You turned six on July 28th. You sure love your birthdays. You usually talk about them for months ahead of time and then expect lots and lots of celebrating (which is exactly what happened this year).
You are right around average for height, weight, and BMI. Your eyes still typically look brown but can show a smidgen of green in certain lighting. Your hair was light brown last winter and blonde again this summer, but it really seems as if it may have turned blonde now even at the roots. We will see come this winter. :)
You started kindergarten in July and you LOVE it. You are actually disappointed when you have school breaks because you like going so much. You are doing great with your math, writing, and reading (you actually taught yourself to read simple books over the last year!). Still, I'd say your favorite part of the school day is probably recess or PE, because you love being active and you love playing with friends.
If I had to describe your personality, I would say the best words to describe you would be happy, joyful, goofy, excited, outgoing, determined, social, and energetic. You always look forward to every day, finding something in it that you expect to be fun or exciting. Every night during prayers you say, "Dear God, thank you for today and thank you that it was so much fun...and please let us have a fun day tomorrow." You cry easily when you have expectations and they aren't met, but you get over it quickly and are grinning again before long. Really, nothing keeps you down; you are always making lemonade out of lemons.
You crave interaction with others and really don't play alone well. In fact, being told to play alone is one of the few things that will quickly send you into tears. You usually don't mind being the center of attention or having others focused on you. You love to talk, talk, talk and you love being with friends. You love to act goofy and make silly faces and talk in a baby voice (which drives us a bit batty at times). You are incredibly competitive and would prefer to turn everything into a competition if possible. Sports are your favorite, basically all of them. Your favorite teams are Notre Dame, Panthers, and NC State, just like a year ago, and your sports jerseys are still your favorite shirts. You currently play soccer in the spring and fall and swim on the swim team in the summer, but you also love to practice basketball in the house or play football in the backyard. You also do great throwing a frisbee (no shocker there for anyone who knows your daddy). You pretty much always prefer to be active, but will sometimes settle down to read a book or draw.
You get distracted SO easily, and your daddy and I have gotten to the point where we just laugh about it because it's so "you". You get distracted while getting dressed, while walking places, while doing chores, while brushing your teeth, while going to the bathroom, while eating. We frequently have to remind you to take another bite during dinner (because you're so busy talking) or to keep cleaning up your toys (because you've noticed something and have started talking about that thing to anyone who will listen). We often hear you singing in the bathroom and have to remind you to stay focused if we're in any sort of rush. We bought you a watch that beeps every day when you have ten minutes left for lunch at school, in an attempt to help you finish your food on time. Still, most days you come home and your dessert is still in your lunch box, and you tell us it's because you "ran out of time".
Your favorite toys right now are hot wheels, bey blades, and anything sports-related. You love to play games still, and it's one of my favorite things to do with you. You also still love the iPad and video games, and you and Krew have been playing the Wii or X-box quite a bit.
Krew is still your best friend, and it makes me so incredibly grateful. You two do everything together and honestly very rarely ask for a friend to come over because you have each other. You really support each other through your different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses and are quite the team. It makes my heart sooooo happy.
Over the last year, you successfully reintroduced chicken, peanuts, and tree nuts and got to keep those in your diet. We also tried reintroducing pork and green beans, but those foods failed and you had your second worse scope results ever. We tried green beans again after you healed, but you became symptomatic again and it's now been many months of lingering mild symptoms. You struggle with stomach pain and esophagus spasms, and occasionally food gets stuck in your throat. We increased your medication dose (per your allergist's suggestion) to see if it would help with the symptoms, and it did seem to, but still you haven't been symptom-free long enough to reintroduce another food. We are planning to look into trying a new GI doctor to see if we can get a new viewpoint and some fresh advice. Other than your EoE, some nightime leg pains, and cyclic vomiting syndrome (which has unfortunately happened three times since your 5-year-old blog post), you really are a healthy kid. You don't get stomach bugs and rarely get colds or flu-like sicknesses. We are very thankful for that.
I mean this with love, but I must say that you have always been incredibly clumsy child. Fortunately, over the last few months, you seem to finally be figuring out your body a little more. You are still frequently covered in bruises and scrapes, but you seem to be falling and slamming into things a little less. Just in the last couple of weeks, your daddy and I have noticed that you seem much more in control of your body on the soccer field. And I actually don't remember the last time that you tripped while running down the sidewalk, which is such a huge relief.
One of your favorite ways to start sentences when explaining something is by saying, "Well, exactly...", which is super cute. I was shocked to look back at a video from a year ago and realize that it was sometime over the last 12 months that you learned to say your Rs and Ls. I didn't even remember that it was a struggle for you! But you definitely have them down pat now. Which is a good thing, because you absolutely love to sing and have now joined a nearby Glee Club, where you learn songs with a few other children and sometimes perform for the local farmers' market. You are also now taking piano lessons and really seem to have an interest in music.
One of our biggest struggles with you is still bedtime every night. Due to your EoE and maybe some growing pains, you seem to feel pain and discomfort a lot at nighttime. Probably five out of seven nights you come out of your room complaining that you are experiencing pain in your stomach, throat, or legs. On the nights you aren't experiencing pain, you come up with some other ridiculous reason for getting out of bed (you can't get your covers on the right way, you feel an itch, you are thinking about something, you have a question, etc.). It is a very rare night that we put you to bed and don't see your face at the top of the stairs within the next hour, voicing a concern. Sometimes your daddy and I have a hard time controlling our tempers when you come out of your room three times in 30 minutes. But then, you've been this way ever since we can remember, so I'm not sure why we expect otherwise. I really don't remember a time when you didn't get out of bed at night. You rarely fall asleep before 10pm, and sometimes it's even 10:30 or 11 depending on the night.
Along the lines of bedtime, there is something you do at night when saying goodnight that I never want to forget. It is one of my favorite things that you do right now. You always hug me tight around the neck, wait for me to kiss your cheek, then turn your little face and put a kiss in the center of my cheek. Every. Single. Night. And oh my gosh how it melts my heart.
Alright Roy Boy, I think that sums you up pretty well at age 6. We love you SO much!!
Love,
Mommy (and Daddy)