My four (!!) year old!

 This morning, two days after my birthday, Lexi says to me, "You have lines on your forehead, that means you are old. Old people have lines." 

I held back from saying, "and guess who’s put them there with her penchant for jumping off beds and knocking out her teeth?" 

She didn’t notice the little grey hairs dotting my temples, thank goodness. 

Her birthday is this Friday (the 22nd). How is it she’s going to be 4!! What!!!

Where did this baby go!!?? Look at the difference!

Too fast!

I am so proud of my girl: she’s reading, spelling and writing, doing basic addition and subtraction. She’s funny and keeps us laughing all day. She is really getting to an age where she gets jokes and being silly and we find ourselves just giggling together as a family over the crazy things that happen in a day. We are also starting to build private family jokes that she loves to repeat and we just burst out laughing together. The kind of jokes/phrases that are hilarious in your family, but don’t make sense to anyone else. 

Lexi is really loving these and says she loves being part of our family. 

Her party is Saturday at a little kids’ cooking place. They will make homemade pizzas and eat them, then make and decorate cupcakes. Lexi’s favorite things at almost 4 are: writing words and drawing pictures, cooking, swimming and playing "pretend". 

About a zillion times a day I hear, "Pretend you are a frog and I’ll use my wand to change you into a princess" or "pretend you are this piece of toast and make it talk as I eat it" or "pretend you are Lexi and I am mommy" and on and on!

She is also obsessed with the NickJr. show Umi Zoomi. She has a limited amount of screen time each day and she always chooses to use it to watch two episodes of it. Her conversation is peppered with references to the characters, the story lines, singing the songs, pretending she’s Mili Measure (the girl character). She says she wishes she could grow tiny and go into the TV to be in "Umi Town" with them. She keeps asking me to find Umi Town on a map so we can go there. A friend of hers at school has an UmiZoomi back pack and a few times a week, she speaks of it in awe. 

For her birthday we got her the plush characters from the show. She’s going to freak out, can’t wait to see it! 

My gosh, is this a foreshadowing of the pre teen years when girls get obsessed with boy bands or movies?

Lexi is doing really well and school and LOVES going. We invited the kids from her class to her party. There’s a couple boys in her class that just annoy her (this is just the beginning, kiddo! ha!). According to Lexi, "They knock down my towers when I build with blocks, color on my work pages and run around a lot." Typical boys, right! This one particular boy, let’s call him Adam, apparently says, "poopy" and "poopyhead" all the time and is in constant time outs for things. When I told Lex that his mom RSVP’d that Adam wouldn’t be able to come to her party she gave a little cheer and said, "Whew, ’cause he’s one of the bad ones!" When I told her who was coming, she said, "Yay, all the good guys!!" 

He he!

She pretty much can dress herself in everything underwear to socks and shoes but doesn’t always want to. She goes back and forth between wanting to do everything herself and wanting help. She’s an excellent cutter and will spend, literally, an hour or so at her art desk just cutting paper into shapes. She’s independent, often helping herself to snacks and drinks, I set up a shelf in the pantry that’s all her snack foods. She knows she’s allowed to take ONE of something from that shelf at snack time. I also gave her a kitchen drawer for all her cups, plates, utensils. She’ll get herself a plate too or a cup and then go to the water cooler and get a drink. 

Question for moms with older kids: when does a kid understand the concept of lying? Lexi took a toy home from school, when I asked her if the teacher said it was ok she said yes. When I checked with the teacher, the teacher knew nothing about it. Lexi seemed to kind of get the concept that what she did was lying but also seemed a tad confused. I did give her a time out for lying…I hope that wasn’t too harsh if she didn’t really have any idea what "lying" means. 

We talked about it and hopefully she gets it now. 

I love this kid so much and can’t thank God enough for blessing me with such an amazing daughter. 

Her personality has been so fun to watch and I can’t wait to see what else her life has in store!