4 Years Old!

Big sister Reese is really growing up, and I feel is especially taking the big sister role seriously lately. That, and she has asked to read her big sister book at bedtime nearly every night for the past week. The two girls are honestly really cute together and Brooke still just adores and admires Reese (90% of the time). Let’s take a look at Reese lately, as she gears up to turn 4.

• Reese’s latest playground endeavor is the monkey bars. These have become quite the fun challenge for Reese and she can do most any at the park but can’t always reach the top to get started.
• Lately Reese has talked a lot about being brave and will say when she is being brave.
• We’ve done away with naps on the weekend which makes bedtime on those nights so much easier. We might ask the teachers to not have her nap at school in the next year for this very reason.
• Reese loves to drum, beat, and dance and the cutest thing is that Brooke likes to drum, beat, and dance to Reese’s music. The two girls start bopping and I just love it!
• Her latest favorite color is “rainbow”. She likes all of the colors and everything needs to be the color “rainbow”.
• She can count to 19. Hasn’t hit the 20 yet and likes to leave out 15 or 17 sometimes.
• She loves to sing the ABCs and now also likes to use “EENY, MEENY, MINY, MOE” to choose things, which have already been chosen in her head but she still likes to play the game of chance until it ends up right.
• She’s still loving dress up. She dons the ballerina costume so frequently and it seems to be of interest to friends that come over too. Needless to say, her birthday party is going to be a dress up princess party.
• Reese has been practicing reading books. I think she is trying to memorize certain books so that she can read them to Brooke.
• She has gotten much more into stuffies lately. She likes to sort her stuffies by boys or girls and then sleeps with the girl stuffies and whoever is laying down with her gets the boy stuffies.
• She is still really liking school. She often says its her favorite thing in the day and I think she has made a lot of friends at her school.
• She’s starting to voluntarily put her face in the water, blow bubbles, hold her breath, etc. I find this pretty courageous as I know a lot of kids her age still don’t like doing this at all. I still want to work with her in the water to start working on her swimming skills.
• When she gets upset, most times she will take herself out of the situation and go calm down somewhere else. This is generally her bed but sometimes she will find other cool down spots.
• If Bryan and I are having a conflict Reese intervenes and asks if we are making the other mad or sad and for what reason and then asks us to give the other a hug. It’s honestly the cutest thing.
• We are doing a lot of role playing lately; teacher, mom, baby, and of course the almighty doctor. The imagination is definitely flowing these days.
• She is truly a great friend; sympathetic, understanding, caring, and definitely a player.

Both Bryan and I love Reese to death and think she’s just the greatest. Brooke thinks so too. I can’t believe we have a four year old and I can’t believe we only have one more year until she will be entering Kindergarten.

Chelsea