L at four years old

Here's another update (finally). This time it's about Second Girl.

I think she's even cuter in this July 4th photo than in the June photos.

This gorgeous girl turned four back in June, so she's four years and five months old now. Daddy was at AT as usual during more than half of that month, so we had her party in July. The party was a success, but I don't feel like uploading those photos. We had it in the church's Primary room with a few of her friends and some extended family. The kids enjoyed playing musical chairs.

Her actual birthday was fun and simple. The first fun thing was our healthy breakfast banana-oat cookies that each had four dark chocolate chunks on top. I make the cookies often (based on this recipe and I replace the oats part with oats / cooked beans / unsweetened shredded coconut) but had not put those chunks on them before. L's cookie was the biggest and we put her "numbah foh" candle in it. I think we just relaxed and did what we needed to at home. Then we went to a park we hadn't been to before and played there for a long time. She and First Girl are such good friends. It seems like we went to my mom's house, maybe for dinner. The day ended with homemade frozen fruit bars and her for some reason falling asleep on the living room floor.

She makes me so happy. She's almost always the first kid up in the morning, and she comes to find me and give me a hug. From age three to age four she became good at drawing people and other things, and she learned how to write her nickname. She doesn't need help with anything when she uses the bathroom anymore, unless it's #2.

She has learned to love preschool, which she started on October 1st. We had to wait for an opening in the free one at the elementary school -- the school First Girl attended last year. I think the preschool friend L has mentioned the most is David B. (who also has a sibling attending the other school for dual immersion, so his mom picks up First Girl for me on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I pick up her daughter on Fridays). There are also three other kids from our ward in the afternoon preschool class with her. L loves the art projects, and telling me about the stations in the classroom and the snacks. The teachers said she is quiet and behaves well. She did very well on almost everything they tested her on a few weeks ago, like knowing letter sounds and which words rhyme.

We all love the songs she makes up. She has an imaginary song folder for her songs -- I'm not sure if this was her idea or her sister's. She'll say "this is a song that I have in my song folder." There was one about colors and there's one called "There's so many of me." Last December she said, "I like to say 'hey!' at the end of songs. But always they don't say 'hey.' But in my ones they say 'hey.'" A weird song she sang just last month included "It is the best thing you could never see: curly hair."

Her speaking voice is so cute, too, with kind of lisp. I wrote down (then typed up -- I guess you can say "wrote up" but you can't say "typed down," can you?) some of the funny, imaginative, and smart things she has said since the last time. This is only a few of many L sayings I've recorded. My sentences have curly brackets around them:

{There's our car.}
This is ours van.
{Yeah.}
Yeah, tug ['cause] it's white.

(After I sang part of a song from a kids' show I had removed from our Netflix queue, so it had come off our our TV.) We yoost have it on our tee-dee, but then it cummed off.

My food just fell on the floor and I picked it up.
{Your banana?}
Yeah, and my Craisins. It’s not really good to tell your parents that.

(As we walked home from the van after taking S to school, I saw our animal on top of the bush by our patio. She said something about giving the animal to S when she gets back.)
{Because it’s S’s?}
Yeah.
{You love her, don’t you.}
Yeah! I didn’t want to look when the doctor gave her the shot. I was gonna cry.
{Aww, that’s so sweet. You’re being like Jesus. You care about people’s feelings.}
Jesus knows everything. I don’t know everything.

A dog wouldn't want to eat that [gunk I cleaned off the stove].

{But sometimes dogs eat things that people think are yucky.}

Like Bwussel pouts like I don't like?

{I don't know, but some people like me like them.}

I think a dog would like pizza.

(After talking with her and S I figured out that she was thinking of the dog in the Stephen Cartwright 1-2-3 book.)

{Are you good at coloring?}

Yeah, because I’m cute.

{Does being cute make you good at coloring?}

Yeah.

When I said I needed to go poo, it was a joke.

{You're a joke.}

Oh, I know why i'm a joke. Because I love to eat artijokes!

You’re just a servant, not a pwincess. . . . [We wouldn’t break the bed] but if you jump on the bed you will, but for weal. . . . I’m pretending that I’m talluh. . . . they won’t bweak the bed, ‘cause they’re more magical -- the people that are fancy. And I have a fancy cat. . .. I have so many stuff. And my cat can talk. . . . Servant? May you please make muffins. 

{You mean waffles.}

Yeah. I forgot. I have a very silly queen. I am very silly. I get all mixed up.

Mommy, have you ever seen a baby butterfly?

{I don’t know if I have.}

I think I know why you haven’t seen one. They might not be on this earth.

{Butterflies are on Earth. You’ve seen them before.}

I know a other ansuh [answer] why you might not have seen ‘em. They might be kinda shy.

(While coloring the Daniel page and paper food from Primary.) So his mom said, ‘be very careful when you carry the food who are in dishes, because they're bweakable.’ . . . So that's what he was doing when he was cahweeing [carrying] some. But on the way he accidentally bwoke one teeny piece of the bowl. . . . If the whole dish bwakes, I'm gonna be weally mad. That's what the queen said. The queen is his mom. And he was wehwing [wearing] vewy pretty clothes. . . . If there's a problem that happened, he should tell his mom wight away.

{If something happened?}

Yeah, to the dishes, and the dwink. . . . If he dwopped the corn then his mom wouldn’t be weally mad, ‘cause it’s not in a dish, and it’s not a drink. It was only on the gwass. And he was gonna bwing his pet named Octo to the picnic.

The other pwincesses, they have black lipstick on . . . Someone fired their lipstick, so now it’s burned. . . Yeah, so that why it’s black. . . . I was so so pwitty that they didn’t wanna fire mine.

{You mean burn?}

Yes.

I don’t like the way you are talking [in a British accent].

{Why not?}

It’s funny and I don’t like funny.

{But you’re doing it, too.}

No I am not.

Another day during AT -- we sent this to Daddy in a text message. These girls both love to stand on any big rock, and they usually do a little song and dance performance on the rock, too.