Having a 4 year old is interesting. It’s WAY more interesting than having a 3 year old. Less tantrum-y, too. Mine is learning patience, mostly by watching her toddling sister be impatient. She’s becoming a lot more self reliant, and taking at least a smidge of responsibility. Unfortunately that also comes with a heavy dose of ‘I didn’t do it’… *sigh* Hopefully one of these days she’ll figure out that I don’t really ‘care’ per se what she did if 1. it’s fixable and 2. she learns something from it. Accidentally knocking down sister? Fine, not going to be mad about that. Yanking something from her hands and making her scream (after I’ve said for the 15th time today not to?) yes, might tick me off a bit.
See? Interesting.
She’s also got a vocabulary that would put most texting generation tweens to shame. My husband came home giggling the other evening because she had visited with the neighbor kids for the first time. Sledding! Once she was leaving, she said ‘It was nice to meet you, thank you for playing with me’… yeah. NOT your typical 4 year old’s response. <3 I’m pretty sure those kid’s mouths fell open. We’ve never believed in talking baby talk to the kids. Do we try and use language they can understand most of the time? Yes. Do we dumb it down? Not usually. We might explain words they don’t know, but for the most part it’s pretty much the same no matter who we’re talking to. Whenever I’m not being listened to, I do tend to revert to toddler-ease (you know where you say ‘go.wash.’ instead of ‘can you please go wash your hands they are filthy’) but for the most part, she responds the way we would, and it sounds hilarious coming out of her mouth.
A couple of months ago I got tired of having to supervise the last of the pottying adventures. So I taught her how to wipe her own tush. I still have to remind her to wash her hands (scrubbing with soap for 2o seconds) and to go regularly throughout the day because she gets involved in what she’s doing, but in general, that phase seems to be over. She can dress herself, pour her own drink from a not-too-full container, get a snack and a spoon, put her stuff in the dishwasher, unload the dryer, zip her coat most of the time, run a tablet, TV, or smart phone, write letters and numbers, and read just about anything you put in front of her. I’m thinking if she learns to tie shoelaces I could kick her out into the real world and she’d not only kick arse, but take names, too. She’s my dirt-pile loving, princess dress wearing, coloring book aficionado, and I love her to bits.
She weighs about 36 lbs and is around 42 inches tall. She’ll be taller than me by the time she’s 10. She has outgrown her size 9 shoes, but the 10s are big, we’ll see how summer affects that. Thankfully, her flip flops were still too large at the end of last summer, so I may luck out and not have to buy any this year! We found some winter coats on clearance, we had found sister one for about $10 at Tar-jay the other day. So when we were at Wally we looked and of course she’s wearing a 3T that’s too short in the arms, but huge everywhere else, so we grabbed a boys 5T, figuring, you know, this might work for next year. Glad we tried it on. It fits perfectly right now. *smacks head*, so we went to the BIG KIDS!!!! section. Couldn’t find anything, but finally on an end rack, someone had haphazardly put one size 4-6x coat on the rack. We had to put out nearly a 20 on that thing, but I know otherwise we’ll pay double that amount next year. Both coats are purple with teal/turquoise accents. Purely coincidental. We had found a purple/turquoise hat and mittens set for the little one before, but have other gloves, so we looked around and found an adorable owl hat for K instead in the same colors. If need be, we can give her the matching mittens and let little B wear the toddler ones, depending on fit for next year. (Comparatively, B is TINY as far as hands/feet go.)
This is all leading up to say that she’s getting to be a big kid. Except for in bottoms, and maybe not even that, I think she’s out of toddler clothing. I REALLY hate that because it’s hard to find the 4-16 range that doesn’t have something stupid written on it. I mean, why BFF on a shirt? Is your shirt your best friend? Umm, no. Anyway, I digress. When I was looking around at the end of last summer season, I found some 5T shorts, but upped to the 6x shirts whenever I could find them on clearance for a buck or two. Boys, girls, doesn’t matter, a chipmunk is a chipmunk, right? The boys shirts just have less glitter! Honestly? I’m scared to PIECES as to how those shirts are doing to fit this year. She wore them some last summer, and they were huge, but I couldn’t resist washing them. I really had a hard time finding shorts, but I think because she’s so slim we’ll be able to use some of the 4’s again. I had finally taken away some of the 24 mo. clothes because I knew if I didn’t get them out of her room, she’d be fighting B for them! She’s a beanpole, for sure. Her 4T jeans are getting short in the leg, but they’re as tight as they can go in the waist. At least shorts are forgiving as far as length goes! I nabbed heavily in the 5T jean department from our church giveaway, and had bought 2 pair from old navy when we had freebie points, so she should have some old and some new ones to wear next year. I can’t imagine putting her in a 6, they seem so different from toddler sizes, I guess we’ll just have to see, I am hoping she can wear the 5’s though. Someone from church gave us like a dozen 6x dresses, so hopefully she’ll be in those for a long time once she outgrows what’s hanging up already. The bigger kid clothes are a LOT more expensive than toddler clothes, I have a feeling she’ll have a lot less to wear going forward, unless I can randomly find $1 stuff or peruse goodwill heavily, it’s just crazy, most of it full price is more than I’d pay for something that I would wear…
