distract her with a change in conversation when she's crying or upset.  Sometimes it gets annoying because she'll be crying and he's yelling over her trying to cheer her up, but it's very sweet.