Joey

Joey's gotten some "middle child syndrome" treatment on the blog lately with Ben's t-ball happenings and Hannah's newness!  Here's a little update on our spunky 3 1/2 year old. 

Last fall, Grandpa Milt introduced Ben and Joey to Animusic on YouTube.  It's really neat computer animations of made-up instruments playing original music.  Very unique and very neat for music lovers of all ages out there.  It inspired Joey to drum on everything!  Daddy pulled out the Guitar Hero stuff and let Joey drum on the set -- he broke the sticks.  Fast forward to the present day, and he still drums on everything.  He started stealing our school pencils and broke nearly all of them tapping away on every possible surface in the house.  After hearing our complaints about the loudness and destruction of this new hobby, Joey's thoughtful Sunday school teacher Paul (who is also a daddy to young ones and a drummer) made Joey some sticks made out of thick dowels, and each end is wrapped with a fun foam.  Joey loves them and plays them all over the house. 

He loves them so much, in fact, that if he misbehaves his normal consequence is losing the sticks.  But when we do that, he uses his amazing little brain to find OTHER things to drum with, like the little plastic track pieces off of the Sorry Sliders game.  His playing is noisy and if I am going to be honest, sometimes annoying.  We encourage him to go to other rooms in the house to play, but he doesn't like this because he loves to be with the rest of us all the time.  The next step is probably getting him a practice pad and teaching him to play only on that only.  Andrew occasionally tests Joey's listening and rhythm skills and plays patterns for Joey to hear and play back.  Success every time!  The boy has some serious natural rhythm.

When Hannah was born I was a bit worried that Joe would show some potty training regression.  It's been just the opposite!  He figured out the #2 thing right before she came.  Shortly after she was born, he suddenly started waking up with dry diapers.  The only time we put a diaper on him now is if we notice he's had a lot to drink before bedtime.  This is especially true after baths, because he loves to drink the bath water in mass quantity.  True [and gross] story.  There have even been a handful of times he has woken up in the middle of the night to come upstairs to go potty.

He's learned quite a bit being present at the school table.  He can count well past 20, and can even write his name, sort of!  It ends up looking like "Joey" in mirror writing, but for a 3 1/2 year old who's not had any formal teaching on letter writing, I'm pretty impressed! 

If there's any one thing I've learned about Joe in the last several months, it's that his love language is quality time (see a summary of the book The 5 Love Languages of Children here).  This is tough, especially since he's the middle child.  We have to be very intentional several times each day to give Joey this form of love that speaks to him the most.  When he is feeling neglected in this area, he misbehaves to get our attention.  He will usually start with bugging Ben, and we caught him a couple times this past week in Hannah's pack-n-play, sucking her binky.  Ouch.

This boy has some amazing potential and it is intimidating to know we are responsible for developing it.  I trust that we were chosen by the Lord to parent this precious boy, so He will give us all the wisdom we need to grow this strong-willed, smart, and playful boy into a great man!