A Whole Hand

December 18, 2004

Five years later

Paul is five! Now to catch up on his recent happenings.

Last summer with Dad home Paul learned to ride a two-wheeler (in seriously like 2 hours) and re-discovered his love of biking. Every day he begged to go on rides.

Last fall he took a football class. He learned how to throw and catch and played a flag football game. He earned his first little trophy.

Paul is a full-fledged Ute fan. At church someone said, "Go Cougs!" to him and he looked at him in all seriousness and said, "I'm a Ute." He told his preschool class that the girls in his family are Cougs and the boys are Utes. Then he asked each kid what they were (most didn't know). He likes going to games with Dad.
He's taken an interest in drawing and writing (finally). Almost every morning he draws a picture of our family and writes our names on it. The other day it was quiet and I found the boys at the table coloring. (Gasp!) I'm proud that he is finally trying, otherwise Kindergarten is not going to be much fun.
Paul is still a great worker. He can always be counted on to work in the garden, rake leaves, shovel snow, vacuum, or set the table. One day he shut himself in his room and then said he had a surprise for us. He cleaned his entire room himself!
Paul is a wonderful big brother. He (usually) plays well with Sam and he adores his sister and loves to talk to her and help take care of her. This makes him mom's big helper too.

Paul has many friends. Apparently he's very popular with the girls at school. Sometimes he says they fight over him. We thought he was pretty oblivious to the whole thing (being a boy), but then he told us who he is going to marry. I think the drama is subsiding now and we just hope he can be a good friend to everyone.
Paul's a thinker and asks great questions. Once he asked, "What do babies think about?" He's a little overly concerned about death and the resurrection. He's still very interested in bodies and how they work with some new interest in skeletons. He knows a lot about dinosaurs (thanks to PBS' Dinosaur Train). He has an awesome vocabulary and loves to learn new words like inaudible and perturbed. He also likes to memorize Dr. Suess books which the boys read at bedtime.
We just love our Paul and all the fun and energy he brings to our family.