Ian's Growing Up ...

 As preschool quickly approaches, Matt and I have talked often about just how grown-up Ian is seeming. Granted, perhaps part of it is just that he has a little brother, and the maturity difference between a 1- and 4-year-old is (obviously) quite different. Of course, he'll still have the occasional temper tantrum or major meltdown that will remind us that, yes, he is only four. Most of the time, though, he's a self-sufficient little boy that loves learning new things and helping out however he can!

Ian asked if we could play with water balloons on one recent hot afternoon. He was able to fill up the balloons all by himself, though he needed help tying them off at the end.

Ian's interest in writing continues to be strong. He will offer to write messages or notes to others. Here, he stands by a sign that he wrote for Daddy after Matt had been in Chicago for a few days for a development training for school. He also has written birthday cards to others and notes to tell Daddy where we are, like "We went to the pool." He also continues to love painting. Here is a picture of fireworks that he painted for Matt with colored sweetened condensed milk. (What a fun idea ... thanks, Aliceson!)

 A recent interest in playing music started when Kim was trying to help Ian make productive noises on the xylophone (instead of just banging!).Together, we wrote color-coded "music" to some songs Ian knew. Ian grinned from ear to ear when he played a song he could recognize! He concentrates very hard while playing to make sure he keeps his place. We still need to work on timing, as expected, but he's doing a very good job. He has also "composed" his own songs and likes to play back what he has written.

 Here are three of the songs he can play.








Last week, we invited Ian's future Pre-K teacher, Mrs. Miller, over for dinner. Ian helped make most of the dinner, and he was VERY excited to show her his room, his toys, and pictures (on the computer) of our recent trip.

 Mrs. Miller seems like she'll be a wonderful teacher -- patient, gentle, and enthusiastic. She has had 25 years of experience working with preschoolers! What a track record!

 Ian doesn't seem particularly nervous or particularly excited about preschool. He knows it's coming up (it's on his calendar and we talk about it daily). He will ask occasional questions about it and enjoys reading books from the library about preschool. I think that he'll overall do very well. I go back and forth with my feelings. I know that he'll only be gone 3 mornings a week, but I feel wistful and sad thinking that the era of "do whatever we want, when we want" freedom is quickly ending. I'll miss those mornings with my sweet oldest boy, and I can't help but feel like I haven't "done enough" to prepare him for this new stage. On the other hand, I'm excited about the new experiences that Ian will have -- and even for the new challenges he'll face that I can't replicate at home. I'm looking forward to having time with JUST Ryan those mornings and I'm already dreaming of the things we can do together, just the two of us. For this girl who hates change, new things are always bittersweet!

And because I never posted about it, back at the end of June, our church hosted Vacation Bible School. This was Ian's first year to be able to go, and he did GREAT. Here he is with his teacher, Ms. Kimmy.

 Here he is at the entrance to "Kingdom Rock" on crazy hat day. He chose to wear a winter stocking cap "so I can look like Uncle Jon."

 on the throne ...

 The final day of VBS was crazy hair day, so we attempted to spike it all up!

For days after VBS (and still now even ), Ian asked to listen to the VBS songs so that he could do the actions. In fact, VBS choreography occupied quite a bit of our driving time on our vacation. Here, Ian does the motions to three of the songs for Grandpa and Grandma while we are at Camp Cilca.