I'm Four!

At preschool


Looking for birds and insects at the Botanic Gardens


A sample of what he produces at the writing table at school

Linus tells everyone that he is four. The cutest instance of this took place at the Botanic Gardens. He insisted on opening the door for us, but he was really struggling with it. He refused help from me or any of the adults lining up behind us. He finally got it open, let me through, and then insisted on holding it open for all of the people behind us. As they walked through he told them, "I'm four!" The last woman through said, "You most certainly are!"

I took him in for his four-year appointment with the pediatrician. They surprised us right off the bat by asking for a urine sample. That went fine; he thought it was interesting. When the nurse asked if I had any questions for the doctor, Linus told her he wanted to ask the doctor if dogs get pinkeye. She made a note of it on his chart and I was chuckling on the inside. The situation became more and more humorous. For the first time the doctor basically interacted solely with Linus. The doctor drew two lines on a piece of paper and held it out horizontally for Linus to identify which line was longer. After Linus pointed to the longer line, the doctor took the paper back and turned it around a bunch of times and then presented it vertically to Linus. He asked him which line was longer now. Linus looked at the lines, then at the doctor, and then back to the lines. Then he looked the doctor straight in the face and said, "As I told you before, this line is longer. These are the same lines." It was really hard not to laugh. The doctor told me at the end that Linus' awareness of his thought process and ability to verbalize it is at the level of a 3rd grader. I didn't know what to say, so I just smiled.

Never mind what grade level he is at. I just know that he is constantly slurping up information and by nightfall my brain is completely drained. Four-year-olds sure do ask a lot of questions!

Linus' Fourth Birthday

Linus told his grandfather on the phone today that "it is fun and easy turning four." During a previous conversation he told me, "I'm proud to be four." I've been hearing a lot of:

I'm not scared of that because I'm four.
I can lift that because I'm four.
I'm learning to read because I'm four.
I can cut things with a knife because I'm four.

Oh, the joys of being four! He likes to be very silly and works at it. He asked, "Are you macaroni-ing your head up, mama?" After saying something like that he'll ask us if it was funny. He has also become interested in jokes and riddles, but doesn't quite "get" them. Here is one of his riddles: Why did the frog hop away? Because he was scared of a bear. Another time he took it a step further and said, "Let's do jokes about riddles."

He was looking out the front window waiting for Matthew to come home from work. He told me, "I'm waiting for the rough-house parent to come home." He likes roughhousing with Matthew in the evening.

He deeply wishes for dinosaurs to still be alive and for Sesame Street and Thomas the Tank Engine characters to be real.

I was getting ready in the morning and Linus said a word I didn't understand. I had him repeat it a few times and he got impatient with me. He exclaimed, "Brachiation! It means monkeys swinging from tree to tree!" Oh, my; I'm going to have a hard time keeping up with him. I can see the writing on the wall.

I was making a Pin the Tail on the Donkey game for his birthday party and he suggested I put hooves on the donkey's feet. After I did so he said, "I thought the hooves would be more attractive." His friend, Noah, gave him a birdhouse with paints for decorating it. He hasn't painted it yet, but has mentioned several times that it will be "very attractive to the birds."

He and Matthew were pretending to be woodland animals and I heard Linus call out this rhyme that he made up on the spot:
I'm an antler moose
And I cannot stay;
I'm going off
To hunt my prey.

(Cute, even though moose aren't predators.)

For his party I had the kids go on a dinosaur egg hunt in the backyard with spotted eggs filled with little plastic dinosaurs. Then they played Pin the Tail on the Donkey. None of them had played it before, so I had Matthew demonstrate how it goes. They thought it was really funny when I tied the blindfold on him and he really played it up as he bumbled around to pin on the tail. Then we served blueberry cake and blueberry ice cream. He received very thoughtful gifts from his friends, including a magnifying glass that has a snake for a handle, the bird house project with a bird book, and a large coloring book.

We had him open his presents from family in the morning, so by five he was feeling worn out. I pulled out my last present for him, which was a stuffed stegosaurus. I had saved it for when he'd be feeling played-out and might like a new friend to snuggle.