When the Dream Never Dies

As usual, the time is flying by and our little boy is 4! We recently went to see Dr. Brooks for his well child appointment. He weighed 37.6 pounds(65%) and was 42 inches tall(88%). His heart murmur is no longer present, so that's an answer to prayers! He wears 4T/5T clothes and size 10 1/2 shoes. August of last year was the last time Caden took a nap, so now he just does "rest time" in his room in the afternoon. Some days I don't think there's a lot of "resting" going on, but he stays in his room :) Most days he does his Leap Start or Leap Frog Reader. He loves both of them and they are great tools for learning. We plan to do Preschool at home this fall and look forward to teaching him even more things.

Caden loves-

Reading- We go to the Basehor Library weekly for Story Time with Mr. Patrick and check out a new stack of books each time. He runs non-stop, unless he's reading. Then he'll sit for a long time. He and his daddy recently read all 5 books of the Rush Revere historical series. That's over 500 pages in about 6 weeks time. Our library offered a challenge to read 1000 book before Kindergarten. Caden was the first one to reach the goal!

Rides- He surprised us when we went to World's of Fun last fall by having no fear and absolutely loving all the rides in Planet Snoopy. "The faster the better" is Caden's motto, which scares me! We went to Silver Dollar City this month with my family and he was so excited to try all their rides, too. Daddy introduced him to go-karts while we were in Branson. He was loving that as well.

Backseat Driving- He reads us the Speed Limit signs as we drive and checks our current speed against the signs. We get in trouble if both hands aren't on the steering wheel, he informs us where to park and makes sure we are going the correct direction. So very helpful! Especially on road trips :)

Sundays- I love it that he gets so excited when he realizes it's Sunday. He loves to go to church and I pray that never changes. He loves his class and his teacher. In June he will move to the 4's and 5's class. This is a big deal and he talks about it a lot. :)

Learning- He is doing a great job of writing his uppercase letters and recently has been practicing his lowercase letters. He's very interested in reading signs and sounding out words. He can already read a lot of words. Numbers are also interesting to him. He counts to 100 by ones and tens and we work on basic addition and subtraction as we play. Mazes and dot to dot books are his favorites right now. At the beginning of the year we started memorizing a new verse every 1-2 week, one for each letter of the alphabet. For Christmas we bought him a CD that I listened to growing up that teaches the verses in song. Of course, it was a cassette tape back then, but I still remember the songs and wanted to share that with him.

Music- He started piano lessons earlier this year with my mom. She loves passing on her love of music to him. She lets him practice until he loses interest. I think the record is 8 minutes :) I was in their basement listening in on one of his lessons. She was encouraging him to look at the music book so he could see which notes to play. He responded that he'd rather hang upside down with his tongue out. I guess that's what happens when you try to teach a 3 year old boy how to play the piano! He definitely has an ear for music and recognizes songs so easily after he hears them.

Sports- He still loves playing baseball. I love to watch him pitch and hit. We got him Royals tickets for his birthday and are excited to take him to his first game. When it's basketball season, he loves to watch the Jayhawks. Josh Jackson was his favorite player this year and we all enjoyed watching March Madness games. He filled out a bracket and joined in on the competition.

Caden does NOT love band-aids, water rides, lotion or haircuts.

We took a trip earlier in May and marked Arkansas off his list of states visited. It was state #9. We went to Fayetteville & Eureka Springs before meeting up with my family in Branson for the weekend. This fall we have trip planned to Colorado for my birthday. He plans to climb a mountain :)

Last year I printed off a birthday interview to see how he'd answer. I thought it would be fun to ask the same questions again this year.

1. What is your name?

Caden Garrett Hancock

2. How old are you?

Four

3. What is your favorite color?

Green

4. What is something that you are really good at?

Coloring, writing, driving the Escalade at BawBaw & GiGi's and the dump truck at Papa & Memo's.

5. What do you want your job to be when you grow up?

A teenager

6. What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy?

Play with the water table

7. What is your favorite thing to do with Mommy?

Read books

8. What is your favorite toy?

magnetic book and water table

9. What is your favorite book?

Rush Revere books

10. Do you have a favorite song?

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (He and Mitch recently read Mary Poppins)

And yes, I knew how to spell that! Mrs. Buehler taught us how in 3rd grade :)

11. What is your favorite thing to eat?

He gave a very detailed answer specific to each meal :)

Breakfast-cereal

Lunch-cheese slices

Dinner-corn on the cob and hamburgers

12. What is your favorite dessert?

13. What is your favorite thing to do outside?

play in the mud

14. Where is your favorite place to go?

Rainbow Showroom to play on the pirate ship

We had a fun weekend of celebrating his birthday. I'll post a few pictures of that and other events from this month. Hopefully I'll get his yearly video done soon, also.

Fayetteville, AR

Riding rides with BawBaw in Silver Dollar City

Silver Dollar City Family Picture

Go Kart Competition!

He was excited to ride with Daddy and made sure we knew they were in 1st place!

Mother's Day Breakast at The Farmhouse

Birthday Time!

Aunt Shoosh helped me make the cake he chose on Pinterest :)

We had friends and family join us at the Pavilion at Basehor Park on the 20th for the celebration.

It stopped raining for the party, but there were plenty of mud puddles!

Caden's grandparents came over for dinner, cake, ice cream and presents. He kinda liked being the center of attention and having all 4 of them there spoiling him :)

PaPa and Memo

BawBaw and GiGi

On his actual birthday we had fun pancakes then went to church and he took birthday cupcakes to class. His Sunday School teacher shares a birthday with him, so they had a special time. Then we had a picnic lunch in the car and went to Crown Center to the Coterie for Elephant and Piggie's, "We Are In A Play."

He ate every pancake shown here, except one!

He chose Fritz's for lunch after the play.

Then we went home for birthday ice cream and presents from us.

4 Year Photo Shoot

And just like that...he's 4!

Happy Birthday, Caden! We sure do love being your mommy and daddy!

Well, we have a three year old. As always, it's hard to believe that he's growing up so fast. The last year has been so much fun. I feel like I'm talking to an adult sometimes with some of the conversations we have. He is so funny, loves to learn and is such an encourager. We continue to go story time at the library each week and check out a stack of books. He can't wait for Daddy to get home and read all 10-15 of them. I'm not sure which one of them loves it more. Recently he's been checking out a few books on Presidents. He read one on Harry S Truman. We were standing in line at Walmart Customer Service to return something and he says, "Look, it's Harry S Truman!" It was actually Sam Walton. That made me laugh!

We went to the doctor for his 3 year well child check this week. He weighs 33 pounds(65%) and is 38 inches tall(68%). He is wearing size 3T and just got new size 9 1/2 shoes for his birthday. His heart murmur was still present at the appointment. It is very faint and they feel confident it is an innocent murmur. Otherwise he got a great report. He went to the dentist last week and had his first actual cleaning and another round of fluoride. His upper molars still haven't erupted. Somehow he got the idea that daily 2 hours are optional. Who told him that? He still naps most days, but when he doesn't he'll still sleep 12 hours at night, so that's nice. He has been potty trained for 3 months, minus a few accidents.

We had such a fun time celebrating his birthday. He loves the Royals and baseball. We thought maybe we should start with a T Bones game to see if he'd even stay in his seat and watch the game. May 19th was Opening Day for the T Bones. We went to dinner at T Rex then walked to the game. He did really well and we even had to sit through some light rain. A bag of kettle corn kept him occupied for a while, but he made it to the end of the game.

On his actual birthday, we had a party at the park with our family and friends. We served brunch and had about 30 people join us. The weather was perfect and the kids had so much fun playing. The theme was Thomas the Train. He is very much into trains right now and that was his first choice for a party theme. He wanted Thomas and Victor to both be on his cake. Aunt "Shoosh" Shannon helped us make a Thomas cake and had several trains chugging around it. He asked for several trains for his birthday that he picked on Amazon. He looked through Pinterest with me to chose a cake design, also. He has an opinion about most everything. He talks in his sleep most nights and is quite the dreamer. I'm afraid he gets the crazy dreaming part from me:) A lot of the time, he talks in his sleep about trains. Although, a couple weeks ago he woke me up at 3:30 am to ask what the name of the pizza place was that we went to several months ago with his cousins. Crazy kid!

Here are some of my favorites from the last 3 months.

My first flower of the season :)

Some friends from church invited us to go to the zoo with them. He was so excited to ride the train!

Great Grandma Mary Lu reading him his new books on Easter

What a great helper!

These 2 love to play pirates together. That is Caden's "pirate face"

March Madness at Power and Light. RCJH :) Love those blue eyes!

Very proud of his sucker plant from story time at the library

Easter goofball!

Easter Sunday morning at church

Handsome!

Oh the giggles:)

Using his golf cart to pick up the weeds Daddy was digging up in the yard. Such a creative thinker!

Go Royals!

Big stuff drinking his Starbucks water!

Having fun in the bouncy house at the Crawfish Boil at church

We took a day trip to Parkville and Weston. This was taken at Cafe de Amis in Parkville. It's a really good French restaurant that we'd been to several years ago and wanted to eat at again.