A Birthday for Nash!

This year I get to share Mother's Day with Nash!  The year he was born, he was born on a Thursday.  How do I remember that?  Because my dad made the comment that if I didn't have him before midnight I'd have to keep him in for another full day because I couldn't curse him & let him be born on Friday the 13th!

Nash is my most verbally caring kid.  He tells me 100 times a day, "I love you mom."  He will always come up and give me a hug with it too.  I won't trade those!  I know it won't be long before he's in fifth grade & saying I love you mom and giving me a hug isn't cool.  I'll take it while I can!  Especially since he wasn't a snuggly baby either!

For Nash's birthday cake this year he wanted Darth Vader (because my mom scored the pan for free for us) and then my girlfriend told me about the Lego Minifigure cake pan she saw on ebay.  So of course he wanted both cakes!  I figured I'd end up being asked to make a Darth Vader Lego Minifigure!  He was good to me though and when I told him I just wasn't going to be able to make both Darth & the Minifigure & Brookelyn's cake he told me he was ok if we just did the Minifigure for the party & saved Darth for Mother's Day.  Who else gets to have Darth cake with their eight year old on Mother's Day?  Probably not a lot of moms!

Since Travis isn't home for Nash's birthday this year we had a family party on May 5th for Nash & Brookelyn.  Nash is such a good kid about sharing his birthday with his little sister.  He let her open presents & blow out candles first.  How many other eight year old boys do that?  Pretty sure he'd be the odd man out here.

For Nash's birthday he has been DYING to get a pogo stick.  The neighbor next door has one & has been kind enough to let Nash bounce on it (I was informed his record was 318 consecutive jumps - until tonight when he reached 510).  Grandma Terri was the hero & found the pogo stick - talk about gift of the year!  He wanted to take it to school with him today to play with at recess.  I think he was pretty bummed out when I told him no.  He was good about it though!  He got another extreme dot to dot from Grandma & Grandpa Reeder (and some cash).  He got a Diary of the Wimpy kid book from the Bradshaws, 6,000 BBs & a target from Grandpa Scott & Grandma Kris, a fun beach bag with lots of fun surprises from the Atkinsons, a new lego set from the Snyders, and cold hard cash from Chad & Shanah's family.  We got him a set of "I can draw" books.  He is my artistic child, hands down!

 

Some things about Nash:

Favorite Foods:

Nash is a GOOD eater.  He inherited his dad's hollow leg.  He is constantly in search of food.  I'm afraid I will be eaten out of house and home when he turns 13 & starts bringing friends over regularly!  He LOVES spaghetti.  He likes most breakfast foods, he loves fruit (especially cantelope, watermelon & strawberries), & his food of choice is probably steak (smart kid!)

Favorite TV shows:

Nash is a good sport & will pretty much watch watever is on TV.  He even watches quite a bit of "Full House" with his sister!

Things to do:

Any & all video games.  He's got pretty good hand-eye coordination (thanks piano lessons?).  He is getting a lot better about telling people he plays with how to do something rather than just take the controller and do it for them.

Legos - the boy will build for hours and hours.  Not just with Legos either.  He got a rickter set on clearance at Hastings & put the entire plane together by himself in no time at all with no help from anyone.

Art - He loves to draw and color.  He has also developed an addiction to these extreme dot to dot books that have 1,400 dots in a picture!  He even colors them after he gets them finished.  I'm amazed at his dedication in finishing them!

Read - much to my delight Nash has finally learned to love reading!  Last school year it was like pulling teeth to get the kid to read for the required 20 minutes.  At the beginning of this school year we went through all my books and pulled out a bunch I thought he might like.  One of those books was Captain Underpants.  That was all it took.  He has blown through all 10 books in that series.  He started on the Conspiracy 365 series in about February and has read the first one and part of the second.  I was looking at his AR report and he's reading an average book level of about 4.6-5.0.  That's HUGE for a kid that I was worried had dsylexia last year!  The other awesome thing about what he's reading is that he retains what he reads - sometimes better than Sam!

Math - Nash is like his dad & numbers just make sense.  He has an easy time with math and actually likes doing it.  He's started whipping out answers to multiplication problems in the last few months.  I think he may out do me in the math area before it's all said and done.

Bounce on his new pogo stick - as I mentioned before, his previous record was 318 consecutive bounces.  Tonight he reached 510.  He informed me his new goal is 600.  I told him he needs to have Alex from next door teach him to jump rope while bouncing on the pogo stick too (because dude, that was impressive!).

Things Nash doesn't like:

Practicing piano - I'm not delusional.  I know the only reason he's still taking lessons is because he wants to play the drums so bad.  I keep telling him they only let the kids with piano background play drums.  We'll see if the drum dream outlives his distaste for practicing his piano or not! 

Caleb's ability to irritate him in about .25 seconds.  Caleb's good at it - there's no denying that!

Getting told "Just a minute." - patience is not a strong point for him (but he is improving!)

Nash is a really good kid and very thoughtful of others.  I really can't imagine what our family would be like without Nash.  He is so good with Brookelyn - she adores him!  Which makes me happy because he wasn't exactly thrilled when we told him he was getting a baby sister for his birthday!  Happy birthday Smash!