Officially with the school aged kids

When my little big boy and his agemates hit kindy age (normal 4 year old kindy), I commented to a long time friend from back when Southies (better known now as Perth Natural Learning Network, website in the works and there is a Facebook group) first started up sometime near the beginning of 2007 that their social life had suddenly exploded with everyone's kids having birthday parties and playdates and whatnot.  She quite enthusiastically said yeh, she loved it.  I also find it enjoyable, though at the time for me it was more of a conscious noting of the fact that I had a child that was getting towards the stage of "big" (ie school aged) kid.  I was slowly but surely moving out of the realm of "mum of babies and toddlers" and into "mum of big kids" land.

Sitting down and really thinking about it, it's both amazing and amusing thinking that my fun, slightly odd, slightly quirky, occasionally annoying (who isn't?), always lovable child started out life in the usual way:

Not bad for a long running experiment, where we started out knowing very little practically.  Good thing we're infophiles and reasonably good at winging it.

Tao was a fairly average sized baby when he was born, as far as average babies go.  He got real big real fast though, and was always on the bigger/taller end of his age group.  At 6 months he was the same size as the younger two got to when they were closer to a year, just in 6 month old baby proportions.

He surprised us by spitting out fairly clear words and sentence fragments from 11 months onward.  A lot of the time just naming things, other times as simple as "Daddy look" and one time while he was playing with some toy or other, he randomly came up with "My love his daddy".  He had pretty okay distance judgement and coordination for a little tacker too, once he worked out little details like lifting your feet higher does not make you run faster.

He was quite eloquent when he started talking enough to hold conversations.  The eloquence and his height would have people often mistaking him for older than he was, despite a severe toddler lisp that had my mother in law suggesting we take him for speech therapy.  The lisp is self correcting.  After being told Tao's age people who asked would often say: "...he's tall."

Tao is an affectionate and sensitive little thing.  We have sibling spats but for the most part he can be found playing quite cooperatively with them and is equally happy initiating games, joining in, and minding the younger two.  We usually forgive him for occasionally wandering of and abandoning them (sometimes in inconvenient locations like leaving his little brother at the top of the cubby house or in a room with a shut door, when the tot is still a bit shaky about coming down the slide by himself and can reach the door knobs but can't turn them).

It all started off like this:

Actually it probably started with him being intrigued by me being pregnant with Ruan, but I don't have photos of him kissing the bump.  Either way, playing with toy guns and violent video games doesn't seem to have made him an aggressive violent child incapable of nurturing and playing with dolls.

Yet another sign of big boyness reared up when Tao from 3-4 started asking if he could play Auskick.  He had to wait a year or so, as our area didn't seem to have the programs for 4 year olds.  Last year we signed him up with the mini version of the Gosnells Hawks (who wear Eagles colours much to the outlaws' delight and Rat's consternation, "I thought you said htey were Hawks!" was his complaint).  After a few mini-tantrums early on when things didn't always go his way he settled right in, and is looking forward to the season starting this year.  He's not bad at it either, once he coordinated the kicks out he got pretty good at kicking reasonably straight and has scored a few goals.  He has also figured out running into space where he thinks the ball will go is better than standing with the pack of kids yelling "Throw/kick it to me!"

When he grows up, he reckons he wants to play for the Fremantle Dockers.  When he retires, he'll be some kind of engineer maybe, he really likes building things.

Smart and well rounded little dude.  He can read a bit.  He doesn't want to go to school, he wants to stay home, play games, go on big long walks and other excursions, go to the beach, do kung fu, play with swords and staffs (staves?), train the dogs, watch the chickens, visit friends and learn from/play

with them, take photos with his father's camera, work out maths problems, write letters and cards to people (currently limited to "Happy birthday" and "Merry Christmas" but have to start somewhere right), play in the rain, work out how static electricity works, work out how bones and muscles work together, work out how your brain and eyes work together for reflexes...list goes on, I'm out of breath so figured the paragraph should stop.

On his birthday, he decided he wanted a carrot cake (the bakery at the Gosnells markets is excellent) and to go to King's Park.  We headed to the Synergy playground where the kids had a huge play before we sat down to eat cake.

Josh and I are still amazed that he is 6.  Sometimes we didn't think he'd make it that far (before we killed him out of sheer frustration).  But seriously, he's awesome in so many ways.  Here's to many more years.