Five Years Old!

My baby turned five years old six days ago. Six months ago he was in a phase of always saying he was "only four." Thankfully over the past few months he went from "only four" to "four and a half" and now "five." Over the past six months he also became totally independent with going to the bathroom. Yahoo! He had gone almost a year without using a nebulizer, and then on his birthday I called the Pediatrician and asked for Albuterol. For the past week he's been getting on average three breathing treatments a day - Pulmicort two times and Albuterol three times a day. The third treatment is usually around 1:00AM, which isn't exactly our favorite time to give him a treatment, but his coughing has been the worst at night. Several times his coughing spells have been so bad that he has vomited all over the place. I admit it has been discouraging as I thought he had outgrown this, but at least this is now the exception rather than the norm.

The past six months were certainly not the easiest as far as parenting Oliver. He went through a phase of being VERY clingy to me and not wanting me to be out of his eyesight. This made things like dropping him off at his Sunday School class and the kids' choir at church problematic as well as soccer practices, soccer games, homeschool gym class, etc. This hasn't been an issue the past few weeks, and I'm hoping that means he's out of that phase. In two days he'll have his first flag football practice, which means he won't be doing soccer this fall. We actually didn't have him participate in the performance of GPS at our church in May because of his poor behavior. Hoping he'll be well behaved in the two GPS performances at the Alliance Church in two weeks.

Turning five is a big deal because it means he's done with Cubbies and will be entering Sparks next month. He has started sitting with us in the worship service. He's done much better with that than I anticipated. He'll be playing Upward basketball in a few months for the first time ever.

He'll also be starting Kindergarten in a couple of weeks! Academically he's much farther behind compared to where his siblings were at this age. That's partially due to me spending less time teaching him, and that's partially due to his immaturity. I doubt I'd actually send him to school this fall if I wasn't homeschooling him, but since we're homeschooling I am declaring him to be in Kindergarten. Hopefully he'll make great strides academically over the next year!

When we first were planning his birthday party, I assumed it would be the "usual" guest list which is the five of us plus his three grandparents. My dad reminded me that the Towfighis would be in the US, and when I asked my sister she said yes they'd all come to his party. We were planning on a pool party, but a couple of days before the party I noticed that the weather forecast included rain and a high temperature of about 68 degrees. Not exactly good weather for a pool party, and certainly not normal weather for August 7.

So then the plans change to go bowling. I signed my three kids and seven of Yvonne's kids up for the Kids Bowl Free program. I knew that my dad, Paul, and Joe all really love to go bowling. Then on the morning of Oliver's birthday my dad called to say that he wasn't feeling well enough to drive up and back to our house that day considering he was going to Virginia the next morning. So we scrapped the bowling plans. I had purchased the traditional gallon of chocolate milk that I buy for each birthday, and I also had gotten a big container of

goldfish that I buy once a year for Oliver's birthday, but in the midst of the chaos of fifteen people sleeping in our house and many of us having a stomach bug, I didn't get Oliver his birthday donuts early enough to have them for breakfast on his birthday (which is our tradition). I usually buy 6 donuts. I ended up buying 18 donuts later that day, and we had them for breakfast on August 8. I did have a present for him to open (a Mickey lunch bag with two long sleeve Mickey shirts inside), and Paul's dad had brought his gift up and assembled it the day before his birthday (spinning see saw). Oliver got to see it on Monday morning even though it was raining. I felt like a failure as a mom that day because I didn't have his donuts, because we didn't do anything special that day, and because I forgot to buy his birthday shirt. The shirt was the only thing that bothered him. I ordered one from Target that night, and it arrived on Thursday. I also felt guilty that I hadn't written his birthday post. I usually put a lot of thought and time into their annual birthday posts and write them a few days ahead of time.

I also usually post a picture and such on Facebook on each of my children's birthdays, and I didn't do that either. I hardly touched my laptop over the past almost two weeks. Fewer than 20 people usually read the vast majority of my posts, but usually more than 100 read the birthday posts that I share on Facebook. My dad's fiancé posted a greeting to Oliver on my Facebook page on his birthday, and again I felt like a total failure as a mom that this woman who met him once was more on the ball than his own mother. We did swim at the pool two days later when it was warmer out and not raining, but the water temperature had dropped so much that Oliver only stayed in the pool a few minutes. We mostly went that day because some of the Towfighis wanted to swim and really wanted to eat pizza. The swimming photo shown above was from a few days before his birthday. The only swimming photo I from August 9 was of Micah swimming. The good news is that Oliver is not materialistic at all, and I don't think he feels slighted. Whew.

Memories of Oliver's pregnancy and delivery and NICU stay are firmly etched in my mind, and I know he's a miracle. I'm very grateful for Oliver Elliot Kennedy, and I look forward to seeing how he will learn and grow over the coming year! So sorry I'm six days late. Hopefully the saying better late than never is true in this instance. Now maybe tomorrow I'll get around to doing his interview.