Jeremy is 4!

 

Yesterday Jeremy turned the magical 4. No, wait a minute, 5 is magical. Never mind. But Jeremy is 4 so that means it is special!! He has grown SO MUCH in the last year. Despite his few speech impediments that, I think, make it seem like he's younger, he has a really great memory, and he's a really smart kid (I'm not biased or anything). He is super athletic and coordinated. Sometimes the moves he does make me think he should be a gymnast. One day at Nathan's soccer game he was asked to play with the kids because they were down a few players. Jeremy kept up with the team like he was their age.

Here are some pictures from our recent vacation. In the second picture, behind where Jeremy is standing, on the other side of that tunnel, is where Jeremy was standing in the first picture ... and where he jumped off several times! His feet were at a height that's at least as tall as I am (that's 5'7").

 

 

I was going to try to include a few memories from this past year that are special Jeremy-memories, but the post was getting too long. So I will just tell you a little about what Jeremy is like (as if I don't already talk about each of my kids enough so that you don't already know him). This is going to be pretty long anyway, though, & it's all right if you aren't interested in reading the whole thing. It's mostly just so my kids & I can look back in a few years & see how they've grown. But if you do decide to read the whole thing, I hope you enjoy it!

*I don't want anyone to misunderstand and think I'm playing favorites here, but by far Jeremy is the easiest of my children for me to get along with. I would venture a guess that it's because we have different personalities, whereas the other two are more similar to me, but since Dan has an easier time getting along with Jeremy too (& they have more similar personalities), then I am out of guesses. I suppose Jeremy is just one of those people that gets along with others. I don't know if the same is true for people outside of our family, but it seems like he really enjoys being with us & wants to get along with us. A year ago he was more shy and did not want to play with certain people that didn't get his or Nathan's stamp of approval. But he's come a long way in the past year. Even in the past few months, since Nathan has been off to school, he has grown and shown a lot more leadership.

*Jeremy also bit into the whole Santa and Mr. Elf thing this year & that was so much fun. He remembered each morning to look for Mr. Elf. He talked about Santa and what he was doing all the time.

*Jeremy does some funny things like points with his middle finger & mispronounces things which make me laugh a lot. He asked me yesterday why flowers don't have eyes. Having no idea where this was going I replied, "well, because God didn't make them with eyes." To which he replied, "But they have eyes on Dragon Tales!!" And then, "I guess God made those flowers with eyes." "Um, yeah, Jeremy, right on." (No, I'm just kidding, I didn't say that)

*The best memory I have is from last week at Disney World. Jeremy was so cool. He totally would have gone on Space Mountain if he were tall enough (I'm so glad he wasn't, though). He did barely make the cut-off for Thunder Mountain, & he loved that ride. He asked to go on it whenever we asked what ride he wanted to go on next. At one point, Dan & I thought he wanted to ride Dumbo, so we waited for half an hour for the dumb ride, where Dan & I took Jeremy & Derek on silly little elephants that crawled along at about 5 mph. When we got off & I asked him if he liked it, he said, "not really. That was boring." So I guess Dumbo was too tame for him. Dan & I are still arguing about which one of us misunderstood something Jeremy said & thought he wanted to ride Dumbo. Of course, from his trips to Storybook Land with Oma & Pop-Pop, I guess I should have known that the faster & harder & scarier the ride, the better it was viewed in Jeremy's eyes. Go figure!

*Something special about Jeremy is that he was born two weeks late, which put him two days ahead of his cousin Hannah, who was born about two weeks early. Also, the morning he was born, it was discovered that Dan's grandfather Pop Dreher had died in his sleep. Pop had just taken a trip down to see us (along with many other places in the country) the summer before, & it was wonderful to have that time with him. He was one of those people that said what was on his mind & didn't care what anyone thought. Sometimes it didn't come out right, but a lot of times he made you laugh a whole lot. I didn't have the opportunity to know Pop very well, but I do know that he had one special daughter (Dan's mom), and she wouldn't be the person she is today if it weren't for Pop. (Do I get brownie points for that?) I think it's pretty special that Jeremy was born that particular day (even if at the time I would have preferred a couple weeks earlier). He also shares a birthday month with other special relatives, such as my mom and grandfather, Grandy. While in Florida we celebrated both Jeremy's & my Grandy's (Jan. 3) birthdays. That was fun! I'm glad we got to do that together. And since I didn't get together a special post for Grandy this year (I'm just waiting for the big 8-0!!), here's a Happy Birthday to you, too, Grandy! We love you.

 

*Jeremy also loves to take pictures. All 3 of my kids like to use the camera, but Jeremy especially seems to have a passion for it. If I let him loose with the camera, he could be at it for hours. One day while I was on the computer blogging & checking email, he took pictures around the room for over an hour. It came out to be about 100 pictures, some of which I actually saved. :) Some, though, such as the pictures he took of Derek's diaper, got trashed. He took a few pictures recently of himself that I thought I'd share:

 

 

That second picture reminds me of when he was born. I jokingly said, "I'd better count all his toes to make sure he has 10," & I discovered his second & third toes are linked a little higher than most, almost like they're webbed. Of course, with that, we had all our relatives examining their toes more closely to see which of us gave Jeremy that gene! So that's just another little funny something about Jeremy.

And now I have a 2-yr-old, 4-yr-old, & almost-6-yr-old. There's something sweet about all those even numbers. :)