four going on fourteen.
Can I just take a moment to express disbelief that my daughter will be four years old in less than a month? I mean honestly. I can’t get over it; four. I remember her newborn days so well, and they seem like they weren’t that long ago, and yet this morning she argued with me about what she’d wear to school (the sweater we’d chosen together the night before was deemed unacceptable because the sleeves were “too crumply,” which I can only assume means that they do not fit her arms like Spandex) and told her dad that he was “ruining her life” because he wouldn’t allow her to wear more than one necklace to school.
“You should be more like my ANIMALS!” she told him, gesturing to the menagerie crowded onto her bed. “They don’t even talk to me and they don’t tell me NO MORE NECKLACES!”
Wait, did I say four? Maybe I meant fourteen. Either way, here it comes in all its sassy, independent brilliance.
:::
Speaking of sassy… MAN do we have it in spades at our house lately. It is hysterical except that it’s not, because you really don’t want to hear your child howling things like “YOU RUINED MY LIFE!” in public, you know? So we’ve been working pretty hard on curbing it. This has meant a lot of tantrums and time-outs lately, and a lot of talks about kind words. So far, we’ve noticed a marked increase in the use of “please” and “thank you” – words that had fallen by the wayside, unfortunately – and an immediate realization when she has said something that qualifies as sassy.
This morning as we left for school, Jimmy handed Madeline her backpack. When she saw it, hanging in mid-air between them, she sighed and said “Just give it to Mom.”
“Madeline!”
A quick look, then another sigh. “I will carry it, then. Was that sassy?”
“Yes,” I said, biting my tongue against the I am not your servant that was bubbling up in my throat.
:::
However, for every one of these four-going-on-fourteen moments of sassiness, there are several full of sweetness and silliness. The other morning as I was getting ready she brought her Oh Say Can You Say Di-no-saur? book into the bathroom and sat at my feet (literally on my feet), reading quietly. Then she piped “Look! You are the maiasaura because of her nest and her babies, and I’m apatasaurus, and Daddy is the brontosaurus with the long neck. We’re a family!”
She’s been reading so much, more than ever, and she has a few books memorized – most notably Too Purpley, which pretty much perfectly describes our morning routine of getting dressed. She knows most of her numbers and letters and shocks me daily with the things she suddenly knows – right before my eyes, she really is counting and recognizing some of her sight words. She is writing several letters like a champ, and has the M-A-D part of her name down pat. (We’re still working on E.)
We’re still working on a lot of things, but you know what? I think I’m going to love four. If history holds true, then I will love this coming year even more than the ones before… sassiness and all.
