William at 5

Height - 43.25", Weight - 40lbs

He has surprised me lately with his ability to learn new songs - both the words and tune. Hes actually got a good little voice and will often sing along with me in the car, or whenever I sing at home. I really think its so cute! Both kids have been obsessed with the movie Moana lately. We watch it at least 3 times a week. I broke down and made a cd of the Moana soundtrack, for the kids to listen to in the car, and he already knew all of the words and tunes to sing along with all of the songs. I was suitably impressed!

He is totally enamored with his little brother and talks to him and wants to hold him all the time. He tells me how he will share his toys with him and teach Daniel cool tricks and how to build lego vehicles. Its very sweet that hes so excited to be a big brother again.

Michael and I both have been drilling into him that in order to get good at something, he has to have patience and practice a lot. He has finally taken that to heart the last couple of months, and has had a much better attitude about everything from walking further distances, riding his bike, playing games and learning to read. He now tells me that he is going to practice whatever it is that day, so that he gets good at it and is better or stronger than he was before. Its a good attitude to have throughout life, so its good hes getting an early start at adopting it!

He has been such a physical guy this past year. Hes rides his 16" bike with no training wheels with ease, has mastered a two wheel razor scooter effortlessly, can do the monkey bars with ease, can climb just about anything, loves to jump and is the fastest little runner I've ever seen. He likes to stage races with other kids and then leaves them in the dust (we've had to have talks about how its not nice to boast). He is this scrawny little string bean that is all muscle. He takes his shirt off and you can see every muscle imaginable - especially the abdominal muscles. I guess constant climbing for a year will do that to ya! He loves to wrestle too and wrestles his dad and grandpa, any chance he gets.

We've been working really hard on learning to treat others with respect and kindness. He is not always the best at that and so really focusing on that has been making a huge difference this past year, with not only how he treats Nora, but how he treats all of his friends. He told me the other day that, "I'm going to be kind today and treat everyone nicely and if you ask me to do something, I will do it!" He really does try very hard and I am very glad to see continual improvements!

I recently taught him to play tic tac toe and he has been a huge fan. Getting him to learn the rules took a bit of effort, and I am still working on getting him to focus on trying to block my moves, rather than just winning. He gets agitated if he loses too often, and so I try to help him by pointing out whenever I have two in a row and am about to get a third, so that he can learn to block my moves. It took a while, but he can now identify when I am about to get 3 in a row and block me - but only when I ask him if I am about to win or not first. Baby steps. He also seems to think that when I win a few times in a row with one symbol - lets say 'x'- that the X must be good luck now, and he will request to switch to X, only to find that he loses just as often as when he was the O player. Hes sharp and in time will no doubt learn the game. Its good for developing logic and strategy though!

For the longest time he just could not wrap his head around numbers. Letters he got early on, and he was always good at counting, but now he is suddenly interested in math and is doing some pretty impressive mental math lately. He will be quietly thinking for a few minutes, and then tell me, "mom, 5 and 10 is 15!" or "10 and 10 is 20!" or he will say things like, "when Daniel is 7, I will be 12!" or "we are on 85th street and need to get to 91st street, thats 6 more blocks!" He has also been writing numbers on sheets of paper and writing his own little equations. Yesterday he grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote: 900+30+40. I asked him if he wanted to know what all of that added together would equal, and he declined :)

I vividly remember driving in the car when I was pregnant with William. I was totally hormonal, and had the thought that one day this baby inside of me was going to be five years old and ready to go to school. I started bawling at the thought (it so funny to remember that). So these past five years have just flown by all in all! Of course he won't he going to kindergarten this year, but he has accomplished so much this year! When I see pictures of him last year and think about the things he was doing, hes just made leaps and bounds in physicality (climbing, running and jumping!), academic learning (reading and math), the ability to emotionally relate (he now gets along better with nearly everyone), and his overall creativity (hes so good at legos and art!). It just astounds me how much hes grown! I am so proud of my big, sweet guy!