ada charlotte {4 years}

Dear Ada,

How on earth are you 4 years old already?! As I worked on your 4th year video over the last few days, I was reminded of how much you've grown in the last year. I thought you talked a lot a year ago (and you did), but it's amazing how much your conversation has developed in the last year. I love watching you change :)

I'll be honest, you've been a little bit of a threenager in the last year, but I know it's because you've gone through A LOT of changes, plus you're just trying to figure out everything about how the world works. Here's hoping we're mostly over the major sass and stubbornness. 

I love you. I love snuggling with you, tickling you, and laughing with you. I love seeing you learn to be respectful and kind. I love that you can be such a good helper. And I love you even when you drive me crazy -- I love you ALWAYS :)

Stats

• 34.0 pounds (43%) and 3'2.75" (38.75 inches) (30%)
• You have clothes all the way from 2T to 5T, but 4T stuff typically fits the best. We finally implemented some rules about wearing clothes, so now you wear real clothes for every meal, and you wear clothes or a dress-up always (no naked girlie running around!). You still spend most of your days in a dress-up, though.

Milestones

• We helped you stop sucking your thumb by painting your nails with yucky polish. Life has been somewhat difficult since then -- you haven't gotten as much sleep and you're learning to navigate tough emotions without the help of your thumb, which is tough! We weaned you about two months ago.
  
• I know no one else cares about this, but just so I have an idea of what to expect with future kids, I'm going to note that we started having you wipe your own bum recently 😂 

Favorite Things
(I asked, and these were your answers)

• Color: Pink
• Animal: Giraffe
• TV show: Little Baby Bum (which you still call "bus")
• Movie: Frozen 2
• Food: Wendy's
• Book: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
• Thing to do: Play with mom and new Elsa doll (birthday present from Grandma). I'll add that you love to dress up, color, dance, and sing.
• What you want to be when you grow up: Trapeze artist (like Anne from The Greatest Showman)

Funny Things You've Said/You Say

• After one of the times when we talked about how your body takes care of you and does everything it can to heal you, you said, "My body loves me!"
• I often say, "Hi, pretty girl!" and for a while, you sometimes said, "Hi, pretty mama!"
• "I deaded it!" instead of "I killed it"
• "Blueblerries"
• "Daddy-O" and "Mommy-O" (on occasion)
• Anytime we pass anyone, you ask what their name is
• Once, when I was wearing a new skirt, you told me I looked like a princess. After I had taken it off and changed my clothes, you asked me what happened to my skirt (you were sad I wasn't wearing it anymore). After telling you, I asked, "Do you love me more when I look like a princess?" and you said, "Yeah." haha 
• For a while, you frequently asked if Holly could sleep with you :)
• All the time, we'll ask you something like, "Do you know X?" and you'll say, "Yeah." And when we ask, "What is it?", you'll say, "I don't know!" So far we haven't been able to figure out how to teach you to just say "I don't know" the first time 😂
• One time we were having lunch outside, and you said the prayer. In it, you said, "Please bless our cows to sleep good tonight, and bless our horses to come back." Too funny :)
• For a while, it was kind of difficult to get you to pray, so we'd have to be creative. One time, I said, "Will you pray? You can tell Heavenly Father you're thankful we got Wendy's!" and you said, "I think He wants some, too!"
• You always say, "We're so grateful we're loving each other," in your prayers. It's sweet :)
• In the mornings, I go in your room to turn on your light and take you potty before you have some morning quiet time. Typically, I cuddle with you in your bed for a few minutes first. One time, you said to me, "You smell like poop." Except, it was just to be funny! Like your nose was not even close to me, and you just laughed and laughed about that. 
• We listen to a lot of Pandora (music station), which means we hear a lot of ads. One we hear a lot of is for Shane Co., whose tagline is, "Now you have a friend in the jewelry business." and one time you said to me (randomly), "Do I have a friend in the jewelry business?"
• Once when I asked you to go pee before we went somewhere, you got on the toilet to try, but soon said, "I can't! I'm empty!"
• When we went camping, you saw a lot of tree stumps, and you called them "tree rocks."
• You speak/sing in a British accent sometimes, and I'm not really sure why. The only thing I can link it to is Little Baby Bum, but it's even when you're singing or saying non-LBB words.
• You say "haves" instead of "has." "She haves a purple dress" etc.

Random Tidbits

• You think the poop emoji is chocolate ice cream. 💩
• You're obsessed with good guys vs. bad guys, and I'm not sure why. It feels like I should try to get you to not worry about it so much (because you always want to kill the bad guys), so I do try, but I'm not really sure if I should be doing something different.
• If we're ever getting ready to leave and we ask you to go grab something, you always say, "don't leave without me, okay?!" I just think it's funny because in my mind, we asked you to do something, so we're not going to leave while you're doing what we asked ... that would be so rude 😂
• We're involving you in more household chores. Over the last 2-3 months, we've had you start doing the following: Table Tasks (put bib and water away, dishes to the sink/dishwasher, food scraps to the garbage, push chair in); unloading silverware; putting your clothes away; helping with family chores 2-3x/week (dusting, vacuuming, cleaning toilets, etc.). Plus you've been in charge of cleaning up your toys for ages.
• Speaking of toys, we recently got rid of so many of your toys because you were sick of cleaning them up. You actually chose to give them up. Now we mostly just have dress-ups, since you still live in dress-ups non-stop :)
• Oh, sleep. We switched to quiet time around May/June (3y8m), which goes very well. You play in your room for 2 hours with no problem most days. But ever since we had you stop sucking your thumb, sleep has been a bit of a struggle. For a while bedtime was bad, and then it was taking 30-60 minutes for you to fall asleep despite no nap, and then you were often waking up between 5:30&6am, too! So many bad things! I think it's starting to get better now, though. Usually in bed ~6:30pm-6:30am, but sleeping from ~7pm-6am. We're currently doing a sticker chart to encourage you to fall asleep more quickly (<20 min), because you just like to play in the dark in your bed. Seems to be helping. I just don't understand, because when you used to nap, you'd fall asleep in 10 minutes on non-nap days, and then that just kinda stopped. 

Love always,

Mama