Our Life: Happy Birthday Mikey

It's Mikey's birthday, and I am incredibly grateful to have him in my home. He is a special boy, a very patient boy. He is very self-sacrificing. He deals with having three younger siblings EXTREMELY well. He watches out for them, takes care of them, and bosses them around.

Mikey is a teaser, he loves to tease. He usually teases in good fun....but then he has found that he can get William freaking out when he calls William by a different name.
Mikey is really interested in the speed of things. He is always asking me what is faster between two animals or machines.

Even though last year I would have said that Mikey had no hope of playing sports, but he has come alive. He loves Saturdays for he gets to play soccer, and he is good at it. He scores at least 4 or 5 goals a game, if not more. When he gets the ball, he just takes it down and scores, and he's good at getting the ball.
Speaking of improving, and speaking of speaking, Mikey has gotten better at talking to people. He still can be very shy, but he has made huge improvements. He acknowledges people a lot better. This is something I have been working on for a long time. I would require him to look at my eyes when I was talking to him, then when he was talking to his brothers or apologizing to them, I required him to look in their eyes. The other day Mikey was really upset about something. I asked him why he was upset. He told me, "Roger didn't look at me in mine eye when he said 'Sorry'". Backfire.Mikey isn't the best at expressing his emotions. I fear that it is because he is expected to sacrifice so much, that he doesn't feel that he could come to me when he was upset. Because of this, he would either try to not show his emotions, hold it inside, or just totally start throwing a crying fit. Someone had told me to focus on asking Mikey about his feelings. For example, after scoring a goal, ask him how he feels, rather than saying, "Good Job", same thing with when he is upset. I've been doing this for the last month, and have been amazed with the progress he (and I) have made. He tells me how he is feeling, he understands that he can tell me that he is upset so there have been fewer crying fits, all while he displays more confidence. He communicates with me much more. I think that he feels that I want to hear what he has to say, like my asking him about his feelings has given him permission to speak to me more.

Outside of the family, Mikey does much better with his friends on a one-on-one situation. He has a better time when he is with one friend rather than with several friends. When there are many friends, he doesn't participate with his friends as much. Roger has been invited to a lot of birthday parties recently, so I wanted to make sure to do some sort of a party for Mikey, but wasn't sure it was in his best interest to have a lot of friends. I asked him if he wanted to have a big birthday party with all his friends, as I named them off, or if he would rather just do something with any one of his friends. His eyes lit up with the thought of the second idea, and he decided on his friend Jimmy. I can understand this, for there are many times I find myself doing much better with just one friend rather than being with many friends.Mikey is a sweet cuddler. He loves to "Gooney", something he made up, where he will squeeze your hand and say, "Gooney, Gooney, Gooney". I use to get very frustrated with him when he would do this, especially when he would do it to Grant. I have since realized that he does this when he is filled with that uncontrollable love, like when you just want to squeeze a baby's cheeks off because you love them so much. Now, Mikey and I will "Gooney" each other. We do this a lot while we do reading time, and I have learned to love this "Gooney" connection that we have.

There are people that Mikey just loves to show affection to. It's almost weird for he doesn't do it to everyone, but some of the people he shows this cuddling affection to he hardly knows and others he knows very well. During Primary he loves to lay across his teacher, but he didn't do it with his teacher last year.
Mikey is a great boy and has a great spirit. I feel so grateful and honored to have him in my home. I love him so much.

I asked Mikey what he wanted for breakfast. He chose French Toast.

He took some pictures of the breakfast.

Here's the picture he took of his plate, candle included.

Afterwards we had swim class, which he loves.

Since he doesn't go to a formal school, and his swimming friends are like his classmates,

I made Black and White cookies on a stick for him to pass out to his friends.

Then we had the Homeschooling Gym class, which I think Mikey really enjoyed today

After we were all done we were trying to decide where to have lunch, since it was a little chilly outside. Mikey had chosen to eat at home, but William was really upset by this since he had his heart on eating at the park. Mikey then decided to eat at the park...very compassionate.

While at the park, Mikey showed me some of his tricks.

We went home, put Grant to bed, I got my old Journal out and read to Mikey and the boys the entries I had of when I was pregnant with Mikey, and his birth story. They all loved it, and I loved being able to read to Mikey about how excited Todd and I were about him coming into our lives.
We had a nice dinner. During the meal Mikey looked at me and said, "Let's all go around and say what we love about me, Mom you go first."

It was so cute for we have been doing this forever, but up until now I had kind of felt that no one else knew what was going on since Todd and I were the only ones whoever said anything. This time all but Grant got involved.
After our meal, we brought out the cake.

Everyone got to have a candle in their own slices.

Since my kids don't have the beginning of the school year to ask for a Father's Blessing, we decided that Todd would give the boys a Father's Blessing on their birthday. It was really neat, and even Grant was reverent during it.
Afterwards Mikey opened his presents.

He is such a sweet boy. He allowed his brothers to open his presents and allowed them to play with his gifts.

Friday we brought Mikey's friend with us to this little kid fair-like amusement park.

The boys had a blast.

Grant could have done without the experience.

When we were out of tickets, yet not ready to go home, I realized we were 3 miles from the zoo, so we headed over there. The Dinosaurs are back again this year, so we visited that exhibit.