Parenthood - 2019-02-11 Now we are six

February 11, 2019

Six is showing continued signs of maturing.

Yes, Matthew is still very energetic and boisterous but he can control it better. There is less of the wild child rolling around wrestling with his buddies at music or junior church while giggling about bananas, and more serious and thoughtful listening going on.

Still cute, likes to exert his independance and self sufficiency sometimes in terrifying ways (eg standing on tippy toes to get things out of the cupboard)

Adores building things and is quite good at following instructions. He’s mainly interested in putting together his Lego sets rather than playing with the end result. Amelia’s happy to play with his completed sets though, inventing all kinds of elaborate stories for the characters. Matthew is still the most generous of my children so far and usually lets her play with his things, even though he’s always worried she’s going to break it. He's still very sweet and likes to leave secret messages around, especially for Elizabeth.

When Matthew and Amelia aren’t fighting, they get along super well. They are either doting on each other or pulling each other’s hair out. He oscillates between enjoying playing with her and having her look up to him as adored big brother and enjoying making her scream. He’s very good at pushing her buttons.

Six feels he's too big to go to bed at the same time as his little sister, and sometimes we indulge this. If he goes to bed too early he tends to build elaborate blanket forts in his bed using sheets and cushions to hang down from Elizabeth's bed above. He'd dearly love the castle walls we had for Elizabeth but they tended to set off his asthma and anyway the windows would need to be repaired to avoid being a potential noose. Matthew and Amelia often get quite chatty just before bed. We have had to add rules about not colouring in bed after a incident where they set up flashlights and accidentally coloured the sheets. A favourite lights out game is "movie time" where they used Amelia's flashlight and little plastic figure Disney character advent calendar to tell stories in the dark.

He’s more interested in playing with Michael now that he can walk. He likes to pick him up and drag him around by the armpits. Mostly Michael seems to find Matthew amusing and doesn’t mind the tougher than we’d prefer handling.

His best friend appears to be a little girl in his class named Sianna.