THE BIRTHDAY
We surprised Ian on his birthday with the dining room decorated with rainbow streamers and a few other decorations throughout the house. His reaction was worth all of the work to do it after bed time on Thursday night!
The streamers were long, plastic, table clothes cut into strips (pretty much along the seams where they were folded in the packaging). We hung a hula hoop (Matthew’s birthday present for Ian) around our ceiling fan, then wrapped one end of the table cloth/streamer around the hoop, and stapled the table cloth around the hoop. We stuck the other end of the streamer to the ceiling around the edge of the room with double-sided tape. Once we got the streamer done, we blew up some balloons and used string to attach them to the hula hoop. It wasn’t an overly hard thing to do but it took a lot of time and was kind of a hot, tiring, frustrating experience. LOL You definitely need two people to do it. We also periodically found streamers that had fallen down and were hanging so we kept having to pin them up. The double-sided tape didn’t seem to want to stick to our ceiling for whatever reason. Overall, it was totally worth it because it was a huge hit on Ian’s birthday and for his party.
After work, the whole family went to Olive Garden (Ian’s pick) for his birthday dinner. Afterward, we went back to our house for cake, ice cream, and presents.
Matthew had a hard time with present opening this year….
SUPER excited to get a video game!
…..and a random unrelated video that Matthew took:
Saturday night, we had Mike’s family over to celebrate with them. Ian got some really awesome presents!
Ian’s favorites were a video game…..
….solar system book, constellation night light, and…..
…..A SKATEBOARD!!!!
THE PARTY
Saturday afternoon, we had a few of Ian’s classmates over to the house for a small birthday party. I think Ian had an AWESOME time!
Ian didn’t really have any one theme he was interested in so we decorated with the colors of the rainbow:
(I used the extra pieces of plastic table cloth streamers to make a rainbow table cloth for our kitchen table. And I sorted a giant party bag of peanut M&Ms into the separate colors. LOL)
When Colin, Patrick, and Megan arrived, we jumped right into the pizza, french fries, and breadsticks!
After filling up on some yummy food, the kids moved down to the playroom and played for a while. Twister was a huge hit!
Soon it was time for cake, ice cream, and presents!
THE PEDIATRICIAN APPOINTMENT
I took Ian to his annual pediatrician visit on Monday, February 27th.
- Height: 48 1/4” (92nd percentile)
- Weight: 47lbs (63rd percentile)
- BMI: 14 (19 percentile/Healthy)
While we were there, the nurse took him for a vision screening which he passed with flying colors.
The doctor did his normal routine and asked about school, diet, and exercise but there really wasn’t much to talk about at the visit. Ian didn’t have any sick visits in the last year and is doing really well. He’s a pretty healthy, well-adjusted little boy so it was a fast check up.
Back in February, Willow Ridge had a Kindergarten and 1st Grade concert. The whole family went to see Ian’s stage debut. 🙂
Mom and I took Ian about an hour to snag good seats up from. While we waited for the festivities to begin, Ian had fun dancing on stage.
Soon the rest of the family showed up and the concert began. Ian stood on the top riser…right under the hot spotlight (foreshadowing here a bit. LOL)
Ian’s principal started the show off with a few words…
The show was a bit long and unnecessarily dramatic. Rather than just sing one song after song, the music teacher had written a story to tie them all together via an investigation by “Sherlock” and “Watson”. I think someone may have forgotten how short attention spans are in the K-1st grade range. LOL
Remember my “hot spotlight” comment?
If you can sit through the video below (it’s long, SORRY!), you’ll see how Ian handles the heat of the spotlight…..
If you think that’s bad, you’re not going to want to miss what starts at roughly 3:15 in this video:
…and continues on in this video:
At first I was pretty horrified at what Ian was doing. I mean, he’s on stage, under the stupid spotlight, and standing in front of roughly 500 parents in the audience. Gaaaah!!! Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything about it and it was just so ridiculously funny I couldn’t help but laugh with everyone else. I did (FINALLY) manage to catch his eye and give him the “WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING??!?!?!?!” look. He immediately got the hint. LOL
Afterward the concert ended, I took a few pictures of his classmates…..
….then went home to get ready for bed. 🙂
Hopefully next year’s concert features less undressing and nose picking. LOL
I love you, Mom!
Ian’s classroom celebrated the 100th day of school by pretending to be 100 years old. This is as close as we got: sneakers, khakis, plaid shirt, checked pattern tie, and a corduroy blazer. LOL
We were invited to a Reading Celebration in Ian’s classroom back in February. Ian’s teacher, Mrs. Newman, taught a lesson to the children while the parents watched. Her lesson was all about how readers use print strategies to read like they’re talking.
After explaining in detail and showing the kids how it was done, she asked her students to get their book bin and find a quiet spot to read alone. Ian got his books and than sat with Mike and I to show us how he reads aloud like he is talking.
After a while, Mrs. Newman asked all of the kids to get together with their reading partners. Each child selected a book to read to his partners. Ian’s group had a hearty round (or 10) of Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine who got to read first and Ian was the winner. LOL
After everyone had a chance to read in their groups, Mrs. Newman called all the kids to the rug and selected one child to read aloud to the rest of the class and all the parents.
It was wonderful seeing how well everyone is doing in Kindergarten!