Lizzie at 4 Years 5 Months

Lizzie will be 4 1/2 on December 6th. In March we will be registering her for Kindergarten which is so hard to believe. I'm pretty sure just the other day she was cruising tables at The Pleasant St. Tea Company with her other little friends. Now her favorite thing to do is to have a play date with her best friends or to paint and draw. She is also a big fan of the Spanish class at her preschool.

At this stage Lizzie can writer her name, recognize numbers and the alphabet and can even recognize some short and simple words. She knows how to use an Apple mouse and can find her way around my iPad (although not as well as Alex). She is also a little chatterbox and pretty much never stops moving or talking unless you plop her in front of the tv. She takes an acting class on Tuesday nights and her teacher, Jape, says she should be a news presenter since she is always giving a running commentary.

Lizzie absolutely adores animals and is the reason we now have a dog (Buffy), cat (Bitsy), fish (Princess Fish) and two frogs (Astrid and Hiccup) plus the crickets which are really frog food. She is not without her problems though and we have been dealing with some behavioral issues. She can have epic meltdowns (we had one today in Petco) that involve her pulling her own hair in frustration. She has also been disrespectful to her teachers at school and mean to her friends. But we are working on these issues and she is getting better. She gets stars for when she gets a good report from her caregiver. When she gets 300 stars we will be adding a new animal to the house. It will be a rodent of some type...sometimes she wants a mouse, sometimes a rat and sometimes a hamster...today it is a hamster. She is pretty close to the 300 so I think Santa will be bringing the cage and everything needed for whatever the rodent-du-jour is.

We also continue to have sleep issues with her which I think is a classic mistake most parents make with their first child. When you have the time to spend putting a kid to bed you take your time, read lots of books and perhaps lie with them as they fall asleep. Of course later when you have more kids that has to go but it is a hard habit to break with the eldest. So we continue to lie with her as she falls asleep. On the days when she has a nap (at school only) it takes forever but on the days when she doesn't it is thankfully quick. She also gets up in the middle of the night and joins us in bed...not every night but quite often. I just figure she won't be doing this when she is 13 and I don't mind the cuddle time.

In general Lizzie is a lot of fun to be around. She is really helpful around the house and a cuddlebug. She is a little fashionista who will only wear shoes which allow her toes to wiggle. She loves her family and is loved by all who get to know her.