Again, I post my baby boy's birthday wishes late!

Loren turned 5 on Thursday, September 24th! Five! Just in the past couple months I've seen him grow into a young boy. He's not a baby anymore. He's much more mature (although we still have occasional tantrums when he's tired), he's very polite, and very loving. He has started preschool (NM cut-off for K is Sept 1) and is making new friends. And he's very smart. I would probably put him at a Kindergarten level academically and he knows lots and lots of random facts (gee, I wonder where he gets that from?).

We had a Transformers party for him on Sunday, September 27. We invited a few of his friends from MOPS, my family, and Mike's family. A few people couldn't make it because the flu is going around our town, but it was still a nice party. I've been waiting to post this so I could post pictures but I have been having issues with my computer freezing up. Here are some pics!

We've had bad luck with our kids - they've all grown up. ~Christopher Morley

He didn't look back

Little Loren started preschool today. As I mentioned in a previous post, he qualifies for Occupational Therapy through the school district. We had his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) last Friday and they will be taking him out of his classroom for 1/2 hour a week (2 days, 15 minutes each) and the rest of his time will be in his classroom. He will go Monday through Thursday in the afternoons which works out great because our playgroup meets on Thursday mornings and he can still go to that, and then our playgroup does our extra activities on Fridays so he can still go to that too.

We talked up school all weekend, asked him if he was excited, and just really encouraged him that it would be fun. Last night I asked him what he wanted to wear and he asked me if he had "a Transformers shirt." I told him he doesn't, so he decided he wanted to wear his Dino Robot shirt. He also wanted PB&J for lunch so I called the school this morning to make sure it was ok to send peanut butter. It wasn't an issue so he had PB&J, a cereal bar, carrots fresh from the garden, some chips, and a water bottle with Ocean Spray drink mix in his lunch box.


We got him dressed, loaded up his backpack and lunch box, and then it was time to go. Loren stopped to pose for pictures on our front porch, although he wasn't very cooperative so I don't have any "happy" pictures of him. Then we all got in the car and drove to the school. We have to wait in line for his teacher to get him out of his car so I took another picture. Then it was time to let him go. His teacher came and got him and they went and sat down on the sidewalk outside. He didn't even look back or wave or anything. I got a tiny bit teary-eyed but didn't really cry. And I'm not too entirely convinced that Daddy wasn't misty-eyed either- sunglasses are good for hiding those things.


Justin asked about him a few times while we were running our errands and stopping at home for lunch, but he didn't seem too upset. We'll see how he does when this is a nearly every day thing.

Finally 3:15 came around and it was time to pick Loren up. Daddy couldn't go to pick him up, so it was just Justin and I. We pulled into the pick up lane and when it was almost our turn, I almost started bawling because I missed my little buddy and was excited to see him. I pulled up to the pick up spot and got the biggest and cutest wave from Loren when he figured out it was my car waiting there. His teacher said he did great and they had a really good day.

Loren said they sang some songs about green and black and pink, he drew some sort of ship, and they played with pretend dinosaurs outside. I'm not entirely sure what it all means but he had fun and wasn't upset or scared or anything so I'm pretty proud of him.

Now I'm getting teary-eyed again. He'll be 5 next week and I'm just not ready for that!

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children.
One is roots. The other is wings.
~Hodding Carter, Jr.

"Music?"

Justin loves music. A few months ago we were at my parents' house and he was playing my mom's piano. He doesn't pound on it like most kids do, it sounded more like he was playing actual songs. I had been playing a few songs using the music and when he saw it, I told him that it was music. Ever since then, he recognizes music notes everywhere we go and always says "music." The day after I told him that, we were at the church for my cousin's wedding and he found a prayer book. The first half of the book is all of the readings for the year and the second half is all songs. When Justin first opened up the book, he told me "story." Then he kept turning pages and found the music and told me "music." It's kind of cute the way he says "music." He pronounces it right, but he always says it with a question mark at the end- "music?"

A few days later, we were home again and I had gotten a dictionary down for some reason. Justin was looking at the dictionary and came up to me and said "music" and sure enough he had found a page that had music notes on it. He finds music notes all over everywhere and always asks me to play music on my computer. He bounces all over when he sees me going into my music folder on my computer. He recognizes a bunch of different instruments as "music" even if he doesn't know them by name yet.

This last weekend we went to my parents' house again for my dad's birthday party. My sister and I were sitting on the kitchen floor and we were talking to Justin and playing with him. All of a sudden he stops and says "peeneano" (piano) and runs to my mom's piano. I opened it up and he climbed up on the bench and started playing. Nobody said ANYTHING about the piano but he suddenly remembered that Gramma has a "peeneano" and had to go play it. Pretty much all weekend he played the piano, even after he smashed his fingers when he tried to close the keyboard lid at bedtime. He even saw my high school senior portrait with my violin and told my dad "Mommy, music."

I'm excited to see this interest in him- music runs on both sides of the family and I think music is such an important part of life. It will be fun to see where this passion grows.

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you,
following you right on up until you die. ~Paul Simon