At 6:39 last night, Josie turned 4 years old, right in the middle of eating her (second serving of her third) birthday cake! We had a big birthday weekend of parties and celebrating, but that’s another post.

Josie has been taking gymnastics and ballet lessons all this year and loving them. She’s very good at gymnastics in following along and paying attention, but somehow that doesn’t quite hold together at ballet. She’s often throwing herself on the floor and dancing in silly ways rather than graceful and smooth ones. When I ask her to do the nice ballet dancing her teacher asks for, she can do it, she is just choosing not too. Poor teacher Sara. So she’s learning something so we’ll keep with it as she’s enjoying it too and isn’t out of line for the class in general. Her last class is this week so we’ll see how things are going by next fall with possibly a new teacher.

Physically she’s grown in the last six months almost two inches and 3.5 lbs. Right now I think she’s gearing up for another growth spurt as it’s been a while and she’s still wearing the same shoes as last fall. For the first time ever she’s almost worn them out rather than out grown them.

One of her big interests right now is understanding the difference from truth and fiction. She wants to know which stories are true and which are not. She’s asked already about Santa, the easter bunny and the tooth fairy. We also explain how kids and grownups alike like to pretend about these characters for fun and she shouldn’t go around telling people they’re not real. We read a lot of books and she tries to guess which ones are true and which aren’t. Mostly they all are fiction so I’m trying to add some more non-fiction into our reading and discuss which books could happen, versus those that are pure fantasy.

Reading during the day is challenging as Celia does not have patience for long books or me paying attention to Josie for long periods of time. When she’s napping or I’m putting Josie to bed are our best reading times. At night we’ve been reading through the Ramona Quinby series, currently on Ramona Quinby, Age 8.

For fun she loves to play with other kids and can pick up almost anyone at the park for some swinging and playing. I try to get as many playdates in as I can to help her get her needs for pretend play met. At home she always wants to play doctor, cape codder resort, or school again and again. Every day. It has been a good jumping off point for discussing how people enjoy doing different activities and how we’ll play something that she wants to play that I don’t really want to and then she can be considerate and ‘play’ with me, which usually means taking some pictures.

I find she has a better tolerance for picture taking now, especially when we alternate picking the poses. Also if I show her different pictures and explain where the light is good or not and show her the results, she enjoys the mini-photography lessons and uses them when she picks up her own camera (sometimes even uses the terms correctly).

Academically she’s excited to be going to school in the fall. She’s got her letters nailed down and some numbers and likes to write and type for practice. She’s looking at signs and starting to understand the idea of spelling. I’m not so much looking forward to the start of school as I can’t imagine not having her home with me all the time but I’m sure we’ll get used to it. Even just after the weekend I’m ready to get back to ‘regular life’ of me and the girls together during the day. We’ve got our own rhythm and structure to how things go. When that is changed Josie’s behavior usually gets a little wacky. She is definitely one who thrives on expectations, rules, and schedules. With her birthday we let a few rules slide and she seemed a little disturbed for the ‘freedom’ and a bit more relieved as the rules were back in force today. Mostly rules like how much cake and ice cream she may eat.

She’s getting so big now, when I pick her up she’s hanging down past my knees with her feet. She gives such great big bear hugs and I love getting to snuggle with her every night at bedtime. She’s a smart girl and very loving toward us and her sister. They’re playing together more and more now. She has a few nightmares from time to time, but mostly the ‘scary thing spray’ we use takes care of that.

• Size/weight: size 5 and some longer 4 clothes, 41.5″ tall and 36 lbs
• Favorite foods: pasta, ice cream, bagels, breastmilk
• Favorite toy: dress up, bike
• Favorite book: Ramona series, otherwise keeps changing
• Favorite activity: playing pretend
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; gets up between 6 and 7
• New skill: telling the difference between truth and fiction
• Teeth: holding steady at 20
• Vocalizations: working at bit on telling jokes and controlling her voice as her emotions run high and low

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2012 at 9:32 pm by Jen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.