Johansen Family: Shane is 6 going on 26

My baby, my first born, my truly special little boy (okay, not so little) is 6. So hard to believe. Only when he was at his birthday lunch with Daddy, Mommy and Aunt Tiff did he look like a little boy. When he is with his siblings, he is such the big kid.

He is full of ideas and I am positive his brain never stops creating and inventing. He is counting down the days until he can do his first lemonade stand and has now decided to do an evening caffeine stand. In his own words, "I will sell caffeine to parents on their way home from work so they can deal with their kids when they get home." No comment, since I am pretty sure where this idea came from. He has a new invention every 5 minutes, some have already been invented, but he does not know that, so it is still creation in my mind. His latest are the hyperator (makes parents more hyper and kids less hyper). Aunt Tiff said this has already been invented and it is called drugs. Cloudinator - makes it so you can float on the clouds.

At his birthday, when his friend Jameson said thanks for inviting me to your party. Shane responded, "Well it wouldn't be a party without your best friends." On his birthday after he found out his party was on his actual birthday, "This is the best birthday ever." He is so easy to please and appreciative. For breakfast when I asked what he wanted, he replied, "Chicken with broccoli." I explained that I thought breakfast food would be more appropriate, so he said waffles, eggs, and strawberries. Now that I could do. I served it to him in his room and he was in pure spoiled heaven.

Of course Myann then wanted her breakfast in her room too. I obliged, I was feeling generous, since we all know what a mess Myann makes when eating. Thankfully, she surprised me and only spilled her orange juice a little and the syrup only got in her hair, but not the carpet.

As for other Shane greatness, since it is his birthday, I can brag on him. At his last parent/teacher conference, he rocked it. He has surpassed all the kindergarten markers and is very close to meeting his end of first grade markers. He is a great reader, but math is his true strong point. His handwriting needs improvement, but he has improved dramatically in the past few months. His problem is that he goes too fast. He rushes his work and wants to be done first. Sounds familiar, I remember getting upset if I did not turn in my work first too as a kid. His teacher was impressed/irritated that Shane has mastered following her instructions by doing the least amount of coloring possible. Example, they are creating equations like 5+1=6. They had to color squares to represent the numbers. ALL of the other kids actually colored their squares, all the squares. In an effort to not color, Shane decided to use white. So he would color one square or 2 squares and do the equation 1+6=7 or 2+5=7. The most squares were of course white. Then to decrease his coloring even more, he created 3 part equations (which his teacher said he was the first in the class to do. 1 red, 1 blue and 5 white squares so 1+1+5=7.) Again, he did everything he could to never have to color more than 2 squares. This was how his entire assignment went. His teacher was amused, but miffed that he does this every time. To be fair, he is not perfect and did receive constructive criticism. He tends to lack patience and needs to work on respectfully addressing adults. Shane is a "know it all" (shocking given his genetics), and tends to say things out loud when he should keep his mouth closed. He rolls his eyes (again shocking since no one in this family ever does that) and to a recent class guest speaker, Shane said, "You already said that, could you please move on." Ouch, I was not happy to hear that. And he called addressed his teacher's much older dad as dude. Thankfully he was paying him a compliment, he said, "Dude, I like your white hair." But we had to have a long talk about respectfully addressing adults and being patient even when you already know or understand something.