Jack at 5 1/3

Jack is always concerned with exactly how old he is. He will state his fractional age to the closest quarter. I hesitate to tell him that we can break it down even further to thirds, sixths, twelfths. But needless to say, Jack is 5 1/3 this month.

February was very busy for us. Jack starting his Little League T-ball. Along with school, piano, and golf, he has quite a full plate. Sometimes I worry that he is over-scheduled, but he tells me that he is having fun.

He is really enjoying his piano lessons. He told me one day, "Piano is so fun. It's like a treat every week." (He added, "What I get if I finish all of my dinner is like a treat every day.") We moved our piano from the office upstairs into the playroom downstairs, and it's made a world of difference in getting him to practice. Now it's in sight and in mind, and he will randomly just start practicing whenever the mood strikes him. I no longer have to cajole him to work on his pieces. In fact, I barely supervise at all.

Another thing that I think has really helped his motivation is that I don't use the sticker chart the teacher tried to institute to keep track of his practices. Jack is definitely a child that will become too focused on external rewards rather than his own intrinsic motivation. I need to remind myself to refrain from automatically offering rewards as motivators for good behavior, because it makes it more about what he's going to get versus doing something because it's right or fun.

I haven't been as involved with Jack's golf lessons as I used to be. When he first started, Violet and I would hang out at the adjacent playground, and we could watch the lessons from afar (or up close, depending on Violet's mood). But it has become increasingly difficult to manage this, because Violet always wants to be in the mix of things. This is not exactly safe with all the swinging clubs and flying balls. Besides, it is scheduled right around the time when she would often fall asleep. So I usually end up just dropping Jack off and then driving Violet home for her nap. I get a nice 30 minute kid-free break, but I think Jack misses having us watch him. He also doesn't like the fact that he has to run across the field from the car to his class by himself. But it is so difficult getting Violet out of the car seat, carrying her across the field (because she refuses to walk by herself on this field for some reason), dropping him off, carrying her back across the field, and getting her back in the car. I keep him an eye on him through the fence to make sure that he gets there safely, but I know that he liked it better when we would go and stay with him.

We are all there, however, for his baseball practices and games. It's so fun to watch him play. I will be honest, he is not the most physically talented player on the team. Jack is pretty good at stopping the ball, but he needs a little more work hitting and throwing. I think we also need to work on having him play his position. He will often run from his spot in left field all the way over to first base, trying to wrest the ball away from his own teammate. In general, all the kids need help learning the rules of the game. Jack wasn't the only one in practice who, while running the bases, would veer off the base path to try to catch the ball.

We finally got the official schedule for the season, and it is not for the faint of heart. There are 26 games in the season. There is a game every Saturday, most of them around 8 AM, and a game every other Friday and every other Monday. The consequence of this is that there will be three games in four days every other week. On some weekends, he has a 6:15 PM Friday evening game and then an 8 AM Saturday morning game. I am seriously considering just having him sleep in his uniform on those nights.

His team's opening day was last weekend, and it was so cute watching all the little boys and (one) girl running around. His team is called the Rockies, and their uniforms are purple (which, as I have already documented, has unfortunately been replaced by yellow as his favorite color). It's funny what a proud parent moment a child's first baseball game can be. I don't know that we will go much further in Little League than T-ball. Jack has fun with it, but so far he hasn't taken to it the way that he has with golf or piano. It is such an intense time commitment that it might not be worth it for something that he isn't absolutely in love with, especially once kindergarten starts.

The activity about which he is the least enthusiastic is school. Which obviously concerns me. We LOVED his preschool teacher last year. Jack likes his teacher this year, but I don't think she's doing quite enough to keep him challenged and engaged. Last year, he never wanted to leave, would in fact beg to stay longer. This year, he always asks if today or tomorrow is a school day. If the answer is no, he tells me, "Good." I was really hoping that this last year of preschool would be a springboard for him to be excited to go to kindergarten full time next year, but it's not looking like that will be the case. Still, I know that they are keeping him safe and he is having fun with his friends. And I have to constantly remind myself that the main reason I wanted him to have an extra year in preschool is to work on his social skills and other non-academic behaviors. He is thriving in those areas, so I really need to keep my perspective.

Closer to home, Jack watched the Lion King for the first time about a month ago. As a result, he has developed quite an interest in lions and other wild cats. He seeks out pictures and stories about lions. He constantly plays with these little plastic figurines of lions that we've had for years that he never cared about before. The lion fascination has replaced his short-lived fascination with kings. I don't know what, if anything, I should read into the fact that his Bible-inspired obsession with royalty has now been replaced by a Disney-inspired obsession with lions, although in general I do prefer the cats to the kings. And, if I had to guess, I would also say that the fact that lions are yellow(-ish) is one of the reasons why it's his new favorite color.

He has been calling me "Moomy" (in addition to Mom and Mommy) for awhile. He has recently expanded that to calling me "Moomy Cuter," which I think is his way of saying that he thinks that I'm cute. He will also call me "Moomy Precious." I don't know where he comes up with these things, but I certainly appreciate the sentiment.

He has also started calling Violet "Baby Violet" again. For a long while she was "Boo-kee," and even now sometimes she is "Boo-kee Cuter." He will occasionally refer to himself in the third person, e.g., "Jack is hungry." I think this may be an unfortunate consequence of Violet's new-found interest in Elmo.

Our nighttime routine is ever evolving. We have recently reinstituted bedtime prayers. We were saying them for awhile, but it started to become one more thing that he would fight as a delaying tactic, so we stopped. Now that he is older, we have started them up again. I still sing him "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," but now he will chime in with "Moomy!" at the end of each stanza. I always walk out the door saying, "Good night, Jack. I love you. Sleep well. Sweet dreams." But he always wants to be the last to say "I love you." I'll hear him saying it through the closed door.

Sweet boy.