Four years old

I know I start every kids age update post with something like, "I can't believe it has been xxx years/months/whatever".  But it is so true!  Time is rocketing by and the girls are growing up so much.

Emeline turned 4!  I don't know where to begin.  She has learned so much in this last year, really maturing and meeting some big milestones.  She took on the challenge of night time potty training like a champ.  I'm still amazed that she just gets up and goes to the bathroom by herself at night, and then goes right back to bed.  It feels like such a milestone for her to have no need for diapers whatsoever and to manage herself so well.  She's also stopped coming to wake us up in the morning...now she will get up and go play by herself in the living room...which will often give us a few more moments of much needed sleep.  Usually this works out well, but occasionally she's gotten herself into some mischief....like opening up birthday presents early, or other such stuff.  But for the most part this shows so much maturity to me.

This past year she's also learned how to ride a bike.  She went straight from her balance bike to a regular bike with no training wheels.  For her birthday we even had to get her a bigger bike because the little one we got from our neighbors was just getting to small.  Now she rides like a big kid.

She's also learning so much more about the alphabet, reading and writing.  She's known the alphabet for a while, but is good now at all the sounds the letters make.  She can't quite write her name, but she's working at writing the letters.  Her name is a bit long, so we came up with a little song to help her memorize how to spell her name.  Now that she can do that she's really proud!

Emeline also loves to play make believe these days.  She's full of spirit and adventure.  She loves Bible stories and has fun acting them out in her own interpretations.  She is so social and absolutely loves to have friends around all the time.  She shows so much empathy for her friends, or anyone really.  God has really given her a gift of compassion.

Since we have two other little ones at home, I often feel like I don't give her as much opportunities to do developmentally appropriate activities...like puzzles or games with small pieces, or other detail oriented craft projects, but when she does them, she's getting pretty good at them.  She still loves running and playing at the park most of all, but she's really growing at focused tasks.  Oh...and dancing!  Emeline LOVES dancing.  We are going to try to fit a dance class into our summer plans, because this one is begging to do ballet.  I'm excited to see if she will actually like it.

There is so much I wish I could capture about Emeline at this age, but it's hard to get it all down, so that will have to sum it up for now.  Here are some sweet pictures of my wonderful big four year old!