Thomas at 4
Thomas is a little smarty pants. He has had a natural love of letters and numbers for years. Last year I posted videos of him playing with magnetic letters and putting them in alphabetical order (see link at the end of this post). This year his reading skills have really taken off. He learned all the kindergarten sight words before his big sister, Ila. When Ila started bringing books home from kindergarten, Thomas would read over her shoulder, often saying the words before Ila. We had to start giving him a turn to read the books after Ila reads them. We give each of the children a turn to read a verse of scriptures each night and Thomas is reading most of the words in his verse independently. He is constantly shocking me by reading words that I didn’t know he knew. Sometimes his reading ability causes me problems. Like when I told him we were going to Winco and he got mad because the store says “Winco Foods” on the outside. “YOU SAID WE WERE GOING TO WINCO, NOT WINCO FOODS!” (he actually had a tantrum about this a few times, I’ve had to learn to call it Winco Foods instead of just Winco). He has started reading all the names of the cereals we eat and sometimes corrects me when I call the cereal by our little nick-name for it instead of it’s actual name (ie: ball cereal = Reeses’ Puffs). One day I discovered that he can spell all of his siblings names except Charlotte.
(Here is a video of him reading. This was the first time he had ever played with these story-making magnets).
And here you can see the creation process:
Thomas loves to play games. He learned how to play Rummikub this year and absolutely loves it. I usually play several games of Rummikub with him every Sunday. He refers to the happy face tiles as “bad guys.” At first he was a little bit of a pill when playing because he didn’t like people to rearrange his creations.
Thomas is very vocal about his love of “cars and trucks, and airplanes and trains, and rockets and things that go.” His favorite vehicle is probably a tow truck. He also loves to play with Legos.
Lately Thomas has been carrying around a Beanie Baby frog who he calls “Lumpy Bumpy.” He takes the frog everywhere we go and sleeps with it at night.
Thomas is still good friends with Ian, though they’ve spent less time together this last year for reasons outside of their control.
Thomas has a new best friend in the neighborhood whose name is Sean. Thomas and Sean always have a blast together. We’ve started having playdates with Sean twice a week. On Monday Sean comes over from about 9:30-2:30 and on Fridays Thomas goes to Sean’s house from about 9:30-3:00. Thomas’s favorite days of the week are what we call “Sean Days.” The picture below is of Thomas, Ian, and Sean deciding what to do about a spider.
Thomas loves to play on the computer. He is able to login on his own with a PIN and navigate to whatever he wants to play.
Thomas’s favorite show is still Daniel Tiger. He has memorized all the little songs and will sing them periodically during the day at relevant moments. Like when he helps me unload the dishwasher he’ll sing a Daniel Tiger song about helping. “You can be a big helper, in your family. . .”
The foods Thomas loves the most are cheese sandwiches, pepperoni sandwiches, pizza lunchables, and ice cream. Ironically, he almost never asks me for ice cream, but he always asks his grandparents for ice cream whenever he goes over to their houses. He is particularly excited about the birthday cake ice cream that he has picked out for his birthday.
He still loves alphabet books, but his favorite books are Mo Willems books. We love the Elephant and Piggie series and the Pigeon series. Thomas likes to make up his own titles for Pigeon books like “Don’t let the Pigeon eat my lunch.”
Thomas is generally a very loving boy. He gives me lots of hugs and tells me how much he loves me. Since he’s my only kid not in school this year, he’s been my sidekick wherever I go and I love him to pieces.
Here is what I wrote about him last year when he turned 3.