Kate: 4 Years Old

This beautiful daughter of ours turned 4 years old in September. I took these two pictures this summer while we were in Utah. I love them and I love her.



Kate is a delight. She is happy, passionate, smart and fun. So far being 4 has been good for her. She has learned a lot in preschool, is more in control of her emotions and it is fun to hear her thoughts voiced.

She is a girly girl all the way! She loves to have her fingers and toes painted, she loves new clothes and is always complimenting me when I am getting dressed, putting on my make-up and wearing jewelry. She LOVES jewelry. One of her favorite things is to wear necklaces from my jewelry box.

 

As much as she is a girl she also holds her own with her brothers. Kate loves to play outside and is super speedy on her plasma car. She loves to go to the park and is finally at a stage socially where she will go up to new friends and start playing with them whereas before she would be too shy to talk to the other kids playing. 

 

Since she is our only girl, and will remain so, she doesn't really play much with her gender specific toys unless another girl friend is with her. She does love to play dress-up but for the most part she does with the boys are doing. She likes to build with her duplos, LOVES to color, loves babies and helping in the kitchen. I need to do better about letting the kids help in the kitchen but with three littles clamoring about it is easier for me to just get it done without all the fuss and inevitable sibling squabbling.

 

Kate is very social and is constantly asking me if we are "going" ie: what are we doing today mom?

Yesterday morning as I was preparing breakfast she asked "Mom, are we going?". I replied with our very busy morning that we were going visiting teaching, then to the park to do another visit, home to eat lunch, brush our teeth, then off to the dentist to get their teeth cleaned and finally to preschool. She looked at me and just nodded her approval that I had sufficiently filled her morning. Funny girl.

She is generally really good about letting me do her hair though she prefers to let it hang loose and free. If I do her hair nicely for school it is inevitably taken out when I pick her up or she looks like she ran a marathon or something with how messy it is. 

She loves to talk about our baby. She is always asking me about him, she loves to feel him kick and keeps telling us that she doesn't know what his name is. Neither do we Kate, neither do we. She reminds me that my belly is getting "bigger and bigger and bigger!". She is going to make a fantastic big sister.

Kate had a nervous habit of picking at the skin around her thumbnails and would just pick and pick! We would remind her often to stop, put band-aids on, tell her she couldn't get her nails done until she stopped picking, etc. It has taken several months but she finally quit. I'm proud of her. She has stopped biting her nails and picking which is wonderful for her. 

We love our Kate! She is very much a daddy's girl but I am grateful to have this sweet girl of ours too. Her love language is definitely touch and she really thrives and responds when she is getting her needs met. Phil is really good about this and I am trying to do better. It is so easy to love on my babies when they are small and I am finding that I get too distracted and busy with the care taking of our family that I too often brush my big kids aside. That sounds terrible typed out! What I mean is that I am trying to slow down and remember that they are still so small and need me and my showing of physical love and touch to them just as much as they did when they were babies, maybe more so now! 

Happy 4th Birthday sweet girl! We love you more each day.