Four Years Old

Sabine turned four today. Almost to the minute, as I type this. In some ways, it feels like the past four years have flown by, on the other hand, both Dustin and I have remarked that we've thought of her as four years old for months. She's done a lot of growing, physically, mentally, and emotionally, recently.

I realize it's been a while since I've done an actual update on her development, so a milestone as big as a birthday seems like as good of an excuse as any!

Sabine is somewhere between 34-35 pounds, and seems relatively tall compared to a lot of her peers, although not abnormally so. We'll get official stats from the doctor in a couple weeks. She likes dancing, swimming, and football, and practices them all at home in various ways. Dustin is training her to bleed orange and blue.



Sabine loves preschool, and has found one buddy that she seems particularly attached to, although she seems to enjoy most of the kids in her class. Phew!



She also loves spending time with her cousins. Cousin E gets treated like a little brother, she always wants to see him and get presents for him, and at the same time he gets blamed for every toy that's out of place or anything that doesn't go according to her plans. Cousin H came home from the hospital recently, and is fascinating to watch. I think she can't quite believe we'll have one of those in our house in just a few months!



I've been having a lot of contractions, ever since I was about 17 weeks along. It's early to be feeling them, but my doctor isn't too concerned as long as I push fluids and get my feet up as much as possible. We're kind of referring to it as modified bed rest. Sabine has just been a champ with a laid-up mommy. She plays independently really well now, and we read a lot of books together. She has a ton of favorites, the francophiles in our family will be happy to know she is already devouring Asterix and Obelix. Fancy Nancy is another series favorite. And usually anything with witches is popular, especially good witches. We made it to the bakery the other day for a treat, and she of course picked a cookie shaped like a witch hat.



Occasionally we have had friends over too, we are lucky to have some good friends who are willing to accommodate my current status of living from the couch. And even then, Sabine will often "read" to her friends.



Sabine loves to play with dolls, both babies and older dolls that she can dress and undress. She also loves dressing herself up, I think that is her favorite activity right now. Grandmom and Grandpa came down to have a little birthday celebration yesterday and brought some dress-up clothes, which were a huge hit.




(Grandmom made that sparkly mini dress back in the day, and mommy used to wear it to parties in college, so that is third generation disco wear right there! And fortunately the perfect length to be long for Sabine but not quite sweep the floor.)

Also, what is a birthday celebration without a chocolate treat--in this case a brownie pop with Grandpa.



This morning Sabine opened a couple of small presents from us.







And she and daddy made special birthday chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.



Although her real birthday present is a new big girl room upstairs, but it's running a little behind schedule, so we'll celebrate that one at a future date. It's going to be dark purple and dark pink, her current favorite colors. She's not interested in pastel at all. Most things about Sabine are intense.





She can take herself very seriously, but she also loves a good joke. Recently we've been teasing daddy because mommy and Sabine like everything Christmas-related a LOT, but usually we try to hold off until December. Sometimes we can't help ourselves and read Twas the Night Before Christmas over and over, or burst into song, and it drives daddy a little bonkers because "it's not December yet!", which is just hilarious.



Sabine's been a good sleeper recently, usually going to bed around 7:45 and sleeping until 6:30 or 7:00, occasionally waking up for a quick bathroom run. She likes to eat what's familiar, peanut butter and jelly and mac & cheese are still staples, but she also likes sushi rolls, asparagus, anything picked fresh off the vine or out of the dirt at farm (last week she came home with fresh tomatoes and carrots--yum!), and balsamic salad dressing. 

She loves her friends and can be pretty generous with them, her biggest sharing hang-up is bunny. Bunny still holds a special place in Sabine's heart, and she doesn't share her with just anyone. Sabine can write her name in capital letters, and often practices on the windows in the shower with her finger. She can shampoo her own hair (with supervision, of course) and mostly dress herself. Speaking of, we are going through a major dress phase. It's difficult to convince her to wear pants, and for the most part we don't push it except for Mondays when she goes to farm. She likes jewelry and fancy hairdos, and seems to have settled deeply into girlie-girl culture. However, she did pick out an excavator as her most recent toy that she HAD to have. Our newest rule is she has to give up three toys to bring a new one in, and a doll, a food set, and a baby toy went out the door to make room for the excavator and the construction accessories it came with. She is certainly not one-dimensional.

She also still LOVES to sing, and seems to be moving past "baby" songs, nursery rhymes and lull-a-byes. Her favorite songs to sing these days seem to be "Castle on a Cloud" from Les Mis, and "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys.

Sabine can get frustrated easily, but is good at communicating what's wrong. Tantrums are almost non-existent, knock on wood. She loves secrets and keeping things "private," right now. I think she's much more in tune with the fact that we really can't read her mind, and, oh the power that comes with having your own private thoughts!

And when she grow up, she plans on having no less than three jobs. She's going to be a swim teacher, pharmacist, and ballerina, in that order, if you ask her.

All in all, she's a smart, loving girl. She's very affectionate, even if it's always on her terms. She is very attached to her extended family, we talk about people in Michigan, Delaware, and Virginia all the time, as well as great-grandparents on both sides who have passed away. We're so excited for the year to come, and to see her grow and blossom even more.

We love you so much, sweetheart pumpkin pie!