Dear William (53 months)

Dear William,

Today you are 53 months old!

We started the month out with a trip to the City Museum.

There were a lot of slides for you to slide down and tubes for you to crawl through.

 

Your dad went around in a big wheel:

 

Just before Christmas, we made a big announcement to everybody:

(It will be a while before we leave though).

You had to drop out of pre-school, because now that I am no longer an employee of Wash U, you can’t go there.  They had a pajama party for you on your last day.

You said you were very excited about not going to school anymore and instead having time at home to play with mama.  But I think really, you were excited about Christmas.

We had a lot of Christmas celebrations this year.  Our first Christmas took place when Grandma Barb and Grandpa Bruce came to visit.

You opened all your presents in the time it took me to go to the kitchen and make a pot of coffee.  I was kind of sad about missing that, but Daddy got a few pictures. 

 

Some of your favorite gifts included a Spiderman hat and super-hero toys from Mama and Daddy.

 

You also really enjoy playing with a super-hero lego set that Daddy got for you:

 

After our first Christmas celebration was over, we took a family trip to the Magic House.

Then we left to go to Grama Nan and Paw Paw’s.  Your cousins Logan and Mackenna were there.  On Christmas Eve, you helped Uncle Mark track Santa on the iPad.

On Christmas morning, you had fun opening presents and playing with your cousins.

After Christmas was over, we had to say a sad goodbye to Aunt Michelle, Uncle Mark, and cousins Logan and Mackenna.  They are moving to Ireland, and it will be a while before we see them again.

When we got back to St. Louis, we went on a few hikes.

Sometimes you weren’t so happy about hiking.

“I don’t like hiking.” — William

 

We spent New Year’s Eve with Cara and John and some other friends.  You got to hang out with a bunch of kids, including your BFF Ashlynn.

Just after New Year’s, we had a Polar Vortex come through.  A polar vortex is pretty much as awful as it sounds.  On January 5th and 6th, we got around a foot of snow and the windchill dropped to -33.  It stayed bitterly cold for many days afterwards.  It was too cold for us even to go outside and sled.  The roads were impassible.  Everybody was snowed in for as long as it lasted. I was very glad that I'd had the wherewithal to buy groceries on the Friday before this happened.

Here is a video your dad took of the snow as it began in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday and continued for the rest of the day.

We are just now melting out of the polar vortex and trying to create a new normal in our lives. At first you were thrilled to stay at home and play with mommy all day, but now you are starting to miss the Apollo room at school and all your friends.  I feel so sad about that, William.  I am trying my best to come up with fun things for us to do.

Today, we built a snowman out of the last of the snow.  He didn’t last long; it got up to 57 degrees:

 

Then we made a dinosaur habitat out of some things around the house and some twigs and leaves we found outside.

You put a pteranodon in the “tree.”  I love it.

 

Our dino habitat had a volcano and lake, too.

I wonder what we will do tomorrow?  I guess I’d better get to working on that.

Love,

Mama