Ryan: 4 Years, 4 Months

Here are some of Ryan's highlights of the months:

• Playing with Cohen (aka wrestling, scaring, or tackling). He loves his brother a lot but needs some reminders about being gentle.
• Although it's been cold, there were a few warmer days where Ryan played with chalk and in the sandbox. Unfortunately, most of the snowy days have been bitterly cold, so he's been stuck inside too much.
• Sunday Ford (Sioux County Nature Conservationist) brought a real falcon to preschool. I'm sure Ryan related all the "birds of prey" facts he knows, including the entire Wild Kratts story involving Zach-bots.
• Ryan likes playing with marbles, legos, trains, and building forts. Here is the fort of pillows he made on his bed one day (picture snapped during his nap) and a picture of the fort we built after watching Treehouse Masters and realizing that our trees will never be big enough for a treehouse until he's grown up. He actually took a Sunday afternoon nap inside this fort.

• We've been memorizing one Bible verse per week this year (each verse corresponds to a letter in the alphabet and I printed out the cards and put them in a photo album we keep on our table). Ryan does a great job memorizing and also has memorized the Lord's Prayer, although I'm not sure it's KJV to say "Holla be thy name" and we usually pray to "help us to trespass against those who tresprass against us."
• Although he still forgets about the number 13 when counting, we've noticed Ryan is catching on to basic adding/subtracting concepts on his own.
• There are 5 apple slices so if I take three, you and daddy each get one.
• You said I have to take 4 bites and I already took one, so one down, three to go.
• If you have two and I have two, together we have 4.
• Ryan struggles to write letters or his name and has little interest in learning, but we haven't been pushing it much.
• We ordered the Financial Peace Jr. set including the books and Ryan has loved the books so far. I'd say they do a good job introducing concepts of saving, giving, spending, debt, work, and integrity on a 4-year-old's level because at the end, he's been able to explain the story and the main teaching concepts to us. He listened to the audio "Battle of the Chores" every night for a week! We're still working out exactly how we're going to use the commission chart but would like to start teaching money principles early!