4 Years Old

It's hard to believe, but my baby girl turned 4 years old on the 6th. The time has simply flew by more quickly than I could have ever imagined. As I say every year, it seems like just yesterday we were talking with Tiffany and praying that maybe just maybe this would be our baby girl and now here we are 4 years later, parents of a high energy, super smart, opinionated, and beautiful girl. When I think back over the past year I am filled with wonder over all she has accomplished. She started preschool and learned how to successfully become part of a classroom. She made friends who not only wanted to see her, but who she wanted to see too! She learned to pedal her tricycle and then moved on to a big girl bike with training wheels. She learned to swing on a swing by herself, starting off from completely still to pumping herself so high the chains on the swing set chink! She climbs, runs, and jumps with reckless abandon. Her vocabulary is ever increasing and she's begun to ponder some of the deeper questions in life such as "Why can't we see the Earth spin?" And the reading, oh the reading. She's gone from level 1 readers to independently reading an entire chapter out of the chapter book The Boxcar Children. She devours every book she can get her hands on and can read just about any book you put in front of her. Of course, there have been some less than stellar developments over the past year such as increased levels of defiance and screaming, learning to use hateful and hurtful words, and increased aggression. Still on a whole this year has been full of accomplishments to celebrate. And celebrate we did. We rocked it out at Chuck -E-Cheese and Hannah actually gave the big mouse a high five and stood right next to him for a picture. For her actual birthday dinner she requested we go out to dinner at On the Border and she was delighted when the servers sang her happy birthday and brought her a brownie and ice cream.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl! Though they've sometimes been hard, you've given me the best four years of my life so far!

Photo Notes: These were taken at Hannah's preschool "Graduation" (though she and several other of the students aren't actually graduating and moving on to kindergarten!)