Noel, age four

Noel and I just compiled a list of his favorite things at age four. I typed them in the order we did them, and you can see how he came up with his own categorites toward the end. Here they are:

Food: Pizza and hamburgergers

Drink: Milk and orange juice

Toy: Pillows

Game: Castle Crashers

TV show: Max and Ruby

Movie: Wall-E

Fruit: Grapes

Vegetable: Carrots

Color: Red and blue

Restaurant: Cici's and McDonald's and Wendy's

Friends: Everybody

Book: Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present

Song: "Day Tripper", "A Hard Day's Night"

Number: 100 billion

Animal: Horse

Candy: Every candy

Cereal: Honey Crunch and Oats

Place: Tillis Park exercise trail with 14 exercises

Holiday: Everything

Color (again): Orange

Crackers: Graham crackers and Cheez-Its

Dominick's art exhibit

Our living room has become an art gallery filled with drawings inspired by the boys' favorite video game, Plants vs. Zombies. Dominick says he likes our house better now that it's a PvZ house and not to call it a gallery because the drawings are not for sale. I love them so much.

Barnyard Moosical

Since we're still getting caught up here in blogland, I would now like to share a video of Dominick's kindergarten musical, held on May 4. His participation in a kindergarten-wide program (five classes, a total of about 100 kids) in front of a gymnasium packed full of parents, siblings and other family members was nothing short of miraculous. Consider that this is the same child who, a few short years ago, freaked out at parties when "Happy Birthday" was sung. My eyes were more than a bit misty when I realized that Dom was not about to run out of the gym screaming that night. He filed in with the others, wore his goat hat, sang and did the hand movements. The next day, he told me liked it so much he wanted to do it again. Dominick has come so far, and I couldn't be prouder.

The video below shows the part of the musical that featured the goats, a song called "Gourmet Pizza Pie."

Noel's turn

Fire eraser
Cameloupe
Pick-ups (hiccups)
Guh-skito (mosquito)
Guh-poose (caboose)
Guh-Queen (Lightning McQueen)
Cow goat
Winch (witch)

I love you, but I don't like you on Sunday. (12/9/09)

That was mypyramid dot gov. (ca. 12/13/09)

I will stop Daddy's hands. I'll use hitting.
I need to sit on your face.
Do you like naked running?
My pootie hurts. Please kiss it. (12/16/09)

We didn't went to McJoklin. (12/20/09)

[Holds up a piece of turkey]: That's shaped like California! (1/8/10)

What a heck? (1/12/10)

Beam me up, Spidey! (ca. 1/14/10)

[Eating a cracker]: Hey, this looks like Tennessee! [takes bite] Now it's North Dakota! (2/6/10)

Do you have mommy milk in your pooties? (2/13/10)

My body made a very funny noise. (4/5/10)

It's a beautiful poopy day. (4/26/10)

I hate numbers. (4/27/10)

I'm going to pee on you and kill you. (6/4/10)

More from Dominick

Okay, here we go. These are in roughly chronological order. Forgive me if you may have seen some of them before.

inrevisible (invisible) It took me forever to realize why Dom said this wrong. Anyone know?

I pooped so toughly. Look how tough it is. (10/29/08)

It takes me a long time to hurry up. (11/21/08?)

Double engines are kind of annoying. (12/2/08?)

I am un-run-over-able. (1/7/09)

Noely just has pants stuck to his shirt. (1/10/09) Noel was wearing a sleeper.

A little bit teeny more bigger (1/23/09)

Dominick: Noely, why do you like signs so much?
Me: We could ask you the same question.
Dominick: Don't ask me the same question. I don't like signs. (1/26/09, as we were planning his road sign birthday party)

I am very trouvlesome. (1/29/09)

I tooted happily. (1/30/09)

wack (what crayons are made of, i.e. "I need some wack." 2/7/09)

I just like to look at cabbages. (6/3/09?)
Daddy thinks we can have worms for dinner.

Sleeping with ornaments is a pretty dangerous thing. (8/19/09?)

He's a bug and he fell apart. (8/19/09?) Hmmm, I wonder why.

Mike: Dom, what did the egg say when it found a dollar on the ground? Egg-cellent!
Dom [laughing]: Don't make me laugh too hard when I'm cracking eggs! (February 2010)

Oh, crut! (6/21/10)

Dominick on Mortality

A month ago, Dom made a bow and arrow out of sticks and string. Afterward, he told me, "I'm going to keep this until my life is over. Usually, when your life's over, you don't live anymore. When you're really old, that's what happens to ya. When you're ten years old, your life is half over."

Then last week, he said, "Robots don't have lives. We have lives that are going to be over."

Also last week, we were discussing the mosquito problem. Dom's idea? "What happens if we take the dead person and put him for the mosquitoes to bite on?" An interesting thought, I have to say. I'm not sure where all this dark subject matter is coming from. Maybe Dominick has inherited my morbid sensibilities.

More words from the mouths of babes to come. I have a stack of paper scraps where I've jotted down these little treasures. Sifting through them, I realize that Dominick no longer refers to the Golden Arches as "Old McDonald's." Sigh. At least he still says "hamburgerger." I'll be sad to see that one go.

A milestone for Dom

What's missing from this picture?

Training wheels!

Dom's pretty proud of himself. He told the lady at the sewing store that he rode his bike without training wheels, so now he gets to go to Skyzone. A little bribery never hurts, right?

The other thing Dominick tells everybody these days is that he's six and in first grade. Kindergarten, where did you go?

Big boy, big news

It appears that my diaper-washing days are about over. Noel is on day three of wearing underwear. Something clicked for him about a week ago, a year after he unexpectedly produced solid (ahem) results on the toilet. Since then, he's been quite resistant to the idea, so I gave up on him graduating from diapers early. Last week, when things finally started happening, we went to Target to pick up underwear. Noel chose Toy Story. Granted, he had a couple of accidents yesterday and one today, but I can't see a return to diapers during the day, which is a little bittersweet. He's getting so big, and I've really enjoyed our four-plus years of cloth diapering. Anybody need some Fuzzi Bunz?