Jackson is 4!

My boy is four years old!  He has been so excited about his birthday coming up and would talk about all the things that he would be able to do once he was four, including doing up his car seat buckle by himself, running super duper fast, and sleeping in his own bed all night long.  Well, we're three days into 4-year-old-hood, and he's running super duper fast, but we're still working on the others.

About this four year old Jackson boy:
-He loves to draw with markers.  The majority of his day these days is spent sitting at the little table in the kitchen drawing pictures.  Good thing dad supplies us with stacks and stacks of scrap paper!  He's gotten really good at drawing people and often draws pictures of himself with his friends.  He also likes to draw rockets and planets in outer space.  And he likes to draw signs about our rules, like "No cars or space ships on the table"  or "No kids can climb erupting volcanoes!"

-He's fascinated by the human body and wants to know how everything works.  He'll say, "Tell me about how my blood goes to my heart and then through my arteries and to all my body" or he'll point to a part of his body and say, "Tell me about what is inside this part of my body" or "Can we look in a book about bodies and learn about ___."  He likes to draw pictures that show the bones and blood inside his body too.  Maybe we have a budding doctor?
-He likes likes to learn about the ocean too...coral reefs, sharks, dolphins, whales, the ocean food chain, etc.  This is probably partially inspired by the Disney Junior show "Octonauts" that he likes to watch.

-Clayton likes to do whatever Jackson is doing, but Jackson is a little less patient with it these days than he used to be.  Two of the words that we hear most frequently from Didi are "DON'T!" and "WAIT!"...he's heard them a lot from his big brother.  They still have fun together, as long as Clayton isn't taking the toy Jackson wants or drawing on his picture.
-The potty thing is going fine for the most part.  We had major regression while we were in Utah for two weeks, but he was back to normal as soon as we got home.  He's great at holding it for a looong time..the biggest thing lately is just getting him to actually go.  Sometimes he just refuses and will be dancing around for 4 or 5 hours before he finally dashes in there in a panic.

-Of course sleep has never been a strong point with this guy.  He does fine going down to bed these days, but he ends up in our bed in the middle of the night.  Every night.  Usually we don't even hear him come in and just wake up to another body in the bed (or a foot in the face).  Occasionally he'll scream and cry and just be inconsolable and not really awake, and we'll carry him in to the bathroom and stand him in front of the potty and once he pees, he calms down and goes back to sleep.

-He's excited about going to preschool in a few weeks.  He's just doing two days a week, from 9-12.  I'm sure he'll love it, but it'll be change for us to actually have something scheduled regularly.  We need to work on getting the morning routine done a little quicker.

-He likes to write and will ask me how to spell words and he'll write them.  His handwriting is pretty good and he does a good job of writing small and in a straight line.  We need to work on lower case letters...so far he really only knows upper case.
-Along with the writing, he's starting to sound out words to read a little bit.  It really has been mostly on his own...Yet another thing I need to work on with him!

-Lately he has become much more interested in Chinese.  Jack has been speaking to the boys mostly in Chinese for probably a year.  Clayton understands most of it and says some things in Chinese.  Until recently, Jackson would just get frustrated with it.  He'd tell Jack to, "Say it in English!" and he'd refuse to repeat words & phrases or to use ones he did know.  But in the past few weeks he's been really interested in it. He seems to understand more, he asks Jack how to say different things, and he repeats and uses the words & phrases on his own.  I hope he keeps it up!

-He is still --and probably always will be-- very cautious about most things.  He won't go down slides at the park by himself and stuff like that.  It can be kind of annoying but I'd rather him be this way than reckless and breaking arms all the time.

-He's a rule follower.  He will not take a step in the parking lot if he isn't holding my hand, even if I want him to.  Of course this doesn't mean he's always obedient about other things.  In fact we've been struggling with that a lot lately, but I think it's slowly getting better.

-Jackson loves to play outside with the neighbor kids, especially Emma.  They're all older than our boys but play great with them.  It's lots of fun.
-He's wearing size 4T shirts, 3T shorts, and size 9 shoes.  We'll get the weight stats at his appointment in a few weeks.
-Update with the stats as of Sept 7:

Weight: 31.5 lbs, 10th percentile

Height: 39.75 inches, 33rd percentile

BMI: 13.9, 4th percentile

He didn't do so well on the vision screening and I was quite surprised.  One eye was fine, but the other eye was not so great.  He kept either getting the shapes wrong, saying that they were too blurry, or trying to move my hand to see with both eyes.  So looks like we're off to the pediatric eye doctor!  Could my 4 year old really need glasses?!

 We sure love our Jackson boy!