The Seth Man

Seth is five-and-a-half and is in full "little boy" mode. We have the Legos, the swords, the cars, the planes, the cannons, the electronic devices, the comic books...and I LOVE it. 

Seth's days are a whirlwind of little-boy activity. If he's not racing through the kitchen, designing a "game" for us to play downstairs (with rules that constantly evolve in his favor), or doing an experiment that inevitably involves my food coloring, you'll find Seth on the iPad or Kindle. He's currently obsessed with Minecraft, but will also return to old standbys like Bad Piggies or Angry Birds. He also likes to try to figure out games that are above his level, like Jon's Risk-like strategy game or games involving higher math skills. 

Recently he's taken to drawing. He found an old notepad of Jon's graphing paper and has been tearing through it, drawing piles of pictures every day. Forget people or animals--this kid draws one thing and one thing only: machines. We have lots of pictures of airplanes blowing each other up, or of various "contraptions" (his word) that do things like trawl the seafloor for treasure or shoot tiny metal balls. And don't worry--you'll get a full explanation of each and every part of his machine/contraption and what it does.

(These are from the pre-machine-drawing phase--the monster-drawing phase.

The big on in the middle on the right says "Mom sees Mostr"

and has a great depiction of me screaming my head off at the sight of a monster).

In the past month we've made an abrupt shift from cars to airplanes. No idea why after 5 1/2 years of nothing but cars, but airplanes are where it's at now. 

Seth is legitimately reading now, which is so much fun. He doesn't like to be pushed to read, but when he feels inspired he'll read books to us at bedtime. He loves the Lunch Lady comics, Fly Guy books, and Elephant and Piggie books. 

Seth always says "good luck" in situations where most people would say "good thing." For example: "Good luck that car didn't crash into us!" It's one of his only language idiosyncrasies left and I love it. 

Seth is my child in so many ways. He is totally mesmerized by books and reading, he needs a lot of downtime, and he generally wants to do what will make us happy. He's also my child in that he doesn't have the best control over his body, especially during a growth spurt. One night he managed to fall off his chair three times during dinner, all while in a seated position. Sorry, buddy.

He's actually singing the songs in Primary now. This is HUGE. 

He has a great imagination and loves to role-play different characters. His favorite is "The Magic Prince" who can bestow magic on the rest of us if he so chooses. He also wins all the games and can never be defeated, even with a direct shot to the head with a hot-lava-laser gun (believe me, I've tried). 

He adores his baby brother and is constantly kissing him. Luckily Aaron is greatly amused by his brother's antics most of the time. He's not such a fan of Seth hauling him around, which Seth is only allowed to do over very short (and supervised) distances. 

(This picture was totally candid--he just LOVES kissing Aaron)

I'm not sure when it happened, but Seth is suddenly one of the tallest kids his age. Around Christmas I had to put away his 5T clothes and go buy some bigger ones. Shopping in the "Boys" section instead of the "Toddler" section was a big change for me. Suddenly Seth's wardrobe just got a LOT more expensive (and he's passing up the boy who's been handing down clothes to us for years, darn it!).

School is going pretty well for us. We've both made some adjustments and seem to be at a happy place right now. He's a smart kid and is easily "above grade level" (whatever that actually means) in basically everything except handwriting. It may still be a mess, but he's made HUGE progress and that's what's really important. 

His chores right now are cleaning his room, cleaning the main level of toys, cleaning the backseat of the van once a week, cleaning the basement toys once a week, sorting laundry and putting the silverware away. He's getting better about doing his jobs but still needs "someone to HELP me!" most of the time. 

I don't know what I would do without my Seth Man. He's been such a huge help since Aaron was born--my life would be much harder if he were in kindergarten all day! I love getting to teach him and play with him. I keep telling him he can slow down this whole growing-up deal, but he's not having any of it. "I want to get bigger than Daddy!" He's quite proud of the fact that he is now more than half as tall as I am. 

Less than five months until we hit six years old...

Some Sethisms:

Seth, pretending to be a daddy: "Come and see my new baby!" (points to Catherine).

Me: "If Catherine's your baby, where's your wife?"

Seth: "Oh, she died."

Me: "I'm so sorry!"

Seth: "It's okay. She was a pretty mean wife."

During a discussion about stranger danger:

Me: "Seth, how will you know if someone is a bad guy?"

Seth: "Oh. They will be wearing black."

Very convenient of those bad guys.

More kissing!