Happy 7th Birthday to Nick!

How can it be that my first-born is 7 years old today? It seems like just yesterday I was at my baby shower wondering what the heck was happening (my water broke and I had no clue). This has been a trying and rewarding seven years (hopefully for both of us). In many ways Nick is the guinea pig of the family, helping us figure out as we go what works and what doesn’t.

Since today was a school day (and we had already celebrated his birthday twice) we opted for a “special” breakfast of cake batter pancakes with special icing and sprinkles on top. Nick humored me and said he liked them, but he only ate two which was a dead giveaway that he really wasn’t all the keen on them. Oh well, Ben loved them and gobbled them up over the next couple of days. I really need to learn to stick with what we know works. Special treats never seem to go over too well in this house.

So here is a little about Nick at 7:

• He is in first grade and doing quite well. His reading skills are coming along, despite some concerns early on and his spelling skills are far exceeding our expectations. His school does a nongraded spelling so kids are working at the level they need, not the level of the rest of their class. One of his classmates is in a group with 3rd and 4th graders. Nick is still at a first grade level, but has skipped several lists/weeks based on his assessment scores. And his weekly tests have been nearly perfect! He is very much like his father so math comes easy for him. He flies through his nightly homework with very little to no help at all. Socially, I’m not sure where he stands. He didn’t want a birthday party with friends and hasn’t been invited to many parties this year, but he seems happy to go to school and his teacher didn’t mention anything so I am going to go with everything is just fine there, too.
• At home, he loves to be with Ben. Sometimes the feeling is mutual, sometimes it isn’t. He also loves to pick on Zander. I cherish those few blessed moments when the two of them get along enough to give me a few minutes of peace and quiet.
• Here are a list of favorites, straight from the horse’s mouth: food – pizza; movie – Power Rangers; television show – Spongebob; book – Where the Sidewalk Ends and Mammoth Academy; toy – LEGOS; place to go – Chuck E. Cheese.
• He wants to be a pilot when he grows up.
• He weighs 74 pounds and is 53 inches/4 feet 4 inches tall. Just tall enough to ride almost every roller coaster in Florida (at least twice).
• He is not very good at entertaining himself, but is an angel when someone is entertaining him. He loves playing games with us. Right now his favorites are UNO, Racko, Mancala, Mille Borne and Skip Bo.
• He has lost six teeth (four on the bottom and two on the top).
• And I want to say how much he loves to sit on my lap and cuddle with me (even though it is very hard given he is 74 pounds) but I was told I can’t put that on the Internet. Oops.