RJ is 4

I realize that you might get a general idea of the kids' development from anecdotes on Facebook/Google+ (and if you're not on Google+, you SHOULD be), but I feel that an update on RJ's general development is in order as well.

Physical Stats:
Height: 43" (95th percentile)
Weight: 37.5 lbs.  (65th percentile I believe. I can't remember but I knew it was between the 50th and 75th)
Teeth: 20, counted at the dentist, no cavities!
Sight: 20/20
Hearing: Normal
Sizes: Currently wearing 4T clothes, 5T pajamas, some shirts are 4-6 or 5T, and we're stocking up on bigger sizes with sales, or second hand opportunities!
Sleep:  ~9pm-7am, no naps at home but ~1hr nap at preschool

Favorites
Favorite Food: Sugary Sticky Crap (which I don't buy, but he seems to always manage to acquire!), Shrimp, Sushi, French Fries, Chocolate Milk, Ice Cream, Carrots, Broccoli, Chocolate, Spaghetti with Meatballs
Favorite Drink: Horchata, Hot Chocolate
Dislikes: Cheese, Orange Mac & Cheese, lettuce
Favorite Book: Whichever one is the newest usually.  Currently "Peaceful Piggies Meditation"  Also, Magic School Bus series, Berenstein Bears, Beatrix Potter books
Favorite Toy: Dinosaurs, Sea Creatures
Favorite Color: Red
Favorite Outdoor Activity: Riding his Skuut Bike
Favorite Indoor Activity: Playing with Dinosaurs
Favorite Sport: Football ("Go Steelers")
Possible Future Occupations: Paleontologist, Chef, Daddy
Favorite TV Shows/Movies: Dinosaur Train, Caillou, Cat in the Hat Knows a lot About That, The Magic School Bus, The Land Before Time movies

Fine Motor Development
RJ can write most of his letters in their capital form, and some in their lowercase form.  His drawings become increasingly complex by the day and since it clicked that he could draw faces and draw things that he could cut out and use as toys (stingrays, sharks), his drawing output has increased exponentially. He is getting better at buttoning and unbuttoning clothing and working snaps and zippers, but often still gets frustrated and asks for help.

Gross Motor Development

I am really impressed by RJ's balance on his Skuut Bike.  He picks up his feet and zooms along for longer and longer distances every day.  He's even more advanced than he was when I filmed him in late June and early July!  He can stay upright on his rollerblade trainer skates too.  He is also taking his gymnastics class, where he has mastered the forward roll and walking along the beam, working on his bar skills and backward roll.  He is constantly in motion and we are working on his body awareness in space because he is seemingly oblivious to where his body is at any given moment, which frequently results in Daddy being kneed in the groin or me getting elbowed in the boob.  He can pump his legs when swinging and can climb almost anything on the playground now.  We are working on ball skills, mostly because we just haven't pushed him playing with balls all that much. RJ will be taking a session of swim lessons next week and already likes to blow bubbles in the water.  We might try soccer in the fall after his session of gymnastics ends.

Cognitive Development
RJ fully engrosses himself in thematic study and while I have been selecting our themes for the past year (transportation, dinosaurs, ocean), he is now taking the reigns and asking to learn about things that interest him.  He is now learning about bees since he was interested in the bees that pollinate our "bee tree".  We go to the library and pick out books on his topic, and read them and he asks me to look up answers to questions that I don't know the answer to, such as "What do baby bees look like?", on the computer.  His curiosity is intense and he asks questions pretty much non-stop through the day.  He seems to have a preference for learning about animals, even though just a year ago, it seemed that all he would ever love was transportation!  I really enjoy teaching RJ because he retains the information so easily and because he loves demonstrations and experiments (such as when we cut up grass in the back yard, put it in water and then poured it over a sponge, so he could see how baleen whales eat!).

Language Arts:  It is clear that RJ's mind is always working.  As he plays, the animals or cars or whatever have intricate conversations and elaborate story lines, which often come out in made-up songs!  At bedtime, we read a book and then RJ makes up a story jointly with one of us (usually Daddy).  His stories are often off the wall imaginative, but do have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a structure which has impressed his teachers at school when he managed to get his whole class telling stories during circle time!

RJ is highly motivated in language arts skills, as he speaks mostly like an adult with a few occasional pronoun or grammatical quirks, and is constantly rhyming real and nonsense words, telling us when something rhymes, what letters start a word, or making up his own words (mostly as silly names for characters in his play).  He never stops talking and/or singing songs, which is not ideal when we want to try and encourage Logan to use words, but we are working on teaching him to talk to Logan rather than talk around him, which helps.  On the plus side, RJ has taken interest in independently "reading" picture books to Logan, where he does a good job of teaching Logan how to name things.  In terms of his pre-reading skills, he recognizes all his letters in capital form and many in lowercase form, and with help can sound out some words.  He has an uncanny ability to decode what Lance and I try to spell over his head too.  Our days of spelling to each other are numbered.  Perhaps we need to start speaking French or Spanish, until RJ picks that up too.  He does occasionally ask me how to say something in other languages, and when we visited Quebec, we taught him a few key phrases, which he has since forgotten most of them.

Classification: RJ has been naturally classifying objects for a while.  He knows the basic shapes - circle, square, triangle and generally understands bigger/smaller.  He typically separates his dinosaurs not only by type, but also by what they eat and lines them up from biggest to smallest on occasion, making nuclear families out of the various sized sets.

Math:  RJ can count to 100 with help remembering the tens.  He can count to 20 independently, and can count objects with a one-to-one correspondence.  He has spontaneously added small numbers of things together (e.g., "1 ball and 1 ball is 2 balls).  Additionally, he is starting to understand the concept of "half" thanks to sharing toys of a certain variety with Logan and cooking activities (which he LOVES).

Sequencing:  He knows the days of the week and knows which days are preschool days. He also knows that his birthday is in June, but his concept of how long a month or a year is is limited at best. He only understands time in terms of the sequence of the day, not at all by hours/minutes/seconds.

Spacial:  RJ is still not very interested in puzzles.  I can occasionally get him to work on one with me, but he just doesn't have the desire to do it.

Emotional/Behavioral
RJ is an intense kid and still working on how to interact with people when he's frustrated or angry, despite his ability to express himself verbally.  His emotions are intense and we still deal with him hitting other people when he's angry or frustrated or not getting his own way, although lately I've found that he says mean things instead in some cases, which is a change of pace.

He also tends to have an oppositional approach to new things, which is frustrating when we are trying to introduce him to something fun and he pitches a fit only to absolutely LOVE the activity afterward.  He is best behaved at preschool, most likely due to the consistent routine.  We follow a routine at home too, because we all thrive on routine, but of course, things always come up.  His behavior is worst when he is out of his normal habitat, but the more I can prepare him ahead of time, the easier things go.  We try not to bribe him to behave, but we do try to encourage him when he is acting appropriately.  In terms of discipline, we are against corporal punishment of any kind, and still using the most natural consequences possible for infractions (e.g., if he takes a toy from Logan, then he can't play with that kind of toy for a little bit; if he doesn't help during clean up time, any toys left go into a basket and he can't play with them the next few days).  We use a cool off time for him to calm down, but we don't typically use time out as a punishment.

Despite his intensity with negative emotions, RJ can also be quite a joy to have around when he's being nice!  His teachers love how kind he is and how well he plays with the other kids.  He also loves Logan very much and likes to kiss and squeeze him, which, while overzealous and not always appreciated, is well-intentioned.

He's growing up fast.  I can't believe he will start Kindergarten next year!

Christmas 2009

As you might have noticed, we were MIA from our birthplaces this Christmas due to the impending birth of baby 2 in a month. This was sad because we missed seeing the majority of our family, but it also gave us the opportunity to give RJ a Christmas Morning at his own house, with lots of big presents. And we actually saw our Christmas decorations for the first time since about 2004! (They all survived the Cross-Country move and the 9 mile move!) It was fortuitous timing too, since RJ really understands Christmas for the first time in his young life. He was excited about getting tree and talked about Santa bringing him presents for WEEKS in advance. So it was a good year for us to do it up and stay home with him.

Of course, we've never really had our own Christmas before, so we had to figure out what we wanted to pull from our family traditions to make our own holiday to celebrate with our visitors - Grandma D and Johnny O.

On Christmas Eve, we decorated cookies in the morning,



and then I tried my best to make my family's traditional Polish Wigilia (pronounced Vigeelia) dinner. The one casualty was that I forgot to bake the rye bread. The mushrooms were close, but I need to do some fine tuning next time.



After dinner, we decided that RJ should open some of the massive quantity of presents. So, we mimicked the Ciesielski Wigilia tradition and he opened presents from Grandpa Tim and the rest of the Ciesielski clan. The DeLancey/Morris tradition was also to open gifts from family members in the evening on Christmas Eve, so RJ opened some of his presents from Grandma D as well. One particular favorite of the evening was the little Pixar Cars vehicles (Thank you Grandma D!), which we've rarely seen him without since and he enjoyed finding his scooter (thank you Grandpa!), which we put a bow on and hid in his tent when he wasn't looking!



After RJ's bath, he picked out a cookie and milk for Santa and left a carrot for Rudolph. He was remarkably insistent on the carrot - I'm happy I had whole carrots in the house!



Then several Santas got busy and assembled his kitchen set, his basketball hoop, and his plasma car as well as arranging all the presents that were wrapped by Santa when RJ was napping!



Christmas morning was awesome. First, he's old enough to be excited about Christmas, but not old enough to make us wake up at 4 am to open gifts. He slept to a reasonable 7 am-ish time, which was very nice. We actually put his new Cars slippers outside his room for him to open first and then he came downstairs for the big show. The look on his face was fantastic when he saw that Santa had come! He opened a LOT of presents, but was loosing steam before all were open, so he opened a few later. After the majority of presents were open, we had a brunch of belgian waffles with fruit compote and bacon and spent the day playing. Then for dinner, I made my first prime rib roast with Lance's favorite potatoes (Delmonico). This is a combination of what Lance's Uncle Jim (prime rib) and grandmother (delmonico potatoes) make for Christmas Day, and what the Hoelzl side of my family typically eats for Christmas Day (beef). RJ affectionately called the prime rib roast beast a la "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas".



The day after Christmas, RJ opened up a few more presents and took his outdoor toys for a spin around the backyard and had some fun playing baseball and basketball with Daddy.



We hope that all our friends and family, near and far enjoyed their holidays as much as we did!

RJ Goes Fishing

On the Sunday after orientation (September 2009) we went to the nearby Bass Pro Shop in Manteca.

"The 120,000 square-foot store...and a 65' replica of the world's largest tree (in volume), The General Sherman in Sequoia National Park, welcomes visitors...Massive rockwork soaring 28' to 30' high above the aquarium replicates Yosemite's Half Dome and allows visitors to walk under the waterfall as it cascades into the fresh water aquarium.

The store is insanely impressive and made my dad completely awestruck (and RJ tired from running around it).



We picked up some bait and some hooks for our fishing poles and took RJ and Grandpa fishing at Caswell Memorial State Park, which is on the Stanislaus River.

RJ loved running into the water at the edge, but was initially a little scared at going in with me and Grandpa. However, by the end of it all, he was loving the water.

RJ was also really good at reeling in his fishing pole - but unfortunately the fishies were not biting that day for anyone. It seems that he might have some more fishing in his future though because at age 2, he was actually able to focus on the activity for more than a few minutes. We'll have to take him more often now that we have the gear (thank you cousin Zach for giving RJ your old fishing pole!) and the river is only about 30 minutes away!

RJ's Second Birthday Party

On June 14, we threw RJ a birthday party to celebrate his turning two. I think the party was a smashing success. RJ's friends Alison, Zach, Daisy, Ashlan, Ariel and Madeline all came by to celebrate with him! And yes, RJ is popular with the ladies, seemingly moreso than with the boys of his crowd, something we actually didn't noticed until the party was almost over!

The kiddos bounced,


and about half of them (including RJ) went home with permanent puff paint on them from making T-shirts as their party favors. I figured green paint stains down the children's arms that took about 2 baths to come off, stained clothing, and cool homemade t-shirts were better than the usual bag of little plastic toys that break on the way home from the party.Note to self for next time - provide smocks or encourage naked painting. Daisy's mom, Run was deemed the smartest mom at the party for taking Daisy's shirt off before starting the painting. I wish I thought of that!

Then we ate burgers and sausages (with homemade bean and cheese quesadillas for the kiddos) along with a bunch of food that we were unable to finish before it went bad. At least no one went home hungry! I managed to get a few bites into RJ, but he was entirely too excited to eat. Plus, he clearly had to save room for the chocolate monkey cake that he helped me make that morning. It was going to be gingerbread man or a teddy bear cake because that was the shape of my one "fun" shaped cake pan, but RJ insisted on a monkey as we were making the cake that morning, so with a little icing and his life is good monkey hat as a guide, I sort of transformed a gingerbread man into a monkey.
RJ would like to say thank you to his friends for a great time at his birthday party and for his birthday gifts, which he has been enjoying these last few weeks!

And, as an added bonus, the bounce house rental guy asked to come early to set up and then couldn't come pick up the bounce house at 8 like scheduled, so we had some extra family bounce house time at no extra charge!

Tale of Two Easters: Adult Edition

We got a babysitter so that us adults could head to San Francisco over nap time and have some adult entertainment.

Easter Parade

As we were walking down the street we remark -- are those cows? Are those dancing cows? Are those dancing cows on rollerblades? Then we realize it is either a regular weekend in San Francisco or the Easter parade complete with drag queens (yes you did read the sentence correctly).





Bring Your Own Big Wheels

Big People on Kids Toys going down the steepest/crookedest street in San Francisco IN COSTUME

Since the name of the event is Bring Your Own Big Wheel (which is an annual Easter Sunday event), and I don't keep a big wheel in my back pocket, I unfortunately was unprepared or I would've been in the fray myself, but 40? Schteve? Dave? Dawber? I'd like a souped up Big Wheel that could handle these curves for next year. Or better yet - we should ALL do it!! If a guy on a modified trash can can make it down alive, a souped up long axle big wheel should too. A word to the wise...bring your own helmet too. My favorite wipeout was when the dumb guy carrying his big wheel up the hill got taken out by a heat of big wheels thundering down the hill.

Here is the official video and a collection of pictures.

Mission Bars

What Easter Sunday would be complete without Happy Hour?

Organic Sushi

To finish out the evening, Lance found an organic sushi restaurant in the Mission. They had the largest rolls I've ever seen. Fabulous Easter dinner! It probably makes up for the fact that we ate Turkey on Good Friday...oops.

I think the only thing we missed that was Easter-related in SF was the "Hunky Jesus" contest that we heard about too late!

This Easter was much better than last Easter, which I spent grading papers!

Tale of Two Easters: Family Edition

Lance and I wake up to a smiling toddler in our bed. Thank goodness we have a King Sized Mattress now - RJ actually leaves us with some room to sleep when he gets upset randomly in the middle of the night (it luckily doesn't happen too often).

Easter Baskets

While the quiche was baking Otte (who was adjusting to West Coast time after flying in to see us Saturday) woke up and helped RJ find his Easter Basket. RJ's response to the colorful basket in the pantry = "Wow!" Thank you Grandpa for the Wahl's Orange Chocolate.



Then we sent Otte looking for his Easter basket. This was actually more entertaining than RJ looking for his Easter basket, particularly because Otte, who was still up when I was hiding it the night before and was TOLD where it was, thought that I had hid it in the dryer and went on a wild goose chase in the laundry room, when it was really in the sewing cabinet in the living room. We should probably give him some slack though since he WAS pretty tired!

Egg Decorating

RJ and Daddy colored a few eggs too. RJ's hands kept ending up in the dye, but he had fun. Then Daddy had fun putting the few pieces of (unsalvagable) burnt bacon in the dye to "see what would happen". (Yeah, nothing really happened except that the yellow turned brown).



Brunch

We all sat down to a big breakfast (Quiche, Sausage, and Belgian Waffles with Strawberries and Whipped Cream), got showered and took RJ to the park on a beautiful Easter Sunday morning in sunny Tracy, CA.

RJ Skills: Drawing

Here is part two in a series of short videos of RJ's skills. As of late, he has enjoyed drawing a lot. Like the last video, it would seem as though RJ does not have the proper drawing supplies like big crayons and construction paper, but he does...he even has an easel now too (Thank You Grammie!!)... we just seem to video tape him when he's NOT playing with his normal stuff. I really love watching him draw since he pays such close attention to what he's doing! It's about the only time he's still too!

It's also looking like RJ will be right handed. Most of the time when drawing or coloring with paper or the magna doodle he does use his right hand. It's not universal though - I sometimes see him using his left hand. This shouldn't be a suprise since Lance and I are both right handed. We'll just have to wait and see what shakes out - I've just tried to put the crayons in front of him rather than putting one in his hand unless he's reaching for one.

Enjoy watching RJ hard at work!

Oh What A Year It's Been: RJ's First Birthday

It has been quite a year. Now, at 1 year old, RJ is 20 lbs. (10th percentile, which is up from 7th at his last checkup) and 30 inches long (50th percentile). He is toddling around independently and can push to a standing position without props now too. His verbal skills are awesome and his doctor said that he'll be talking very soon since he's trying to communicate verbally. He can say Momma, Dadda, this (usually pointing at something and wanting you to either name it or get it for him), cat (still sounds more like at), ball, eyes (while poking my eyes), nose (while pointing at my nose), lunch (sounded more like lunz), water (sounds like wa), the exclamation, "whoa" when enjoying a good swing, among some other words/wordlets, such as mooing like a cow. He has some very clear preferences now too, like swings, slides, climbing, balls, throwing things, running away from us, chasing and petting terrorizing the cats, dancing to music, playing with a stockpot and big spoon, and hugging stuffed animals, just to name a few.

All that developmental stuff is great, but you're probably wondering how we spent RJ's birthday. As you already know from previous posts, we spent RJ's Birthday in South Carolina , and started his birthday celebration with his first haircut.

Then after lunch out at Panera, where he gnawed on a piece of baguette (he LOVES bread), we headed back to the Bryson homestead for his birthday party preparations. I baked RJ his very own organic white birthday cake, complete with organic frosting (okay, the writing icing isn't, but it's not going to kill him). The rest of the gang got an organic (box) chocolate cake, with the same icing.


The party started with pizza - each guest got to make their own personal pizza atop pizza dough that we half-baked first.

After eating the pizzas, RJ opened some presents. We had a bit of a surprise in this area. RJ tore through his Christmas presents with great excitement and aplomb. He even got in on opening other people's presents since he loved tearing paper so much. He still loves paper now, but apparently not when there is a room of people to socialize with. He showed no real interest in the opening process and instead kept walking or crawling away to hang out with his audience. It also didn't help that he was fast friends with the stuffed frog that we opened first. Apparently frog was enough for him! (Thank you Audrey, August, and Gracie!) However, I think that all his new outfits are adorable and he has been enjoying all his other new toys that he received at his party or in the mail! A BIG THANK YOU to all!

Next up was a tradition in my family where the birthday boy gets to choose one of three objects on his highchair tray. His choice is a prediction of sorts regarding his future personality. The objects are a rosary, a dollar bill or coin, and a shot glass. We also added a heart pendant this year as a symbol of love. RJ chose love, and his second choice was the money. I'll leave it up to you to decide what it all means.

Then it was finally cake time. RJ seemed to really enjoy his cake (although he might prefer chocolate since his eyes lit up when we let him try a little piece of the big cake!) and definitely needed a bath following it!


Here is RJ's First Birthday, abridged into approximately 8 minutes of video:

Daddy's First Father's Day

Last year Lance ALMOST had a Father's Day with RJ, but on June 17, 2007 RJ was still "Nugget" and we spent the day walking around San Francisco with my mom in anticipation of his arrival (Yeah, I was hoping all the walking would stimulate labor!), which would come two days later on the 19th.

This year, Lance flew in to meet us in South Carolina in time to celebrate Father's Day with RJ.

I wanted to share my appreciation (and RJ's appreciation) for a year's worth of fantastic fathering.

We love you Lance!

And yes, I realize that we've been behind on the blog...stay tuned, there will be more posts soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this video clip of RJ and Lance on Father's Day:

Thank You Teachers!

Today was RJ's last day of school until September. The pictures of him with Krishawn really show just how much he's changed during his time at the CDC - his teachers have really gotten to experience his development first hand.

While I'm really happy that I will get to spend a lot of time with him this summer, we will both really miss his teachers. These women have done a fantastic job this year and deserve a great big pat on the back.

To show his appreciation, RJ wrote his teachers a poem to accompany their end-of-the-year gift (a Bath & Body Works gift certificate). He wanted to share it with all of you too:

I've spit up on your shirt,
I've wiped it in your hair.
I've spit up on the table,
And spread it everywhere.

I've put boogies on your pants,
Because you said to share.
I know that it's disgusting,
But you didn't seem to care!

I've made you lose in poo roulette,
And clean my stinky mess.
You even wrapped my butt in cloth,
With no visible distress.

And because you kept on smiling,
Through all my messy little quirks,
I figured you could use something,
From Bath & Body Works!

So to Krishawn, Kasie, & Melody and Amanda, Ashley, & Marie: THANK YOU!!!

Thank You Mystery Gift Giver

RJ recently got a package in the mail with an adorable Steelers onesie and a plush football blankie. The return address was the manufacturers and there was no note inside.

As you can see, he's really enjoying his new toy, but doesn't know who to say "thank you" to. You can remain anonymous if you wish, we just wanted to be able to say thank you!