Jack is 4!!

February is pretty eventful around here since we celebrate both Belen and Jack's birthdays. 

Jack got to celebrate with a few of his friends - they opened presents and played with the toys and had a good time. 

(from left to right : Jack Kizzar (whom he calls by his full name since they have the same first name - this cracks me up), Connor Ferris, Barry Warner)
When it was time to sing Happy Birthday he suddenly became overwhelmed by all the attention focused on him, so he hid...

as the song went on, he came around...

and in the end decided to blow out his candles with enthusaism.

On February 9th Jack turned 4 and we celebrated as a family.  Jack gets pretty excited about his birthday and this year was super opinionated about his cake. This year he wanted as many layers as we could make.  I think the inspiration for this came from one of our favorite story books - Clever Jack Takes the Cake by Candace Fleming - in the story, the main character, Jack, makes a cake for the princess for her birthday and has quite the adventure getting it to the castle - the cake Jack makes has layers, and the royal cake at the end of the book has lots of layers.  Anyway, he wanted layers.  His birthday landed on a Sunday and I realized I only had one cake mix (and was much too lasy to do anything from scratch) so we borrowed a few cake pans and made 4 skinny layers - appropriate since he is turning 4.  We had a great time dying each layer of the cake with food coloring, pouring the batter into the pans and licking our fingers all along the way.  Each step of the way was pretty exciting as we baked them, cooled each colorful circle on the counter and finally piled them up, frosted them, decorated the top like a 3 eyed monster and devoured it with ice cream and milk.

Jack loves music, he already knows the words to a bunch of rock classics, some michael jackson a few pop songs and all the words to let it go from frozen, plus he'll belt out some church songs too.
He doesn't dance as much as he used to (sadly), but still has some killer moves.
He's opinionated about what he wears - he prefers sweat pants and t-shirts, but he sure cleans up nice when he wears jeans and a collared shirt or when he gets spiffed up for church.
He loves to pretend to be a dinosaur, bird or dog and often stays in character for over an hour (this includes only growling/gnashing his teeth, tweeting, or barking and of course crawling around on all fours)  This is often how we get him to eat his dinner - "dinosaurs love green beans" and suddenly there's 17 beans in his mouth being ripped to shreads as he growls - it's a little bit gross at times, but pretty effective.
He is loud, has a short fuse, and an explosive temper but on the flip side is so loving and tender hearted - he loves to cuddle and read stories, he loves his sisters and is such a good friend and brother to both of them.
He wants to obey the rules, sometimes this is hard for him and lots of the time he doesn't BUT he wants to be good - for example, sometimes when he is sneaking treats (an almost daily occurrence), he'll sneak a vegetable first.

He has a very active imagination and will tell stories in great detail - very fun to listen to, not always easy to comprehend.
He has no shortage of personality and we love him oh so much - Happy birthday to my favorite 4 year old boy in the world!