A Slice of Life with Stephen

Yes, we have a 4-year-old.

And he picked out the glasses himself. With the 10 dollars he was given and told to spend at the Dollar Tree. He also got some number magnets for the fridge and some letter vinyl stickers for the sliding glass door.

Because of the distance from family, we celebrated with Ryan's family early in June, with my parents July 4th weekend, with Emily the day before his birthday, and for his actual birthday dinner had one of the kids' favorite people (Brian) over for a pizza dinner.

And because I thought it would be fun, I wanted to share a few of Stephen's more interesting moments from recent weeks ...

Thanks to Ryan, Stephen now knows a few knock-knock jokes, which he loves telling to Abby in particular. The other night, he started making up his own. They went like this:

Knock-knock
Who's there?
Banana
Banana who?
Banana rain.

Knock-knock
Who's there?
Pillow
Pillow who?
Pillow pretzel.

And he wonders why I call him "goofball" instead of "Stephen" sometimes.

He continues to love music and surprised me by knowing all the lyrics to How Deep the Father's Love for Us (which I sing to Abby before bed). I even recorded it--listen here for yourself. I really like this song--so much so that it was performed at our wedding.

He misses music class. It doesn't continue through the summer, but he will hopefully be in the 4-year-old class this fall. Last Monday he began a gym class. It's definitely not his forte, but I think it'll really help him with some of his confidence in trying new activities.


He continues to play fairly well with his little sister, Abby. Lucky for him, she's a tough girl who can handle his roughhousing. Last night he made up a new game. He would pretend that we left Abby at HEB and then we would go look for her. She loved pretending that our house was a grocery store, so she played along very well.

Though he just had a birthday, he is looking forward to his next one. He regularly tells me about his future birthday cakes. It goes like this: "And after I am 4, I think I will be 5. And on my cake I want it to say 'STEPHEN 5.' And after I am 5, I think I will be 6. And on my cake I want it to say 'STEPHEN 6.'" And on he goes ... I think we've gotten all the way to when he turns 30. But he's not the one turning 30 anytime soon. That honor belongs to his daddy.