Jonathan - Three to Four

Shortly after turning three, Jon "graduated" from the early intervention speech program.  

Much to our amazement, his speech evaluations had him performing at the average to above average level for everything!  This is the child that had a vocabulary of only about 20 words six months ago and was diagnosed with a life lasting disability less than a year ago! 
 Not willing to let go of the help and worried he would slide backwards without the speech therapy, I rallied for continued services.  He was temporarily accepted into a public school preschool program three mornings a week.  That only lasted a month before they decided that his speech skills were too advanced compared to his classmates and they were afraid that he would actually regress if he interacted with them.  It was a long time before I would feel comfortable and think of him as "normal".

In December of that year Jon had an ear infection and was put on amoxicillin.  In a matter of a couple days he had broken out in hives all over his body and face...a sure sign of allergy.  Unfortunately, later, the same thing would happen with Zithromax which left him with few options for antibiotics.


Most of Jon's birthday presents, and most of his Christmas presents too, were trains.  Oh...how he LOVED them!

We even had to bring his trains on our vacation to Arkansas.

Jon could be stubborn at times.  I have no idea what he was so upset about here.  We were on a paddle boat McDonalds in St Louis.

But at least all that crying tired him out!

One of our favorite things to do was drop C.J. off at school and meet grandma at Delta for breakfast.  Jon would get their $.75 piece of french toast and a glass of milk.

Because Jon thrived on social interaction and to keep him exposed to verbal interaction with others, I enrolled him in class on Friday mornings through our rec department.  Jon was never shy around strangers!

When he was about 3.5 we began to notice how intelligent Jon was.  Before that, he was so quiet and just let C.J. answer all the questions or do all the talking.

 That summer, C.J. played t-ball and Jon was jealous but he was still too young to play.  He sure loved anything to do with sports.  So, when we got C.J. his baseball equipment...we got Jon some too.

In September, he started preschool at Sacred Heart Christian Preschool.  As shy and quiet as C.J. was...Jon was every bit as outgoing and excited!

Even at almost four, he still took a nap on most days and preschool seemed to really tire him out.  Although he was trained since February, he still needed pull-ups for nap and night time.  In fact, he was such a sound sleeper, he needed pull-ups until he was 7! Fortunately, he was still small enough to fit in pull-ups that whole time.

I didn't mention this in C.J.'s posts and I don't have any pictures of this...but I need to write it because it was a really big part of their childhood.
One of their absolute favorite things to do was to listen to the Monday Night Football song.  Every Monday night at 8:00, freshly bathed and in their warm pajamas, they would run around in circles and go crazy while that 1 minute song was played! "Are you ready for some football?  A Monday night party."  I will always remember that fondly.

For his fourth birthday we switched gears and Carey made him a great Buzz Lightyear cake.

Both of the boys LOVED that movie and we saw it several times.
And I'm including this picture because I think it's hilarious.  Just don't ask what he's doing...and don't ask what C.J. is doing in the background...because I'm sure I don't know!

Jon's four year stats:
Weight: 30 pounds 2 ounces (5th%)
Height: 36 inches (less than 3%)