news from chicago: James is 4

Um you guyses, when did James turn 4? HOW did James turn 4? Who knows who knows. But, I will tell you this. James is definitely 4. I don't know what to even call him anymore - I feel like I'm lying when I call him a child but he is - is absolutely not a toddler anymore and he's not my little guy either. Actually he gets offended if Doug or I call him "little guy." He corrects us and says, "No I'm the big guy." It is quite apparent to him that Cillian is the little guy. James calls Cillian "Cillian Lovie."

James loves to sing. LOVES to sing. He will play his uke and strum away while signing (sometimes at the top of his lungs) different songs. Sometimes it's Frankie Valli, sometimes it's Ray Charles (he says Ray Char-less and it's hilarious) and sometimes it's songs that he makes up. So the radio/cd player in the jeep still isn't fixed and to be fair it's a speaker that's broken so it's not exactly a quick fix or a cheap fix either. And truth be told I kind of like listening to the Pandora stations. Anyway, on the Disney channel we listen to they play songs from The Sound of Music with Julie Andrews. Um, James enjoys these songs thoroughly. This makes me so happy I cannot even express my happiness to you. As a musical theater and general theater enthusiast and perhaps pretender at home of such shows, it makes me so excited. I bought James the soundtrack on cd as a random good behavior surprise and the look on his face was awesome. We listened to it while we ate dinner and it was wonderful. To hear her voice fill the place was just amazing. Anyway, he sings Do Re Mi and I love to hear his little voice sing "So Do La Fa Me Do Re" around the house.

I showed him a clip from the movie so he could see Julie Andrews and the kids singing it and he loved it. We still watch videos on the computer when he takes great naps and has been having good behavior and he watches basically four movies over and over again as rewards - Cinderella, Jungle Book, Robin Hood and Cars.

James is starting to sight read and sound out read. It's amazing. I am so excited for him. He loves to read and loves to be read to at any time of day. Another thing James loves is "roadwork" or anything that has to do with construction. Caution tape is regularly hung all over the place designating 'work zones' and he received a gift from my parents - an excavator, with barricades, barriers, cones and the like so it looks like a real work site. Just FYI the cones and signs do not feel nice when you step on them. At all.

James eats what we do now - for the most part we all eat the exact same thing (with slight variation - seasoning, spice, etc) at dinner. I love this. It's a lot of fun and I think it makes James feel adult when we do that. I can't believe it'll be three more years until we can all eat together. So a few more years of being a short order cook :) James loves fruits and veggies. For any meal, fruits and veg disappear first and then he moves on to the main dish. No complaining here just actually bragging :)

James now goes to the bathroom all by himself and has been doing this for a while. I just didn't feel the need to make a separate post about it. We leave the seat up in this house. It's just easier that way. I mean I'm out numbered 3 to 1 :) But seriously, it's easier for James to just have it up already just in case it's a close call bathroom run :) James also likes taking showers sometimes and we're hangning out right by him - but he'll suds his own hair up now. What a big boy.

At bedtime James loves telling stories or having stories told to him and this is after we've read to him. This is the procrastination tactic before bed. However, it is cute and we indulge him. Favorite stories are about Mommom, how he was born, how Cillian was born, why we live in Chicago and how Daddy asked Mommy to marry him. James is also very into alternating which one of us lays with him after story for a bit - Doug's night then my night and so on. He gets very into the pattern.

James is very good at puzzles. We bought a couple of puzzles for him at Christmas because he was clearly too old to keep doing the Melissa and Doug ones we had where you match the truck into the truck piece and the excavator into the excavator piece or the different dinosaurs etc. Also he has this nine piecer from The Donnellys and I would watch him do it in like 2 minutes. So we bought him two 24 piecers and he loved them and could do them pretty easily so by his birthday we got him some 48 piecers and some 100 piecers. Mostly outer space.

James is very interested in the planets and the solar system right now. For his party, I decorated the windows with the sun and the planets and I had put the sun in the center and put the planets in alternating order to create a heliocentric universe and James woke up from nap and he said, "Mom, you have the planets in the wrong order - It's the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and then Pluto." I think I looked at him stunned for a while and then I changed it - He is very smart. Very very very smart. Oh and by the by ... Uranus is pronounced "ur-uh-nuhs" ... I just learned that.

James loves getting snacks all by himself - he opens the childproof cabinets right up. Oh yes. We also still keep his milk on the bottom shelf in the door of the fridge so he can just open it up whenever he's thirsty. Oh he tried to convince me to take off the plastic chair cover I have on his chair at the table because he said he won't spill anymore and that he will use napkins. That night we had quesadillas and there was salsa all over his chair protector - sorry buddy - not quite yet :)

James picks out his clothes every morning. During football season, he was wearing a Bears jersey three out of the five days - we had three jerseys. Sometimes he wears a work shirt to be like Doug. James likes us to pretend to be people - he'll say - be the girl on the children's memorial bus or be kermit or be ray charless or be cinderella and then we have to say, "hello" and then he tells us he's going to give us post-its, or construction paper or a hug or something. It's just something that popped into my head right now and I want to remember that he did this.

We were picking Doug up from work the other day and James asked me, "Why does Cillian look at the back of the city?" I thought that was a cute way of asking why is Cillian's car seat backwards. He also asked me why we have trash cans for trash. And on the way to school *just* today - why do cars have exhaust? why is it black and smokey? why are there four lanes? why is the lake wavey on this day but not other days? why is there wind today? Just today - and that's not all of them - that's a snippet of what I can remember.

When James talks sometimes he will finish a sentence with "I think" or make it a follow up sentence to a previous statement. "I think we're going to see the balcony guys today. I think. Yeah, I think." And then he'll keep repeating it until I respond to him. Other times if he's thinking of something but can't remember it he'll say, "it's at the top of my head."

The other day James told me I sung like Cinderella (it made my day) and then told me I was as "bootifur as a pricess." I hugged him so tightly. Sometimes he makes his l sounds into r sounds - so girr (girl), bootifur (beautiful), hosapur (hospital), availabur (available). It's hard not to smile when he's marching around the house singing, "Big Girrs don't Cry!"

Oh my gosh I just remembered this - I had gone to his school for his class birthday party and all the children asked me if Cillian was a girl and I said no, he's a boy .... So I asked James on the way home why everyone thought Cillian was a girl ... James said, "I want a baby girl. Daddy already has a girl - you. I want my own girl." Can I love this child anymore?

James, you are amazing. You inspire us, you make us laugh, you make us think and you make us fill with love each and every day. We love you so much our dear sweet angel James.

I thought it would be fun to show James as he grew through the year on this post.

April 2012