My Baby Is Four

Today was Orin's fourth birthday. I can't believe how fast four years have gone. It's even crazier to think how much has changed in all of our lives in four years. He's getting so big. When he's asleep at night and I look at him he looks so huge. Damien was saying a few days ago that he's turning into a real person. Yes, he's been a real person for a long time now, but he changing. He has his own thoughts, dreams and fears. He's starting to realize that the world is not a perfect place. And as parents, we're realizing that we can't protect him from every difficulty that will come his way. We knew it would come, but when you have a happy little toddler who is obvious of all that's around him and just enjoys life you feel like it will always be that way. We've had a couple of lessons in this recently. As I've written before, Orin has realized he is vulnerable to the world. He is small (which he says often, especially if you tell him what a big boy he is). It's hard to see your child worry and not be able to completely calm his fears as you have in the past. This week we experienced another part of his growing up. At Orin's preschool, the kids move up to the next class right after their birthday. So on Monday, Orin will be moving up to the 4 year old class. He told us this week and that doesn't want to go and wants to stay with the three year old's. We asked him why, of course. He told us there is a 4 year old boy named Joshua who doesn't like him and is mean to him. He also said that none of the 4 year old's like him. This was so sad to hear. Not because kids don't like him. There will alwayss be kids that don't like him. But his innocence is lost in this area. He feels the pain of not fitting in. I know you can't shield your kids from this, but I do wish we could! To protect them from the hurt and difficulty in this world. But this is just another reminder that our kids are in God's hands. Their physical and emotional well-being.

We had a fun day today. I still don't think Orin gets why a birthday is supposed to be so exciting. As we counted down the days since last week, we'd go through the days of the week and then say, "And what happens Friday?" And he's say, "Movie Night!" We'd say, "No, your birthday!" I guess in his mind, movie night was still more exciting than a birthday. But he was exciting about making cupcakes and opening a few gifts. Today was a whirlwind and just flew by. I wish I would have made more of an effort to have "quality" time with him. Things are just crazy right now. But I think he had nice day. For dinner he wanted his favorite - Kraft Mac & Cheese. We made cupcakes (which was a blast) but he didn't even eat a cupcake for desert. But he had eaten enough batter while cooking to make up for that! Orin it totally into robots right now, so we got Wall-E. He loved it when we first saw it a few months ago.


The two following pictures are from April 2nd (the day before Orin's birthday.) The year Orin was born, I was having contractions that night, about 10 minutes apart. It was 15 days before my due date so I was trying to convince myself that there was no way I was in labor. We went out to dinner at Don Pablo's. I totally stuffed myself! By the end of the dinner I was getting really uncomfortable. We decided to go strait home and start timing the contractions. It ended up that I was in labor, and a couple hours later all of that huge dinner came back to haunt me. Anyway, we decided to go to eat there on April 2nd to reminisce. It was fun. On the way to the restaurant the kids saw the Chick-Fil-A right next store and got so excited because they thought we were going there. So after dinner we walked over. They played in the play area and we shared milkshakes.