Middle Boy

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This guy.  He is my most intense child.  I always think about writing about how he came to be and I always delete it.  1 - you don't really care and 2 - it's just too personal.

David is 4 years and 5 months old.  The impetus for this post is that he is so similar to his brother in interests ... but so very, very different in so many ways.

He is physical.  So very physical.  He has a touch bucket that has to get filled.  If he doesn't get enough touch you can really tell.  He likes to be sitting near people and touching them.  (Note this is a problem and challenge for him at school).  This is like the absolute opposite of his brother, though D has taught him affection.  I mean it's complicated.  G is affectionate, but he doesn't seek it out like D does, or instigate it.  D does.  He is cuddly and wants to touch constantly.  G likes it and participates but he is not the most likely to instigate.

So for instance, Lew travels and is gone Sunday night through Wednesday night.  The kids won't see him till Thursday morning.  D will tackle him for probably a solid hour Thursday morning.  And then he will sit next to him on the couch just touching him as often as possible.  The touch bucket has to be filled.

He is not as easily motivated as G.  G wants to do good for praise and recognition.  D is pretty certain that you're going to love him whether or not he cleans up the toys or if he sits for story time.  He's pretty sure time out isn't that bad.

He is also crazy emotional.  And says ridiculous things now.  We walked to a pizza place for dinner Sunday night and on the way home I pushed him and J in the stroller and Dad and G were running and we raced.  We lost and D says ... "Oooooh, I hate myself!"

Broke.  My.  Heart.  That word, one, is not allowed in my house.  We don't hate anything.  We have preferences, but we don't hate.  Obviously this is hard because it's in the vernacular but we try.  But we definitely don't hate ourselves!   But he says big dramatic things like that.  Where does he get this?  I am not sure.  We are a PBS household almost universally (except for Pixar and Disney).  We don't even watch most Dreamworks because they tend on the whiney, sassy side and Lord knows these kids don't need more examples of that.

Maybe it's inherent.  Because well.  You all know me.

If he doesn't get enough sleep it's crazy how badly he functions.  If he plays too much iPad it has similar results.  This is a challenge.  Because his brother is older and has more privileges in this area. But D thinks he is G, and should be allowed to do it too.

Another thing he says all the time ... "I wish I wasn't 4.  I want to be 7."

Something else ... "Mom why am I not bigger than other kids."

And that's been super hard.  We just tell him to eat all his foods so he can grow big and strong.  But then when he eats all his food he rushes upstairs to the door jam and asked to be measured.

And I will tell you I've fudged it and said he's grown a quarter of an inch just so he isn't so discouraged.  He ate all his pizza on Sunday night and the next day he said "mama I ate so much I'm 5 now!"

If only.

He cut his hair at nap time on Monday.  That was interesting.  One it was nail scissors, so shame on me for leaving those where he could get them.  I don't really care that he cut his hair so much ... but when I said we couldn't cut our own hair he looked at me like I was nuts.  It's my hair.

Touché my friend.

He likes his hair to be flat.  "Is my hair super flat mom?"  "Mom, make my hair super flat."  He wants us to put the detangler we use on sister in his hair to make it flat.  So we do.  He is the most hygienic of the boys.  He is on top of reminding us to brush teeth.

But he's stalling bedtime so not sure it's about having clean teeth.

He loves puzzles.  He does puzzles a lot.  We have always had several that G would play with if I got them out, but he didn't really get them independently.  D loves them.  He gets them out all the time.  Today he did a few upstairs all by himself.  One of them one of the harder ones.

I read an article that said kids like them because it's immediately gratifying and it's black and white; the piece fits or it doesn't.  I can see how that would appeal to him.

He is smart but he doesn't run home and say "mom guess what I learned!" like G does/did.  I have to beg him to talk and that's getting better the more we do it but it's hard.  Granted - he's 4.  It's hard to remember how 4 is.  Especially since he's really in the 3s program and I do remember it was pulling teeth to get G to talk then too.

D is social but it's different.  His best friend is G so he's different.  He has friends at school but he plays with different kids every day.  It worries me.  He and his one "good" friend have been off and on.  He comes home and says ... "N said he didn't want to be my friend today."  Now ... is this drama?  Was N just playing with something else and didn't want to play cops and robbers?  I can not imagine N saying he didn't want to be D's friend.  But that's how D interprets things.  If kids don't want to play what he wants to play the world is over and he has no friends.

What he wants most in the world is to be with G.  Thats his happy place.  He climbs into his brothers bed and Sunday night he slept in the top bunk all night.  They were both exhausted Monday.  We've implemented a sticker policy for him sleeping in his own bed.  And this is tricky because I want to encourage their relationship or nurture it but they don't sleep well together.  So it's out.

Sleep is as important as food.

He is so different but so similar and his strengths are very different.  He is empathetic and loves baby animals and babies.  He has a big heart and big feelings.

We love him so.