Tuesday, June 7, 2016

A Letter To My Four Year Old


Dear Elizabeth,

Today you are four years old. You have been talking about your birthday for months! As you said, "on my birthday, I'm the birthday girl and I get the first piece of cake." You are quite the comedian lately, with everyone in our family being told "oh yeah baby." Speaking of baby, you are definitely the baby! This year you became one of the big kids at daycare and it didn't take well. You prefer to have big kids around and you prefer to have them give you your way. Although you are still completely baby obsessed!

Three was a big year for you. You happily started school, loved your teachers, and loved going to school. You are super excited to start four year old preschool in the fall. You continue to love anything your brothers do: Nerf guns, playing in the backyard, hiking, and taking walks. Some of your favorite things are dolls, playing "moms and babies," Barbie's, make up, nail polish, and music. For your birthday you requested "a Ipod....and make sure it has an apple on the back of it." Well, it doesn't have an apple on the back of it (you are only four after all. When you prove to me that you can wipe yourself thoroughly I'll consider getting you one with "an apple on the back"), but you'll be able to listen to all of your favorite music and sing along to it completely off key. You also love to dance to your music as you sing.

This winter we discovered you love scary movies and TV shows. You watched the X-Files on Netflix and went through a phase of playing "Scully and Mulder" (for the record, I DID NOT plan on letting my three year old watch The X-Files). Otherwise you still don't watch much TV or sit still for movies ( your first movie going experience last summer did not go smoothly). You continue to love your daycare friends and have been counting down since March until all of the big kids were back from school. 

You can throw tantrums better than the best of 'em and fight to do things your way. You don't really care what anyone else is doing, you know what you want and go for it. Even though it's challenging, that's one of my favorite things about you and I hope it never changes (the tantrums can go away though)! 

The other night I had a clear reminder about how much you have grown: Usually if you wake up in the middle of the night, you call (more like yell) for your dad or I. Saturday night you got yourself out of bed and crawled into my bed to tell you what you needed. You wound up sleeping in my bed with me and proceeded to kick, shove, and slap your way around the bed. Not only are you physically bigger, but you've grown in so many other ways just in the last few weeks.

I love your happy smile, your shyness around people you don't know (people think you're so quiet. When they say this to me I have to laugh because I know otherwise), your imagination, your big emotions, and how you can get worried about the littlest things. May your fourth year be filled with happiness, adventures, bravery (we're taking you white water rafting, so you'll have to be brave!), and a quieter scream. Thank you for bringing humor, love, and sweetness to our family. We love you!

Love,

Mom