4 Years Old!

Riley is FOUR!  He is growing up so fast it is unbelievable.  We love him and his personality SO much, he is a ham and makes us all laugh every day.  =)  He's a sweetheart.  My sister and my nephew came to visit for his birthday and Riley looked at his ten week old cousin the first day and said, "I just love him SO MUCH!"  Who can resist such sweetness?!  With huge, deep brown eyes to boot.  Sheesh.

Riley is making remarkable strides with pre reading skills.  He knows a good portion of the alphabet, especially the letters in his name, and his brothers' names.  He can spell "Hook" with bathtub foam letters, line up the letters of the alphabet with very little help, and sound out simple words like "man."  He loves books, letters, the alphabet, numbers, and can do addition and subtraction up to 18, and count backwards from ten, and forwards to 29.  He's so much like his daddy it's ridiculous (Brent did advanced math, physics and calculus in high school.  Plus he's easygoing and funny as shit, so Riley is absolutely his Mini Me).

He can ride a bike with training wheels, run pretty fast, play hide and seek, snakes and ladders, Monopoly and even Cranium with a little help.  He is getting a bit more logical/sophisticated with his jokes (moving up from: Why did the poop stink?  Because it was brown!  Hahahahahaha!).  He is 3 feet, 4 inches tall and weighs 31 lbs.  I have HUGE babies and tiny kids.  It's hard to get weight to stick to them when they are in perpetual motion ALL DAY.  EVERY DAY.

Riley is an amazing kid.  Charming, sweet, cheerful, smart, and enthusiastic.  He is definitely his own man; he went underwear shopping with Brent and his brothers the other day and when Brent asked him, "Which ones would you like?"  He pointed at the strawberry shortcake toddler underpants and said, "THOSE!"  When I heard that story it made me so angry that culture or the powers that be would never see fit to put strawberry shortcake on little boy underpants.  I mean, it makes sense because most boys would rather die than wear strawberry shortcake but the disappointment in Riley's face when he heard that they were just for girls was a pretty big bummer.  (and you really need room for 'extra stuff' when you are wearing boy underpants, so simply buying girl ones wasn't really an option).  Matthew dies a thousand deaths when Riley makes choices like these, but man oh man Riley doesn't care a whit, and he's just so cute about it.
Fortunately, Riley is just as happy to wear Cars underpants.  So there's that =)

Riley is very much looking forward to going to preschool in September!  We bought him a backpack and a lunch kit and we are going to preschool Open House next Thursday!  He is over the moon excited.  He's SO pumped about being old enough for school, and is excited to have his very own school and his very own teachers and his very own hook to hang his backpack on, at school.  =)

We love you, baby!  I can't believe you are already four years old.

Likes:
-T-ball
-soccer
-the trampoline
-his bike
-the water park
-camping
-fishing
-books
-jokes
-stories
-lego
-my little ponies
-strawberry shortcake
-sparkles
-bubbles
-climbing trees
-Star Wars
-Arts and crafts
-FOOD.  This kid eats like a hoover vacuum.  He loves everything.

Dislikes:
-long car rides
-being thirsty
-being left behind
-bugs