Well....we knew it would happen but, we didn't think it would be this fast. Cal turned 4 this year and he seems like such a big boy already. We let him choose the type of party & theme - gymnastics at the West Austin Youth Assoc and Star Wars. He has never even seen the movie all the way through but a few glimpses here and there was enough. He's hooked. So we invited a million kids and a blast - buckets full of party favors, pizza, Star Wars cake, juice boxes and this year's "Special Guest" was a Stormtrooper. I always thought they'd be taller. Seriously. It was awesome and they all loved it - especially Cal who said to mommy as soon as the Trooper left - "it wasn't a Trooper, it was just daddy." The thrill is gone, I guess. He loves gymnastics even though we haven't taken official lessons in a year - he is still flipping and flopping and climbing everywhere so we are starting again this fall through a group that comes to their school. So I will probably max out our blog capacity with all the photos we took, but it was a super fun party.
We are super proud of our budding genius and planning to start him on time next year for Kindergarten unless an actual teacher tells us he's not ready. He is quite the creative storyteller (and I don't mean liar - we frequently catch him telling Griffin bedtime stories at night that are quite complicated with multiple plot twists). He is obsessed with Super Heroes and can tell you about some mom & dad have never even heard of. We think BFF Brady is partly responsible for this since he started going it before we had ever discussed them at home in any form. He loves to read books, run fast, jump high, and build build BUILD things. He can entertain himself for hours with a set of legos or a bunch of sticks & grass. He has a fantastic vocabulary and is also a very empathetic child - a fantastic big brother who loves to help Griffin and take care of him (and kick him in the head as soon as he stops crying from whatever the last thing was). He is eating ton right now but squarely in the bottom quartile of weight for his age. We're thrilled that his height is in the 50th at just over 40 inches! He loves to learn and to share things he has learned with us. He's very talkative with us but pretty shy around strangers or people he doesn't know that well. He still plans to marry Charlotte Pounds (one of his friends at school). He played soccer all summer in another league and really did well. He's little but fast and we're thinking that's enough for a college scholarship - no? Well, it's potential, anyway. His favorite food is Chik-fil-A nuggets (God bless him!) but his taste buds are waking up and he recently decided he likes shrimp and macadamia nuts. I could go on, but those are the basics. He loves to read stories from the Children's Bible at night (really!) and lives for story time in the bed - he is very specific about the kind of story he wants and who should be in it (usually 6-7 Super Heros, a racecar and a firetruck and all his friends from school). It actually tests mommy's creativity to try to fulfill these requests. He's very orderly and great at cleaning up - we're thinking there's an engineer in there somewhere dying to get out. Time will tell. For now we have a 4 year old big brother who can put on his own clothes, brush his teeth, get his own Yogurt Tube out of the fridge and is fully potty trained (at least by day). We'll worry about night later - he has made it 2x when mom & dad took him for a late night potty on their way to bed. So we'll keep trying. We can't wait to see what he has in store for us next.