She will be four this Sunday, and I will certainly post how we celebrate, but I also wanted to highlight her personality these days...
Bella is tender-hearted, often saying things like: "I love you mommy so much, I love playing with you."
Bella is pretty artistic, she is left-handed, and she is more timid than our other children.
She is quick to forgive and loves playing with her brother and sister.
She still cries almost daily at drop-off at school, and then at pick-up animatedly tells me the kinds of games they played. Last Friday was the first day that she did not cry in a while. (they now have a short break for dragon boat festival)
For her birthday when asked what she wanted (for a cake), she said: a princess riding a horse, about to get married. (Really, something so simple?). Then she said later she wanted a cake with a bridge on it and fish in the water. She mentioned a chocolate eclair cake, but I don't have the ingredients for that....she changes her mind almost daily.
For her party I asked who she wanted to invite, if anyone, and she said, "one friend from class, I will show her to you, and my Yang Laoshi".
Bella is reading. We finished up her ABC stuff, I still wasn't sure what to do next. And Sophia kept telling her: 'next you will learn to read'. And so we started '100 easy lessons'. I had no idea what to expect, and didn't expect too much, I knew she knew most of her letter sounds, but we hadn't practiced a ton. I made a chart, for both girls and reading goals, so that by the time we go to Thailand for a week summer break in July they will get a small gift certificate to Toys-R-Us. This is great motivation. And I give one skittle per her reading lesson. She often does two a day! And most importantly, she is getting it, with no complaints! She is on lesson 23. Good job, girl.
We hope as she turns four, or soon thereafter, to help her stop sucking her thumb, we think this will also help her maturity. She had stopped a long time ago, but it prevented her afternoon nap so much that I gave it back to her. Now that she doesn't nap, it is time to give it up. This will be super hard for her, she has no desire to stop.
For this K4 year I am not sure when I will start certain things. No pressure and no rush. Her step into reading is great, and we will continue. We may start Right Start Math maybe when she is 4.5, we will see. She already does quite a bit of memorization with us, with no pressure, just her presence, she has an incredible memory and knows our catechism questions and Bible memory verses pretty well.
Some of her favorite things to play are 'drawing with mommy', and setting up a house, where she takes baskets and stools and makes a fence like area and calls it her house.
She really got it in her head that she could marry Tobin. She thought it was a no-brainer. "I will just marry Tobin". We told her she couldn't do that, not possible. "okay, then I will marry daddy". No, still not possible (but try to find someone just like him!). We told her she can't marry family, or cousins, and I listed them out. She thought and thought...."what about Oaky?" Yes, you can marry Oak (our friends two-year-old), but you are older than him, you are closer in age to Ezra, but really those are both great options. (let's hold off on the marriage talks kiddos).
God has blessed us with some amazing kids, each with quite different personalities that bring something different to our household. We are still in super training mode with these little ones, it is hard, hard, but worth it.
