My little buddy is 4. He is by far our most independent child while equally being quite entertaining. It is truly a joy to just sit back and watch him play, run, or basically do anything. He's hilarious. Throughout the day I'm always nudging Chase while silently pointing to something George is doing that will undoubtedly make us chuckle. Whether he's in the corner of our yard digging holes with his trucks, acting as a human impact hammer, racing his dump truck all over the yard, seeking out roly polies, snuggling his monkey blanket whilst laying on the kitchen floor, peeing on a bush in the yard with his pants at his ankles, or allowing Eliza to put her finger up his nose with no complaint; he's a hoot and we just love him to pieces!!
This was a big year for George. Lots of growth. No so much in height (as seen in his wearing a size 2 suit in the photo above) but in some pretty great little milestones. For one, he finally decided he was brave enough to go down the slide at the pool. In the past I would have to hold his hand the whole way down and he would flip out if I ever let go. It was so fun watching him realize that at the bottom he's tall enough to stand and get back to the side of the pool by himself. His confidence went through the roof! He must have gone down that slide 30 times and completely ignored the lifeguard's whistling as he ran up the stairs. He was just too excited!
He's also agreed to wearing his puddle jumper without screaming bloody murder in the deep end of the pool. If I let go of him even a little bit at the beginning of the summer, he'd completely freak out. But by September, he decided he could do it on his own. Way to go George!!
Probably the biggest change for George this year was becoming a big brother. He is the BEST! Such a sweet little guy with Eliza. Sometimes if he can't see Liza while I'm nursing or if she's up too high on a bed he'll shout "I wanna see Wiza. I can't see eeeeewiza!!"
And if she's sleeping I've heard him tell Jack "Shh, Wiza's sweeping. Be quiet Jack."
When we bring Liza into the room George will blurt out "chickie Wiza!!" This has become Chase's nickname for her because it just stuck after hearing it so often. The last few months George has started calling her "kitty" which is the highest form of flattery coming from a boy who thinks kittens are the greatest creatures to ever walk the earth. He has the meow to prove it!
They've become such great little buddies over the last few months. Liza will ONLY snuggle with George on command. If I tell her to go snuggle George, she'll crawl over to him and lay her head on his head while saying "ahhhh." Sometimes she'll crawl on top of him and give him a full body snuggle. The other night she followed him around while he walked away and just kept snuggling him every time he stopped. She love love loves George!! There's always a big smile behind her binky whenever he comes into the room and oftentimes she'll leap out of my arms so she can give him a goodnight snuggle when I'm tucking him in bed.
Like most toddlers (and basically any child), George loves the water. He loves getting into the shower with Chase every morning or with whoever will let him in. When it rains, we go outside in pursuit of puddles for him to stomp in or ride through on his scooter. He gets such a kick out of riding through even the smallest puddles in gutters.
George and Knox
"Here comes ME!!"
I've even gotten him to like the car wash after several attempts or hearing him scream when the big blue scrubbers came to wash his windows. Now he loves the car wash and asks if we can go every time we stop for gas.
George had his first trip to the dentist this year too! He wanted to wear his skeleton pj's. With his little tush looking so cute in those, how could I tell him no?
He sat still for the most part but then had to explore all the lights and sounds around him.
The dentist is so fun!!
He's a goof ball with out even knowing it. Sometimes we prey upon his goofiness and take pictures for wedding dinner material in 20 years.
George finished up his joyschool group this year. Such a fun group of little boys to play with. This year he went to preschool twice a week at Miss Andrea's house. She was the perfect fit for him to get ready for 4 day preschool this coming fall.
His favorite friend this year was knox by a landslide! He asks to play with knox just about every day! It could be that he has an awesome garbage truck to play with or that he's just the nicest kid on the planet. Either way, George is a fan!
He also loves playing with his buddies Miles and Ryder. Sometimes they're having so much fun, they hide so a play date doesn't have to end!
But if George could choose one person to hang out with ALL the time, it would be Jack. He idolizes the guy! They're such great little buddies that I'm really glad we were able to have another sister for Sadie, otherwise I fear she would have felt pretty left out. These two do everything together. George will wait all day for Jack to get home from school so they can run around the yard pushing their dump trucks, play legos, build a race track or ride their scooters. Best buds for life these two!!
Sometimes if George doesn't want to take a nap, I'll remind him that when he wakes up, Jack will be home and for some reason, that gives him just enough hope to fall asleep for the treat that awaits when he wakes up! And sometimes if he misses Jack too much during the day, we'll scooter down to the school to have lunch with him on the patio.
He and Sadie have a really sweet relationship too. She's really good at calming him down when he's upset and will always stick up for him when I'm making him eat his vegetables or taking away his toys at the dinner table.
We love hanging out with George and especially love his snuggles! It's the best when I can still get him to fall asleep in my arms. Such a squishy little butterball. Snuggling George is one of my favorite things EVER!! Especially when he meows.
He still needs a nap every day but doesn't always get one. That can be a good and a bad thing. Good because perhaps he's fall asleep with Dad while watching ESPN and bad when he's screaming his head off at dinner because he's too tired to function. George can be pretty feisty!! He always asks Chase when he walks through the door "You wah go jump trampleen wiff me?" Dad's his other best friend too.
He's started taking after his brother and has become a real narc! Falls asleep just about anywhere!
After putting Liza down for a nap one day, I noticed it was really quiet in the house when I came out of her room. I couldn't find George anywhere. I called out his name and looked just about everywhere until I finally checked the one place I would never expect him to be. In his crib! He had crawled in there and fallen asleep all by himself. My mom tells a similar story about me when I was about his age. Smart kids know when they need to sleep....wink..wink.
When we moved to the Gordon's we put Liza in George's crib and had George sleep in a big boy bed. He was more than ready! It was also great to not have Liza in our closet anymore. He and Jack had to share a room which was annoying at first because they wouldn't go to sleep. But after a few nights, they finally figured out that Mom and Dad will stop putting you in the dark garage if you go to sleep! I love that I went in to wake them up for school and found them sleeping in the same position on their beds. He copies Jack even in his sleep!
With 2:00 church George just couldn't make it through sacrament meeting. Sometimes he would fall asleep in the car on the way there. One Sunday we realized we had forgotten to put shoes on him. That particular Sunday it didn't matter because he slept the whole 3 hour block anyway. No need for shoes if you're camped out on a pew all afternoon!
We learned the hard way to NEVER wake George up from a nap. It takes him hours to recover from such an ordeal. With his snuggles, and tenderness, comes a side of George our whole neighborhood has seen (and most definitely heard). The kid has some serious pipes!! He's got some serious attitude too for a toddler. The other day I told him to get on the sidewalk while he was riding his scooter because a "car is backing up." He turned to me and said, "it's not a car Mom, it's a truck!" We were talking about the wheels on the car and he corrected me by telling me "it's not a wheel, it's a tire!"
If I point out some sunflowers on the way home from preschool he'll say "they aren't sunflowers Mom, they're lellow flowers." I also pointed out an excavator on one of our drives and with a big exhale he replied "uggggg, I know MOM!!!
When George is having a tantrum there is NOTHING you can do to quiet him down. No hugs, kisses, bahs, threats or bribes will work. Sometimes he'll scream "NO, go away right now!" or "you're sooooo MEAN!!!" Sometimes he'll even threaten me. "you're mean Mom!! You don't get to play with my remote control helicopter!"
He still screams with his head launched back and eyes pointed to heaven. Sometimes I stick him in the garage so we don't have to hear him, but then all the neighbors do. His cries sound like he's being tortured!! I'm just waiting for CPS to knock on my door one of these days.
It's tiring being George. He has so much to learn and is taking in new information everyday! I love watching him play with his toys. He doesn't just play with them, he gets down on the floor as low as he can go and studies them. He will go underneath his helicopters and watch the propellers spin around and get underneath his garbage cans and watch them get picked up by his toy garbage truck. I've tried in vain to sit down and learn the alphabet with him but he just wants to play with his toys. I'm not worried about him being a late reader because I know how smart he is, just by watching him play. He's got it all figured out!! I love listening to him count. When he gets to 18, 19 and then 20 he'll say "twenty teen." I love it!!
He's the only one who can fly this remote control helicopter without it running into a wall or plummeting to the ground. It says 14 and up on the box, but George had it mastered in a few short hours. When he opened this gift on his birthday he made sure everyone knew it was for him. "It's a remote control helicopter......for me....it's for me!!" He was told that we would get him a helicopter but that it would be one he'd have to share with Dad. In protest he would always say "I want a remote control helicopter that I don't have to share with Dad."
He thinks he's big enough to sit in a real chair at the dinner table too. You can barely see his head peeking over the tabletop, but he won't have it any other way!!
He's a champ at going to his sibling's school parties and helping himself to their snacks and treats. We never have to worry about George being hungry because he helps himself to our pantry too. He would eat Cliff bars all day if we let him. His favorite foods these days are "cado" (avocado), Skinny Pop, chocolate milk, "daddy uttmeal" (basically oats, water and a freakish amount of brown sugar), and fig bars. These foods have sustained him throughout this year with a mom who nurses a baby and doesn't have time to make anything healthy.
George has become quite brave in the "manicure" department as well. I don't have to pin him down anymore to cut his fingernails and he actually enjoys getting his hair cut because he knows there's a lollipop at the end!
He's also been our easiest to potty train BY FAR!! Anyone compared to Jack is like a walk in the park!! George basically trained himself. I had to remind him for a few weeks, but after a while, he just figured it out and used the bathroom when he needed to. I still help him wipe and he sleeps with a diaper at night, but it was such an easy transition, I'm almost not dreading doing it all over again with Liza.
Even if we are in our front yard, George prefers peeing outside. It's so white trash and I hope our neighbors never see him peeing in our bushes. Sometimes I'll look over and he's got his pants all the way down to his feet, his round little bum exposed and just whizzing away! I think he likes seeing how far and high his stream can go. He can't do that inside!
He likes to get into the bumbo after Liza is done getting her monthly picture taken. I can't get over how HUGE he looks in there!!
But then he looks like my little baby again when he puts Bah up to his nose and sucks on his fingers. I'm not sure when I'm supposed to make him stop doing that. He loves that Bah so much it's hilarious. It's the only thing that can calm him down at times. It's his drug! The other day I was washing all three of his bah's because they were smelling pretty bad. He kept asking for them and I finally showed him where they were. He came over to the washer with me to watch me put them in the dryer. I'll never forget him discovering each one, grabbing it, giving it a quick snuggle, and then handing them over one by one to go in the dryer. He looked like he was "taking a hit" with each Bah that came out of the washer. Wet and all, he grabbed each blanket, sniffed and rubbed that nub under his nose while he sucked those two little fingers with every fiber of his being. You'll never meet a boy who loves an object more. If he's in the car and we forget to bring one, he's pretty upset at first but will resort to stealing Liza's pink one from her.
He loves dirt, trucks and bugs but especially garbage trucks, helicopters and airplanes. He's religious about heading to the curb to watch the garbage truck every Monday morning. He loved the "tiny" garbage can he could roll himself when we lived in the Gordon's house for a few months. And airplanes. He points them out along with helicopters every time he sees one in the air. Sometimes he'll ask me "can we go on an airplane in 10 minutes?' It's even better when you get to fly inside one!!
For the most part George is pretty obedient and will stop doing something if we tell him too (unless he's having a tantrum of course), but from time to time he can get into a little trouble. Like when he took Chase's razor in the shower and shaved a strip of hair off of his head.
He's not big enough to ride in a booster yet but will sometimes sneak in there and put on his own seat belt. It's so convenient that I let him stay in that seat. I think he has 5 pounds to go before he can graduate from his 5 point harness. Getting so big!
I keep a list of all the funny things the kids say on my phone. George's list is the longest. He cracks me up every day! When we were at the park he looked down at the kids below his tower and said "hello little turds." He must have heard me calling his older siblings turds from time to time. They can all be such weasels! And because I sing Baby Mine to him when I tuck him in for a nap or at night he sometimes says "hello little one when you play" to Liza. He picks up on the lyrics. If I sing "personal penguin" to him, he tell me I'm "funny and kind" the rest of the day.
He also gets his words mixed up too. I love it when I tell him there's a front loader out my window and he'll say "where is" instead of "where is it." Or if I get a sting from a fire ant he'll say "you got a ant bite you" instead of a "fire ant bite." Speaking of fire ants. It had been a while since I'd shaven my armpits. He looked at my underarms as I was waking up one morning and asked "you got ants in there?"
Now that he's 4, he thinks he's all grown up. Sometimes he won't let me come to the door with him when I drop him off for preschool. He points at the car and tells me to stand by it while he rings the doorbell. Kind of breaks my heart. And the other day he wouldn't hold my hand. We were walking along and I kept trying to grab his hand because we would soon be in a parking lot with cars. He kept telling me "not yet. You can hold my hand when we get to the road." Geez George!! What are you going to be like when you're a teenager? Will I have to drop you off down the block from school because I'm not cool enough to be seen with you? I sure hope not. I hope you'll always be my snuggle bug and crawl into bed for a morning meow and Bah molestation. I know this won't be the case, but a mother can dream can't she?
He's REALLY good on his scooter. Now that's he's figured out how to use the brake in the back, he has the confidence to go down some pretty steep hills. Sometimes he makes me nervous when he flies down the roads on our roller blade adventures. He likesnto be in front of everyone else. He will scream at Sadie from behind until she scoots over and lets him pass. I think he just wants to be near Jack. He can ride all the way to our park 2 miles away and then back to our house. Sometimes I have to help pull him when he gets tired, but he's such a trooper!
He'll still wear whatever I lay out for him. I love that I still have at least one more year before he enters the "sports clothes" stage. On a hot day I put a little tank top on him. He looked at his arms and said "just like the painters!" The wife beaters those guys wore left a great impression on him.
He's a pretty patient little dude especially with all the waiting he does while I take care of Liza. But sometimes he will get frustrated and say "you're taking for long." I'll tell him it will be just a few more minutes and he'll keep saying "it will take for long!!"
He's my blue eyed wonder and I thank my lucky stars every day that I get to be his mom. He comes with some challenges, but that big smile makes it all worth it. Love my little Georgie Porge!!
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