Ezra - 4 years

Ezra turned 4 today! We celebrated with presents and donuts this morning, followed by a dinosaur themed party at a local park with four of the families we like to hang out with.

This little dude is full of questions these days. "Why" rules the day. Some parents might find that annoying, but luckily for Ezra, he has parents who love to know how things work and don't make rules we can't justify! So we are really enjoying him lately. 

Things Ezra likes to learn about include liquids and solids, boats, dinosaurs, letters, numbers, animals, and identifying trees. He likes to make cookies, squish his hands in things, swim, build, climb, and play a guessing game in which he thinks of an animal to be and I ask him questions about its features until I guess what he is. He also likes to ask what letter words start with. We didn't make it to the Carolina coast this summer, but we've spent some time at Lake Michigan, and he LOVES the lake.

Ezra's favorite shows are Dinosaur Train and a YouTube channel called Coilbook that features animated trains and other toys teaching about letters, numbers, colors, etc. His favorite color (as of today) is blue. Ezra loves music and has been requesting "Step by Step" by John McCutcheon lately (since our Labor Day folk music dance/clean-up party).

 Favorite foods are basically anything salty or sweet - candy, ice cream bars, cookies, chocolate shakes, fries, pepperoni, sausage. Really his one redeeming favorite food is shrimp Pad Thai. His adventuresome eating habits disappeared around his third birthday and are nowhere to be found, despite plenty of things being offered. He does like most fruit and broccoli.

Sometimes I like to do developmental psychology tests on Ezra. He can conserve volume (pour water from a short wide glass to a tall thin one and he knows it's the same amount) but he does not yet have theory of mind (still asks me to identify things in his hand that he can see but I clearly cannot see).

Three was ROUGH over here. Lots of defiance and not much concern about consequences. I hear that's pretty normal. It's also incredibly frustrating. He seems to be moving into a very emotional stage and practicing his negotiating skills now, which pushes our buttons much less than the last stage, so let's hope this one sticks for a while.

Everyone who knew Ross as a little boy says Ezra is uncannily like his daddy. Ross even remembers being Ezra's age and doing many of the same things Ezra does! As a result, he's very good at parenting him, and they have a lot of fun together.

And to finish up, just some basics... Ezra hasn't had his 4 year checkup yet, but he's about 36lb, not sure how tall, wearing 4T or 5T shirts and 4T pants and a size 10 shoe.