Dear Oliver,
Happy birthday, buddy! We had such a nice day celebrating your birthday despite how weird the world is right now. Coronavirus is raging in full force around the planet and the world has basically been shut down for a few months now. It's been almost 2 months since you've gone to school and I've been homeschooling you and your brothers! Isn't that crazy?! I never thought I would be homeschooling all of my kids, but here I am.
Gratefully, you didn't seem to mind too much that your birthday party and baptism are going to be postponed until things normalize a little. Today, I told you that you were the king for the day and you could do whatever you wanted. You spent most of the day playing the Switch and watching TV, your dream come true. Grandma Janie took you to Target (with a mask on, of course) to pick out a birthday present for yourself. You picked legos, of course. Then you went to the Chick-fil-A drive thru.
I'm not going to lie, it's been a huge challenge to have the responsibility of teaching you and your brothers. There has been soooooooo much whining and crying when it comes to school work and it seems like you all need me at the same time. You've probably been the biggest stinker about getting your work done out of everyone. It is such a fight every single day. You're lucky that you're smart and that school comes easily to you. You're one of those kids who gets perfect grades without even having to try. I'm trying to teach you to have a good work ethic though and not just let you coast through school. You were in the language arts SEM, or gifted program at school for the first half of the year. I was so proud that you tested well enough to get in!
You used to be my best eater but over the past 6 months or so, you've gotten super picky. You've started refusing foods that you used to love. You're not just picky about WHAT you eat but HOW it's prepared. You refuse to eat leftovers of any kind, even if they're just a day old and taste great reheated. You won't have it! Butter has to be melted JUST the right amount on your bread. It can't be so warm that the butter completely melts into the bread but you also don't like it too cold and stiff. If there's a tiny corner of the turkey is hanging out of the bread, you won't eat the sandwich. You like cheese on some foods but not on others. Sometimes you like it melted and sometimes you don't. It's ridiculous! All of your picky preferences make it really hard to cook for you!
You are COMPLETELY obsessed with screens. I've never met a kid more crazy about them. You beg for them, you plead for them, you frequently say, "Mommy, I'll do ANYTHING" to earn them. If I don't know where you are, I can usually find you hiding in some corner of the house with a screen that you snuck away. We borrowed a laptop and an iPad from the school at the beginning of the coronavirus quarantine to do your schoolwork on, and they've actually become a big problem. You're on them all the time. Against my better judgment, Santa brought you a Nintendo Switch for Christmas and it has been so awful. I swear, 90% of the fights in this house are over the Switch. It drives me nuts. I frequently take it away for days or weeks at a time because I can't handle it anymore! Your favorite games to play are Luigi's Mansion 3 and Minecraft. Your favorite thing to watch on TV is gamers on YouTube playing video games. Ha ha.
You love screens but thankfully, you also love books. You love to read. You can plop yourself down on the couch and read for an hour at a time without taking a break. You stay up way later than I want you to every night reading in bed. I don't try to control what you read but let you read whatever you want. I figure it's more important for you to enjoy reading than to make you read books that will actually make you smarter. You favorite books are comic novel series like Dogman, Captain Underpants, Bad Guys, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Story Treehouse.
You are super talkative these days and love telling me the plots of shows and books. You'll follow me around the house for 15 or 20 minutes at a time going into lots of detail about whatever you're excited about. I try my best to listen and act excited, but most of the time, I realllllllly don't care about what happened in that episode of Voltron. I know it's important to you though, so I try!!!
You are super witty. Sometimes you say things that make your dad and I look at each other in disbelief and say, "Did he seriously just say that?!" The way you talk makes you sound older than you are. You use big words. You're still in speech therapy at school but I think you're almost done with it. You've made a lot of progress and hardly have problems with any of your sounds anymore. I'm so glad!
Oliver, you're such a fun guy to be around. As long as you're rested and fed, you're a happy guy with a chill personality. Being your mom is so fun! I'm so proud of the boy you are and for the person you're becoming. You always want to do the right thing and always try your hardest to be good. When I have to discipline you, you usually say, "Yeah, you're right. I should be better." You can admit when you're wrong. You love church and I know you have felt the spirit. You listen well when we do Come Follow Me and always give thoughtful answers to questions we ask. You're going to be a great missionary someday.
I'm so excited to see what you do with your life. I have no doubt that you're going to be successful and happy! I love you so much. Being your mom is a privilege that I don't feel worthy of!
Love forever and always,
Mama
8 Year Stats
Height: 52.3 inches (80th percentile)
Weight: 61.8 lbs (70th percentile)
20/20 vision
No comments:
Post a Comment