My daughter is four-years-old! She has been for about two months now…or as she would say, she is: “one, two, fwee, FOUR!”.
I forget how quickly she’s growing…until she reminds me. 
Or until I look back on pictures from two years ago when we first moved to New England. At that time, she still had the chubby little bottom from wearing diapers, she was still practically bald (her hair didn’t realize it was supposed to grow until within the last year!). She still had that teetering run where you hold your breath and just wait for the fall…which sometimes happened, but more often was barely avoided.
But now. Now. Well, she’s an independent little girl with a whole lot of attitude.
Her hair is halfway down her back, and to my delight, she still has her curls. In fact, we usually let her hair dry naturally after her baths because it fluffs up and frames her face in the most angelic way. ADORABLE!
And she loves to dress herself. We sometimes walk out of the house in a purple shirt, an orange skirt and pink cowgirl boots on the wrong feet…but she is proud to say she dressed herself. And I’m happy to let her tell the whole world that, yes ma’am, she dressed herself.
Usually though, in all honesty, she’s quite good at picking out her outfits. I don’t know where she gets her fashion sense, but it sure didn’t come from me. Poor thing. She has a mother who avoided skirts, dresses, frills and all other such “feminine” things clear through junior high and high school. Partially because I was too busy chasing after my brothers, and partially because I knew full well I had no fashion sense and I didn’t want to embarass myself by trying. Which probably means I’ll be quite good at embarrassing her!
I guess I’m just going to have to make sure she has good role models around her who do have good — yet modest — fashion sense. *sigh* Or maybe I should start reading the teen fashion magazines!?!
And then there’s her laugh.
When Abigail was born, she had this wonderful, throaty, raspy cry. It was so cute that sometimes I wanted to pinch her in her sleep just so that I could hear her cry.
I didn’t…
but I wanted to…
And I hoped that her voice would keep some of that throaty, raspy quality. So far, I’m not able to tell if her voice has or not. But recently, she has started laughing at her brother’s silly antics with this belly laugh that reminds me of her sweet baby cry. There are no words to accurately describe it. But I love it. And she only laughs like that around her brother.
So I eavesdrop on their conversations hoping to her that laugh.
Four. Really?
Four still seems so young, so tiny. She still has tiny little fingers and tiny little toes. Her face is still wonderfully round and cherub-like. Not the defined features that her brother is growing into.
I’m not ready for her to grow up yet. She’s my baby.
Baby. That term frustrates her…
She’s only four, for crying out loud. She’s still my baby!
Whenever I call her my baby, she’ll say, in an exasperated tone, Mommy, I’m NOT a baby! I’m a big girl.
I know you are, baby.
