Graham is 4!

Our “baby” is 4-years-old today! He has grown up so much in last year. In fact, it seems like he has grown up so much just since we moved to Virginia at the end of last summer. He definitely took his time reaching some of his milestones, but he is so much more independent now than he was just a few months ago (potty trained, dressing himself, picking out his own clothes, washing his own hands using a very tall stool, washing himself in the shower, putting on his own socks and shoes, and even opening the refrigerator and opening his own yogurt cup!).

It is hard to believe that Alexis, Jack, and Faith were six weeks away from their 4th birthday when Graham was born. At the time, we thought of them as being so grown up already. Now that Graham is the same age, though, he seems so young to us. We laugh at ourselves in hindsight since we thought waiting until our triplets were “older” would help us handle the stress of having a 4th child. Now I am shocked that we dealt with three kids that were this age when we had a newborn. It makes me realize why I was overwhelmed since I barely have the patience to deal with one 4-year-old right now. It’s great that he is becoming so independent, but it makes us late for everything, and he literally won’t let me help at all or he starts the process over.  

I think most families experience a similar adjustment in their perspective of a child’s age between the oldest and the youngest. We feel like our firstborn is so grown up when they turn another year older, but the youngest is always “the baby.” I believe part of the reason this happens is that we want our oldest to grow up quickly, but we want to savor every age with our youngest. I think it also has to do with realizing that each kid does things in his or her own timing, so we didn’t push Graham as much as we did our older kids. It probably also has to do with being busy with our older three kids as sometimes it’s just simpler to do things for a young child than to teach them something or wait for them to do it.

Easter Sunday...all dressed up to watch church from our computer thanks to COVID

Even though he wants to do everything himself, he says he doesn't want to get any bigger. He fits on my lap quite comfortably still.

Regardless, whether we want to admit it or not, our baby isn’t much of a baby anymore. Here are some things about Graham at age 4: 

Height: 40 inches, which means he grew 3 inches in the last year

Weight: 30.5 lbs, which means he gained 3.5 lbs in the last year

Size Clothes: He is wearing 4T shirts and some 4T pants (3T are starting to get short). He is in shoe size 9. Honestly, he’s small / average size for his age, but since Jack was very small, Graham is wearing some of the clothes that Jack wore in Kindergarten (including his shoes that he wore as part of his school uniform). That seems crazy to me. 

Night Sleep: Graham is a great sleeper, once he falls asleep. The boys still share a room, and some nights it is very hard to get them to calm down and go to sleep. He goes to bed between 8:30 and 9:00 (with the older kids), but some nights he doesn’t fall asleep until 10. He wakes up between 8:00 and 9:00 (or later if I let him continue to sleep!). Having a child that sleeps in is so strange to me since our older three were always up by 7:00 when they were younger. The best part is that most mornings I actually wake up to an alarm instead of a child, which means I can wake up a bit and get myself ready before talking to anyone. This feels like a gift after so many years of starting my day to a child calling my name. 

Naps: Graham hasn’t napped since the occasional car naps he took before his 3rd birthday. I was surprised to hear that other kids on his tee ball team still take naps since it’s been so long since he’s taken a nap. Honestly, it has been fine that he doesn’t nap since we are homeschooling this year and it would be hard to convince him to take a nap when the other kids are playing. He doesn’t seem like he needs naps anyway, especially since he is able to sleep in.

Resting on the couch with his favorite stuffed animal (he calls it Fawala, but he's really trying to say Koala)

Food: Graham seems to have completely outgrown his dairy intolerance (which was very severe when he was a baby). Some of his favorite foods now are pizza, quesadillas, pesto pasta, and yogurt! He continues to love chicken nuggets, Z bars, applesauce pouches, and all fruit. He is starting to eat more vegetables like broccoli, carrots (cooked and raw), and peas.

Milestones: 

Potty Trained: Graham is potty trained during the day! I attempted to train him many times, but he was very stubborn and didn’t want to do it. In October we took a few days off of homeschool to focus on potty training and he did it! I think the fact that he was 3 1/2 really helped since he truly understood what he should be doing. 

Open Cup: He was resistant to drinking from an open cup for a long time, but I bought him a “Tiny Cup” that is meant for babies and that helped him become more confident drinking from an open cup. Now he can use a regular plastic cup without a problem. 

Gaining Independence: He dresses and undresses himself, he can put on his own socks and shoes, he can put on his own jacket and zip it (and don’t try to help him!), and he washes his own hands. He can walk down the stairs, but for some he still prefers to go down backwards. Honestly, he can do most things for himself these days and he does not want me to help him. This is only a problem when we are in a hurry.

He loves to ride this bike and his training wheels bike around our culdesac...at his own pace.

Thankfully he still lets me push him in the strollers most days that I want to go on a walk. On this particular day he looked quite comfortable, but he won't fit much longer!

He excitedly picked this bouquet of dandelions for Grandma when my parents came to visit. He even decorated the jar 100% by himself.

Our Backyard: One of the biggest hurdles he overcame recently was going up the ladder and playing on the deck of the play structure in our backyard. He has been very scared of heights, especially when there are holes or gaps that he can see through to the ground. Jack thought of the idea of putting a blanket on the deck of the play structure so that he couldn’t see the ground. It took some convincing to get him up there initially, but since that day he has climbed up and down numerous times without any help. In fact, he loves playing up there with the big kids.

He has courageously conquered the backyard play structure

Playgrounds: When I started writing this blog post a couple of weeks ago, Graham had not gone onto a play structure at a park in over a year. He was terrified, so we really didn’t go to many parks because it wasn’t fun for him. Two weeks ago, his tee ball game was canceled at the last minute. We were already at the school and many other kids were playing on the playground, so we stayed to play too. My parents were in town and my mom was walking around with Graham. At first, he just sat on a bench under the play structure. Then, he decided to climb to the top of the play structure, but he was crawling around on his hands and knees as he was nervous. The next time I looked at him he was walking on the play structure! Before I knew it, he was going down the slide, running around the play structure, climbing back up every ladder, and going down every slide. I was shocked! No one asked him to try playing on the play structure that night. We think he saw the other kids his age from his team playing, and he realized that it must be fun and that he was big enough to do it too! Now he has excitedly played on several playgrounds around town and he LOVES it. This makes us all so happy. Alexis, Jack, and Faith were so excited for him.

Speech: Graham talks constantly, and with a lot of detail. He does continue to have some articulation issues, though, especially for the G and K sounds (he substitutes D and T). He also drops the S at the beginning of words and has a lateral lisp. When there is a lot that he wants to say he often stutters, and during his recent speech evaluation I was told that the stutter (called Disfluency) may never go away. Time will tell if this is truly the case, as we feel like he could be stuttering because his vocabulary is exploding, and it’s hard for him to get the words out when he is excited. Although I have been trying to get him services through the local school system, it has taken months to work through the process (and at this rate he won’t start therapy until the fall), so I recently enrolled him in private speech therapy. He is already making progress with articulation, which is exciting, especially since it is all being done virtually through Zoom.

Imagination: Graham has a great imagination. Our triplets have always had each other to play with so, although they are imaginative, their games always involve each other. Graham, on the other hand, spends part of his time playing with his older siblings and part of his time playing on his own. He LOVES to dress up. Our older kids would put on a costume for a little while and then get tired of it quickly. Graham will wear the same costume for days on end. For several months he was constantly changing characters and he would get really upset if we called him by the “wrong” name. So, I would have to say, “Peter Parker, would you like a snack?” because if I called him Graham he would throw a fit. It was an exhausting stage since I had trouble keeping his characters straight, especially when I was just trying to get things done. He is also good at playing trucks or with other toys by himself, but it does get upset if we “interrupt” his play by asking him questions since he gets so into it. 

He picked out this outfit, packed his backpack, and grabbed his toolbox. He is ready for anything.

Working on the stool with sound effects

He asked me to add a string to his sunglasses

He came up with this outfit himself and he wore it for two days straight - paper mustache and all

Costumes galore

The boys have been wanting suits and ties like Dad wears to work. When someone posted the blazer for Jack and the tuxedo for Graham to the local Buy Nothing group that I'm a part of on FB, I jumped on it. The boys were thrilled and they've spent hours walking around the house dressed up.

Preschool: Our older kids went to preschool when they were 3. Although we planned to have Graham go to preschool, COVID and our move across the country made this difficult. I thought I could just teach him some things when we did homeschool, but it was hard to find the time and he wasn’t very cooperative. I needed to find a way to occupy him and to teach him some things, so in November I bought a homeschool preschool curriculum and my mom went through the lessons with Graham on FaceTime for a few months (December through the end of February). Graham looked forward to his calls with Grandma four mornings a week (at least on the days he wasn’t extra grumpy). She would spend 20 minutes with him reading, singing songs, and talking about letters, numbers, colors, or whatever else was part of the curriculum for the day. When my parents went on an extended camping trip in March, I took over as his teacher, and he has continued to enjoy it. Next fall he is enrolled at a local preschool two mornings a week, and I think it will be really good for him to interact with other kids his age and be away from me regularly for the first time in his life.

Graham's drawinings of people and some letters he knows. He spends a lot of time drawing on the whiteboard while I do homeschool with the big kids.

Preschool activity. He cut it all out and glued it on the paper completely by himself.

Tee Ball: When Graham heard us talking to Jack about signing up for Little League for the first time, he decided that he wanted to try out Tee Ball. We were surprised that he made the cut-off by a few months since he is so young, but since he continued to be excited about it, we signed him up. We could save a little money on signing him up if we volunteered, so Micah said he would do it (we figured one of us would have to be there during practice anyway). For some reason we didn’t realize this would mean being an actual Tee Ball coach…so when the email came from another parent saying we were co-coaches I was a bit surprised. Unfortunately (for me), Micah’s schedule doesn’t allow him to commit to an early practice time every week, so I ended up doing the co-coaching. Although it’s laughable that I’m a coach since I don’t know much about baseball, it has been somewhat fun to get involved in something in the community. Graham has surprised us by understanding the game better than many of the other kids out there. He actually pays attention and follows directions, which is basically all that is required at this age ;). He seems to be having fun, and it’s definitely been good for him to be around other kids his age since he hasn’t been exposed to many kids with COVID. His favorite thing about Tee Ball is wearing the hat that is part of the uniform.

Playing catch in the backyard

Annual Birthday Questions

What is your name? Graham Andrew Howard

How old are you turning? (Held up 4 fingers)

When is your birthday? Chincoteague!

How old is Daddy? (Held up 10 fingers)

How old is Mommy? (Held up 9 fingers)

What is your favorite color? A lot of colors! Strawberry one (red) and monster one (green)

What is your favorite food? Meatballs, chicken nuggets, and ketchup

Who is your best friend? Max and Peregrine (he actually asked me whose houses I used to drop him off at when I did a childcare swap with friends pre-COVID)

Favorite song? Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Favorite animal? Koala (stuffed animal which he says "fawala")

What are you scared of? Ghosts

What makes you happy? Koala, mommy, and daddy

Where is your favorite place to go? (He couldn't come up with an answer....we don't go many places with COVID)

What is your favorite toy? Koala

What do you want to be when you grow up? An Engineer

What is Mommy’s favorite thing to do? Hold hands together

What is Daddy’s favorite thing to do? Hold hands

We wanted to take a family trip this spring, and when we started looking at dates the week of Graham's birthday worked the best for us. We decided to go to Chincoteague, VA as it's only a little over 3 hours away, it's on the ocean, and we learned about the wild ponies that live in nearby Assateague Island in a book I read aloud to the kids called "Misty of Chincoteauge." It has been fun to go away for Graham's birthday as it makes it feel even more special to everyone. Yesterday Graham (and the big kids) got to see the ocean for the first time! We also saw wild ponies on Assateague Island. We are staying in a cottage we found through Air BnB and it's right on Chincoteague Bay, which means Micah has been able to try our new SUP from our backyard! There has been some slight changes to the backyard since the photos were taken for Air BnB, and we were happily surprised to find a giant patch of sand in the yard that the kids spent hours playing in. 

View from the master bedroom of the backyard and bay

Running from the waves at the Atlantic Ocean on Assateague Island

We hiked 1.5 miles each way in hopes of seeing wild ponies. Luckily the trail ended at the Atlantic Ocean, so it was worth the walk. Graham walked most of it.

Enjoying their first ever full bottles of Sprite in our Air BnB

Obligatory tourist photo