Thursday, August 26, 2010

4 Years

Matthew mar 2 011

My sweet boy,

Where have the last 4 years gone?  Sometimes I look at you and I am startled to see you looking like a kid instead of that chubby little laughing baby.  I feel like you are still brand new – and every day I’m thankful that we have you.  I don’t think a single day has gone by where I haven’t been amazed to realize you are really here, after all those years of praying and waiting for you.  You are such a blessing, and your name, which means “Gift from God” is a perfect fit for how we feel.

matthew february 2008 025 (18 mos. old – the sun was shining through your window and captured your profile perfectly on the wall – look at all that curly hair!)

Well, you really are here, and you really are going to be 4 years old this week.  You are such an interesting little guy, and there are so many things I never want to forget about you at this age…

You make noise from morning till night.  If you aren’t asking (hard!) questions about how things work or what something means, you are either singing, saying nonsense words and cracking yourself up, humming, or simply making various noises with your mouth.  You blow raspberries on just about anyone and laugh because it sounds like a “toot”.  What a boy.  You give your silence-loving mama a real patience workout.

You are a clown and love to make people laugh.  You tell off-the-wall jokes in your “stage voice” (about an octave lower than your normal voice) and no one really gets them, but you get the laughs and that’s all that really matters.  You still like to pretend you are a robot and have to “recharge your head” in the mornings.  You call your hands your “Crazy Little Things” and they do crazy little things for sure… recently I found a couple of cuts in a pair of your shorts and I asked you if you had cut them with your scissors.  You said, “My crazy little things did it.  I kept telling them to stop, but they just kept on cutting until I finally took the scissors away.”  Whew – what a windjammer, as your daddy would say!aug 2010 092

You are baby-obsessed (is it something in the water we drink?  I think we are all baby-obsessed) and have started taking care of a little stuffed bear – putting him to bed, being so gentle with him, talking to him in a sweet little voice, and even feeding him his “baby ba-ba”. :) 

You love to fly like a bird or a superhero, depending on your mood.  And we’ve had more than one trip to the emergency room because of this.  You must stop climbing on the furniture and jumping (sorry, flying) across the room.  I really mean it this time.

Your favorite word is “hanky”.  Why, oh why, is this the word you say all day long?  Daddy comes home and you say, “Hi Daddy Hanky-head!” (or Hanky-legs, or whatever else you come up with).  You yell “hanky” over and over at the top of your lungs in Target and your poor mama starts looking for a hole in the ground to crawl into.  The cashier says, “hi” to you and you say, “hanky!”  Sometimes while you are playing alone I hear you singing, “Hanky Doodle went to town, riding on a hanky…”.  Good grief.  aug 2010 091

You are also a thinker.  You got a double dose of this trait from Daddy and me.  But I think you could out-think both of us anytime.  You think about how the car works, and you are obsessed with the gas gauge.  You tell us if we have “half a tank”, a “quarter of a tank”, or need to fill up soon.  Once, when the clock in the living room was pointing straight up at noon, you said “Look, it’s half a tank full!”   You are also obsessed with batteries.  You think about why metal conducts electricity but plastic won’t (Seriously?  Can’t just knowing it’s that way be enough?).  You wonder if there’s a lion in our woods just waiting to come out and poke a hole in your inflatable pool.  You think just maybe the deer that really do come will think your pool is a real shark (it’s shaped like a shark) and will be afraid to come near Daddy’s tomatoes and he won’t have to spray them with the smelly stuff anymore.  Think, think, think.

You make me tired.  But even more, you make me happy. :)matthew 069(4 month old baby feet – so sweet!)

You are loving and affectionate when the mood strikes you, and thankfully it does fairly often.  You love to give kisses and hugs and you say, “Mommy, I love you” in a serious little voice that makes my heart fill with joy.  Sometimes you blow kisses and then tell us to open our mouths so it can go all the way down to our hearts. 

My favorite time of day is bedtime, and not only because then it will be quiet, but because you turn into my baby again and still want me to rock you in the rocking chair for a few minutes.  I love the feel of your head on my shoulder and your hair on my cheek, and all 40 pounds of you strung out over me with legs and arms seemingly everywhere.  That poor wooden rocking chair creaks and groans. :)  But still I won’t stop as long as you want to cuddle with me because I know soon it won’t be this way any more, and I’ll miss it so much.  I love you, baby boy.  And I’m so very, very proud of you.

Love,

Mama 

8 comments:

  1. yay!! Happy Birthday!! What a sweet post!

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  2. Such a sweet post - happy birthday to your little boy!

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  3. This is a beautiful post. Happy Birthday!!

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  4. Soo sweet. I laughed out loud at the crazy little things.

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  5. Oh my goodness, this post had me in tears - there's so much mama love oozing out of it! The 'hanky' bit made me giggle - what a cutie!

    Happy birthday, M!!

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  6. That was beautiful Nicole, very teary and beautiful. :) Happy 4th Birthday too!

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  7. I almost teared up reading this - what a beautiful post! Happy birthday to M, "all boy all the time" :)

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