Kiah is 5!

It’s hard to believe that my Kiah-man is 5 years old. Seriously, where has the time gone? I am starting to sound more and more like those older ladies at the store who tell you that “the days are long but the years are short”. But seriously- my middle man is FIVE! We are rapidly moving out of the baby/toddler stage and this kid will be more than ready to be in Kindergarten next year!

Kiah came into the world in an unpredictable way, as I wasn’t sure I was even in labor until about an hour before he was born. After he was born, I was thrown into a deep pit of post partum anxiety and months of struggling to get the kid to gain any sort of weight. We weighed him multiple times a day and spend SO, SO many hours pumping, feeding and trying all.the.things to get him onto the growth charts. And yet every so often I catch a glimpse of him tearing around our house at 5 years old and am reminded that labels and diagnoses and seasons are not permanent, and sometimes we can defy the odds. Because this little man who was diagnosed failure to thrive? He’s thriving.

This kid has so much energy…he literally bounces around. He climbs the walls and tears around and we joke that he has springs in his legs. He’s fairly athletic and LOVES to be outside climbing, running, digging and riding his bike. But he’s also my kiddo who is most likely to be quiet and need some of his own space for a time.

He’s my early riser and I don’t think he’s EVER slept past 7am a day in his life. He’s artistic and athletic and honestly quite mature for his age when he is around his peers at school.

He loves his siblings, but gets along better with his older sister. They are absolutely inseparable. There is one day a week when she goes to school and the boys are home, and on that day there is a lot more noise, fighting and bickering in my house. And yet, the two boys are also buddies and can found playing and working together quite often now that they are both getting a little older. Sibling dynamics fascinate me.

This year he has really started to become a beginning reader. He can’t read yet, but he has found a joy in learning his letters and has lately taken a big interest in writing. He wants to know how to spell certain words, but the funny thing is that he doesn’t know how to form all the letters. So if I spell a word for him, I also have to stop and tell him how to write each letter. We decided to keep him in Pre-K for an “extra” year so next year when he goes into Kindergarten he will be nearly 6.

For his birthday, we had school all day so I felt bad that I hardly even saw him until 4:30pm. We had baked some cookies for his class and I’m thankful to his teacher for making the day somewhat special for him, letting him be line leader and pick the book to read at story time. I had a meeting after school that went long, so the poor buddy was also in aftercare. Once we got home, Memaw made dinner and we had a small party with Memaw and Pepaw and Miss Corinne. I was worried that he would be disappointed, but he was THRILLED with his party and his gifts. We got him tickets to see Monster Jam later this month, so the gifts were minimal but this kid is just so sweet and easy to please. We all went around at dinner and said our favorite things about Kiah and he was just GLOWING.

The only gift I got Kiah was a pack of small cars. I was afraid he would be underwhelmed by this gift, so we ended up hiding the cars all around the back yard so that he could find them! He had a blast looking for them and proudly lined them all up and counted them and then we all had some races with them. It was so fun to be reminded that kids don’t care about big and expensive, they are so happy and content to be showered with love and attention and praise and support of their interests.