Random things about my kids

On Facebook, which I joined a few months ago and am now totally addicted to, it is all the rage to post a note entitled "25 Random Things About Me." If you are my Facebook friend, you can see my note here.

I thought it might be interesting to do the same for my children.  Since none of them are even half a decade old yet, it seems like 25 random things is a little much.  So, ten for the big kids and five for the little kids.

CHARLIE

1.  If you name any of the Houston Texans opponents for the 2008 season, he can tell you not only whether the Texans won, but also what the score was and what date they played.  The kid is 4.

2.  As a baby, he was very, very, very, very fat.

3.  He slept through the night at 2 months.  To this day, he's a great sleeper and will often ask to go to bed if he's tired, even if we are in the middle of a party and there are tons of other kids running around and playing.

4.  When I was in the hospital with the babies, he was incredibly sweet and concerned about my well being.

5.  He looks, and acts, EXACTLY like his father.

6.  He watches nothing but sports.  If he is home sick from school, he watches old games on ESPN Classic.

7.  He's been going to Astros and Texans games--and watching the entire game with interest--since he was three.

8.  He is a perfectionist, and sometimes is not willing to try things for fear that he doesn't know how.

9.  Like most of my kids, he is very cautious.  For example, he stayed in his crib until he was over 3 and he never tried to get out.  He can also be shy around adults, although he's more social than his brother with his peers.

10.  At a little over a year old, he got involuntarily moved up to the next class in daycare because he was biting all the students in his class.

JOSEPH

1.  He was my smallest baby, weighing 4 lbs. 14 oz. at birth.

2.  When he was 2, he cut part of his finger off in a door at daycare.  In all, he has had one finger surgery, hernia surgery, three ear tube surgeries, one adenoidectomy, five trips to the ER, and three cuts worthy of stitches - one of which got a staph infection.  

4.  He taught himself to read before he turned 4.

5.  He is allergic to dogs, and we have two.  He is also allergic to cats and oak.  

6.  He has a deep-rooted fear of many things, including team mascots, the Chik-Fil-A cows, witches, skeletons, most Halloween costumes, masks, and the faces on Will and Helen's bath toys.

7.  Like most of my kids, he is very cautious.  He also never tried to climb out of his crib.  He is often afraid to try something new if it involves something physical.

8.  He has an incredible knowledge and understanding of geography for his age.  He can pick out most states on a U.S. map.

9.  He loves to write things.  He will write out entire songs, lists of sports teams, and sports statistics.  He makes his own lists, and adds things to my lists.  He spells pretty darn well, but I find it interesting how he will spell words phonetically if he doesn't know how they are spelled.  For example, he will list "innersepshuns" by the Seattle "Seehox."

10.  He is not very social, but also is not shy or self-conscious.  He easily talks to adults, but isn't always that interested in other kids.  Charlie is definitely his best friend, but he is also a much better big brother than I thought he'd be.

WILL

1.  He loves, loves, loves books.

2.  Before he goes to bed at night, he leans over to his sister, takes her pacifier out of her mouth, gives her a kiss, and then replaces the pacifier.  We have GOT to get this on video.

3.  He has strabismus, possibly due to a problem with his third optic nerve.  It is treatable, but not fixable.  He has had one surgery, and will have more in the future.  His opthamologist says he'll probably never have much depth perception.

4.  He has plagiocephaly, which means he has a misshapen head from laying too much on one side as a baby.  We opted not to have him wear a helmet to fix it, but when we made that decision it hadn't occurred to me that he could end up bald like his daddy someday.

5.  Like most of my kids, he is very cautious.  So far, he does not seem very social, but seems content doing his own thing.  He is incredibly sweet though, and he loves his brothers.

HELEN

1.  She is more coordinated than all three boys combined and was my earliest mover.  She started crawling at 6 months and walking at 12 months.  It surprised me, however, that as a girl she didn't talk earlier.  But it also surprised me how well she could/can communicate without talking.

2.  She slept through the night at 5 weeks.  Several times.  Then she didn't do it again for months.

3.  She is the only one of my children who preferred me over daddy as a baby.  She doesn't anymore though.  Frankly, she's pretty self-centered now.

4. She has wispy, fine, strawberry blonde hair.  Where in the heck did that come from?

5.  She is the one who is not cautious.  We find ourselves saying, more times than we can count, that she may be the death of us.  She likes to be in the middle of things.  In a way she is one of our more social children, but only if everything revolves around her.