4.5

On September 9th, Jackson turned 4 1/2 years old. He's simply amazing and somehow we love him more and more each day.

He's excelling in Pre-K and loves, loves, loves school. He's officially an independent reader and is a rock star at reading. Now that his decoding skills are proficient, we've had a blast working on phrasing, fluency, self-correcting, and voice. My favorite time of day is curling up with him on the couch, or in bed, listening to him read to me. He loves to read with expression and cracks me up when he does voices. His Pre-K teacher selected him to be a narrator in their Thanksgiving play, "The Little Red Hen." I am so so so proud of him!!

He wakes up at 6:00 am on the dot each morning. The first thing he does is log onto the computer and check the weather forecast! He draws a picture of the forecast and writes the high temperature, and then comes into our bedroom to tell us. So usually, the first thing I hear each day is, "It's going to be mostly sunny with a high of 75 degrees." I love it! Who wouldn't want to wake up to this cute meteorologist?!? (Occasionally, our weather gets a little repetitive and boring for him, so he's learned how to check the cities his cousins live in! Cities that have "real weather" like: Denver, Salt Lake, Chicago, and Philadelphia. But his favorite is grandma and grandpa's city in southern Illinois because they have fog and thunderstorms. Ha Ha)

Jackson definitely displays an affinity for all things science. Eric couldn't be more proud and is thrilled that Jackson fantasizes about working at Intel when he grows up!! We are completely in love with our little scientist.