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It seems like every time I write about Isaac I write the same things.  That he loves to build with Legos and other things, that he’s a good reader, and that he is a very curious boy who asks lots of good questions.

I hope to portray a deeper picture of Isaac this time.  I find that it’s harder to describe my children as they grow.  When they’re little I can write about their developing abilities to talk and walk and the things that they like best, but as they grow, they develop in ways that are harder to define.  Hopefully the following words give you a picture of who Isaac is as he starts his 8th year.  I want to apologize in advance that some of my writing for this post seems to be a little more rambling than I like.

In the last year, Isaac has been reading more difficult chapter books.  Several of the series that he enjoyed this year were mysteries and have included: A-Z Mysteries, Cam Jansen, and Encyclopedia Brown.  When he really gets into a book he’ll read for an hour and finish the entire book in one sitting.  He also really enjoyed listening to his dad read The Great Brain series to him.  He was very excited about the storyline and often had to recap parts of the story to me. 

He has also read the scripture readers and he sometimes surprises me with the details he remembers from scripture stories.  Our home teachers brought blocks and the kids built a tower.  One of them asked if he knew a story about a tower from the scriptures and he told them details about the tower of Babel and the tower that King Benjamin built to speak to the people.  I am impressed that he can remember and retell details of scripture stories from his reading.

I see in him a strong desire to be good and for us to be proud of him.  He often tells me that one day he will make a robot that will do all my chores for me so that I’ll have more time to do whatever I want to do.  Although I sometimes have trouble motivating him to do chores, when he is motivated, he is my best helper and he does a great job.

He is still my most fearful child.  Maybe part of it is the fact that he’s the only kid with his own room, but he is the one who gets out of bed and reports that he heard strange noises.  He sometimes says that he had a nightmare before he has even been in his bed long enough to fall asleep.  He has a very active imagination.  Earlier this month he said that he couldn’t sleep because a sound in his room "sounds completely like a leopard." 

I remember when he was a very little boy that he regularly called out from his bed that he was afraid of something.  His biggest fear at night for a long time was tigers.   When we were in Tennessee he was afraid of bears and I used to spray air freshener in his room at night and tell him that it was bear repellant.  He became very afraid of aliens at my parent’s house just before we moved to Washington.  Every noise made him jump out of bed.  It didn’t help that they had a creaky floor.  It would take him hours to fall asleep each night.  My dad gave him a priesthood blessing to help him be less afraid.  When we first moved here his biggest fear was that jets would crash into his window while he was sleeping.  It’s almost like his fears come in spurts sometimes.  He has stretches of time where he is afraid every night and other times when he just goes to sleep without being afraid of anything.(The last paragraph from this post tells about some of his night time fears from several years ago.)

I think since he’s the oldest, we sometimes forget that he’s still a little boy. 

I was talking to a mother of 2 the other day who said that her 4-year old was having a hard time with her new baby.  Isaac overheard the conversation and was curious.  I told him that sometimes when a kid has his parents all to themselves they get jealous when a new baby comes and takes some of the attention.  Isaac said that he was so used to sharing his parents that he wouldn’t even care if a new baby “just popped right into the family.”I’ve been increasingly worried about how he is doing socially.  He has been best friends with his sister Charlotte basically since she was born, but he’s had trouble developing friendships with kids at school.  He has been showing signs of fear and anxiety when talking to other kids.  I met with his teacher and the speech-language pathologist (SLP) a few times towards the end of this year and his teacher reported that sometimes other kids don’t understand him and just walk away when he’s talking to them.  She also said that he often just starts talking to someone as if they’re already in the middle of a conversation.  I’ve started to pay more attention to how he interacts with people and I’m worried that he’s missing a lot of conversational skills and I am hearing him stutter more and more.  He has a good friend at church who is like him in a lot of ways.  They have similar interests and are both the oldest with several younger siblings. They enjoy the same activities for the same length of time and Isaac doesn’t sound nervous when he talks to him.  I am really grateful for this friend.

Isaac plays with some other little boys in the neighborhood, but the boy that is his age is manipulative and bossy and they don’t always get along well.  He threatens Isaac that he will not play with him ever again if Isaac doesn’t do what he says.  The neighbor boys try to get him to exclude Charlotte.  It was making Charlotte very upset so we talked to Isaac about it.  Since then, Isaac has started sticking up for Charlotte more and playing with the neighbor boys less.

He has started to be embarrassed by things more.  Last year I sent black bean soup and chips in his lunch and he said that some of the other kids thought it was gross, but he didn’t care.  This year I made him a sandwich on a homemade roll that I had died purple for Nicole’s birthday.  When it came home uneaten, I found out that he was afraid that the other kids would think it was gross.

He was embarrassed by the fact that he didn’t know how to tie shoes.  Admittedly I tried to teach him a few times, but I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working.  It finally clicked recently and we figured out that part of the trouble we had been having teaching him was because he is left handed.  He was so excited after tying his first shoe that he wanted me to record him doing it.  As you will see, he still needed some practice because his method was a little weird.  He took that book and a shoe to bed for the next few nights and practiced in bed before falling asleep.

Isaac likes to set his alarm clock so that he can get up early and play.  He’s such a heavy sleeper that if he sets it too early, it won’t wake him up and Zach or I will have to get up to turn it off.  A few times I caught him trying to set it for 3 AM!  I finally had to have a talk with him about not setting the clock too early.  Now he sets it for 6 AM.

Isaac is a great brother most of the time.  He cares about his sisters and his brother and wants them to be happy.  Here is a video from one day when he was home sick from school.  He had thrown up during the night and was tired much of the day.  He found out that he could make his sisters laugh by pretending to sleep and then opening his eyes when they came near him and said his name.  The game had been going on for some time before I got my camera out and started recording it.