4 and a half

Today Sophie is 4.5 years old.  We told her this today, but I'm not sure she gets it yet.  To me, it's just something kinda scary that my little girl is now almost 5 (I know this is being slightly overdramatic).  She can do so much now.  She helps empty the dishwasher, she mostly gets dressed by herself--just socks she needs help with, she helps with cooking, can ride her tricycle all over the place, can count at least to 60, and is almost swimming.  And she can read very well.

Funny reading story: I had a dermatologist's visit and was checking in at the desk.  Sophie read the receptionist's name tag and said, "That's Becky!" and the nurse said, "I am Becky."  We then went in the exam room, saw the doctor, and later came to check out at the desk.  Becky comes over with someone else and says, "There she is! Here, have her look at your name tag."  So the lady comes over and says hello, and Sophie says, "You're Linda," and to another worker, "... and you're Tracy... Simmons" and the whole flock of them are just gasping and going on like Sophie's the most amazing party trick they've ever seen.  One of them asked me if we used the "Your Baby Can Read" program that's on commercials all the time?  I said, no, we just read to her and don't let her watch a lot of TV.

Anyway, Sophie loves reading.  She's just recently started reading books to herself.  She always liked to look at them by herself, but I think she just looked at the stories and some of the words.  But we got The Complete Curious George Collection from the library with all 7 original stories, and she will sit there reading it out loud to herself.  We're trying to get her reading easy story books to Peter, but need to work on her reading slowly and louder.

She is also very big on authors.  I find this weird, but she's always asked about it and read the names.  One day I found a new series of books by Cynthia Rylant called Mr. Putter and Tabby.  Sophie read the name and said, "That's who writes Brownie & Pearl!"  I told her no, it's just spelled similar, but turns out I was wrong and both series are by Rylant.  She loves Rosemary Wells, who writes books about bunnies like Max & Ruby, which is also one of her favorite shows (and we hate it because the whole show is Max disobeying what he's told while Sophie screeches with delight).  And there's another book by her called Emily's First 100 Days of School about another bunny.  There are 100 little scenes about each number.  Each night at bedtime we read 20 of them, so 1-20, the next night 20-40, etc.  We've read through this book at least 5 times.  Other series/authors are Mo Willems, all the Eric Brown books about Arthur or his sister DW, Curious George, some Dr. Seuss books, and anything about school or preschool.


Another side note: at her school last year, they learned Zoophonics animals: Allie Alligator, Bubba Bear, Catina Cat (below is the song they performed at her school for Team Spirit Day).  Well, a few weeks ago, Stephanie told me that Sophie was singing them out of order in the car.  After a minute, Stephanie realized she was singing them backwards.

Sophie is still very good at occupying herself and playing pretend.  She loves dress-up, sometimes dollies, putting things in bags and purses, and shopping.   The thing she plays with most for the last few months is coins.  For Easter she got a little coin purse and some dimes, nickels, and quarters in it.  She plays with them every day, she dumps them on the floor, puts them in other bags, puts them in her cash register, puts them in her car, puts them inside her doll's clothes (then cries for help), puts them in her backpack, etc. In a couple months she's going to be sad when we have to babyproof for Peter and put them up.  She still doesn't really know the values yet, but just the idea of paying money.

Lots of things are getting better for Sophie.  Her speech continues to improve.  She's added so many new sounds that she couldn't say even months ago.  There's still many to improve upon, but other people can understand many things she says now, which is big for her and hopefully the more that happens, the more she'll open up to others.  Pottying is going great.  I know 4 is old for this, but kids with lots of sensory issues have problems with it.  She's been doing well with going whenever she's prompted since last fall, but if we forgot to remind her every so often, she'd have an accident.  But 2 weeks ago or so would stop what she was doing and say, "I need to go potty!" to us.  We'd say, "Well, okay, great, go!"  And since then she's been going pretty much on her own.  We've had 1 accident the last 2 weeks.  It also helped that Stephanie bought her a new pack of Dora panties.

She still goes to occupational therapy, as well, and is behind on fine and gross motor stuff.  Cutting is going well with her new little scissors.  We have some cutting crafts where you cut and follow some dotted lines.  After she finishes that, she'll cut the whole page to little pieces.  Stephanie also on Friday found a slice in one of our cloth napkins.  (We do a lot of crafts at the kitchen table.)  I said, "Hey, somebody cut our napkin?" and Sophie followed up with "And it was me!" which is a thing she likes to say.  Anyway, she still needs to work on jumping, running, throwing, and catching.  She still walks on her tip toes, but she doesn't need orthotics (braces), so that's good.

Sophie has developed a little bit of an attitude this summer.  She's started yelling "No!" at us sometimes and saying "sure" or "yeah" (pronounced show-ah or yee-ah) instead of her usual "yes pwease".  We think this is the kids at her daycare because we noticed last fall when she went to her church preschool, all of a sudden everything was yes pwease and no fank you.  We're hoping that will happen again in August, when she'll be in the 4 year old class (pre-K2, they call it).

And finally, a couple more pictures from the backyard.

new sand & water table

cleaning up after the stump grinder