I've been a horrible, horrible blogger lately. My excuse is that my Canon died literally minutes after we arrived at DisneyWorld...it figures. It is still in a local shop getting the circuit board replaced. I'm almost ashamed to admit how lost I feel without it. I have missed so many great photo opportunities with my girl. The shot above was taken at the Zoo pre-Canon-crash-and-burn.
But Fall is officially here now and with it comes all of the pretty colors and georgeous weather and cute new outfits on my girl. That's it, I'm calling the shop tomorrow to beg him to hurry up and finish fixing my camera.
There's actually a lot that's been going on since my camera broke earlier this Summer..a lot of which I've neglected to document here on my "scrapbook", and I feel kinda bad about this. The most important being that my girl turned 4 1/2. Four has been such a fun age with Kerry and I can hardly believe it's already half over! So now that she's reached this mile-stone I guess it's time to document where she's at right now.
First off , she has just become so much more independent in a lot of ways and even the way she talks and the things she says are telling me that her little mind is becoming even brighter, it seems, by the day! She's doing addition and subtraction now.. and the biggest thing? She's reading now, yall! As in not just sight words, but last month she just kinda picked up a Berenstein Bears book that we had just brought home started reading it...only needing help with the trickier words. Would have blown me away even more if I hadn't already guessed, when she was 26 months old and could identify every letter of the alphabet, that she might end up being an early reader.
What is Kerry "in to" at 4 1/2? Well, she's still in to all things Disney...the girl loves Minnie and Mickey and lately she seems to be a bit more into the "Princesses" than she was before, especially since getting to meet them at DisneyWorld. She's into playing board games and card games. In fact she recently got take some money from one of her piggy banks after looking through all of the toys in the store she picked out a Disney Princes Yahtzee Junior game...and it was a toss up between that and another game, or a puzzle. Which brings me to another thing she's really in to...puzzles. She LOVES working on puzzles, especially if one of us will sit with her and work on them. My mom has found about a half-dozen really cute 100 piece puzzes for her for a dollar a piece! She is also really into playing her Wii games and playing games on a couple of preschool sites on-line.
She still loves to paint and draw and said again just yesterday that when she grows up she's going to be a "big artist"..because right now she's just a "little artist", hehee.
Her favorite shows right now are Caillou, SuperWhy, Team UmiZoomi, Max & Ruby, Little Einsteins, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She also somehow discovered the "America's Ninja Warrior" show a while back and was really loved watching that on whatever weeknight it came on until the season ended. Her favorite foods are still rice, mac-n-cheese, soups, and any kind of meat. I've always called her my little carnivore and she is quite a picky eater these days. When she first came home she would eat anything you put in front of her..not so any more.
She still loves her "robe" and sleeps with it every night and she still would rather play with her stuffed animals than dolls most days. She calls them all her "friends" but has always had 4-5 favorites all of which are Pandas or Penguins. Lately her most favorite is Penguin Puppet and he has been going absolutely everywhere with her and sleeps with Kerry and her robe at night. You'll notice that I did not say that he sleeps with her at nap-time because those are a thing of the past now, aside from the occasional car-seat nap.
She started gymnastics in July and is love, love, loving it! She had done a few semi-parent participation sessions just after she turned three but it was a 45 minute drive and at that point she still didn't do too well with a stranger giving her directions her and physically guiding her so that just kinda fizzled. After seeing how well she is doing in her Thursday MDO program and in class at church we found a gym ten minutes away and signed her up. She is so excited to get into her little leotard and when we get there she runs straight out into the big gym to find her coach. She started out in the preschooler group and I can't even tell you how cute they all were practicing somersaults and learning to balance, but mostly fidgeting. But after eight or nine sessions she got moved up to the beginners glass. Kerry thinks it's great that she gets to practice with the "big girls" who are all of 5-7 years =). It's faster paced and they're doing a bit more challenging stuff so she sleeps really well on Thursday nights.
Another thing I've noticed about four is that it seems to be a very "sweet" age. Kerry is really learning more about being thoughtful and kind and helpful and cooperative. The typical little tantrums that you might see at two, and even three, are no more. My Jiangxi girl can still show her
"spicy" side and still ends up with an occasional time out. She still has a bit to learn about being patient and when she can and can not be in control but she is, after all, only four. Most of the time she is my happy, silly girl and I still just can't get enough of her =)
