Four Years Old

Anna turned four at the beginning of this month. She is still my independent kid who wants to do everything her way. For example, yesterday she pulled out my quilt that I've been working on for five or ten years. I told her I wanted her to put it away because I didn't want it to get dirty. When she dilly-dallied, I went to pick it up and that brought on a scream of outrage and the declaration that she would give it to me if I would let go first. Then she added that she wanted to hop around it first. Whenever I tell her to give me something that she shouldn't have, she always responds that I have to let go first and then she'll give it to me. We have very similar personalities--we both want to be in control--so we butt heads often, but it is getting better as I'm figuring out how to talk to her so that she'll listen to me.

Her streak of independence and her natural curiosity probably are part of the reason why she loves to play with worms. In fact she loves playing in the dirt in our backyard and just being outside in general. With all this warm weather we've had this spring, she's been playing in my raised garden beds. She loves pulling out worms and the other day while I was digging out weeds, I pointed one out to her. She picked it up and started talking to it like it was a little baby, in a high pitched voice: "Hey there. Do you want to go back into your home?"

Last Thursday we went to PetSmart for a preschool field trip. I was impressed at Anna's willingness to touch the lizards and she even let them put a rat on her shoulder. He liked to nestle back behind her neck under her ponytail.

She has started to ask to say prayers on her own. Often they are full of lots of "thank thee"s. Tonight she said, "Thank thee that daddy can go visit people and serve. Thank thee that I can clean my room. Thank thee for Heather and Maren. Please help them. Please help Ryan on his mission." There was much more to her prayer, and I wish I could have turned on a tape recorder and caught it all because it's only an hour later and I can't remember most of it.

Recently she figured out how to pump on the swings, which is awesome for me because now I only have one child begging me to push her on the swings. Anna still likes a good push, but she can get herself going if I can't get outside at that moment. She's been taking gymnastics all year and she's finally starting to get the idea behind a cartwheel. Now she wants to do them all over the place. She really likes gymnastics, but since she was still talking about her dance class from last year, I decided to sign her up for dance again.

Anna is a great kid who wants to do what's right. Recently, I started planting in my garden and adding fertilizer. I told her I didn't want her playing in there anymore and she's been great about it. Her favorite primary song is still Follow the Prophet and her favorite food is probably cinnamon toast. She also loves to say, "You're really freaking me out, Mom." She's a great kid and we love her.

First Day of Gymnastics

This year, instead of having Anna take dance, I decided to have her try gymnastics. Originally my plan was for her to take gymnastics over the summer and then pick between dance and gymnastics in the fall, but the summer slipped away and I never got her enrolled in gymnastics. Luckily for Evie and I, they have a Mom and Me class for toddlers at the same time as Anna's class, so this time Evie isn't stuck just watching and I'm not stuck trying to entertain her during Anna's class. Yesterday was the first day, so I took a picture of them in their leotards. Evie is wearing Anna's leotard from last year.

For the first twenty minutes of the class, I really started to wonder whether I was wasting my money for the Mom and Me class because it seemed a little advanced for Evie. Her group started on the floor and they had set up a little rotation of stations. At the first station, Evie was supposed to stand on a star, place her hands on handprints on a mat, and then I was supposed to lift her feet over the mat to teach her how to do a cartwheel. Placing her hands on the handprints while staying standing, was a little complicated for Evie. Then they had a soft wedge that Evie was supposed to do a somersault on. She's been doing somersaults since the beginning of the summer, but when she got on that wedge, she thought it was a slide, so it was pretty hard to convince her to do a somersault down it. There was also a spot for doing donkey kicks, and that went about as well as the cartwheel station.

After the floor, we moved to another part of the gym where the kids were supposed to jump on a spring board (I guess that's what it's called) and land on a little target and then raise their arms in the air with a ta-da before moving onto another area where they jumped through some hoops lying on the ground and then ended with a series of donkey kicks. Since Evie is still learning how to jump, I was just glad that she could run in a straight line to the spring board, even if she couldn't really jump on it.

Once we got to the beam, she actually did much better. She wouldn't walk on the beam without holding onto my finger, but she did pretty well and seemed to enjoy it. The teacher had her walk sideways on the taller beam and was impressed that Evie could walk sideways in both directions on the beam. She said it suggests that Evie's very coordinated--something I've suspected myself.

We ended on the bars. Evie got to jump on a little trampoline, which made her laugh. She also got to hold onto a bar, walk up the wall (with my help), and flip over the bar. She actually really liked flipping over the bar. I think that was probably one of her favorite parts of the class.

While trying to help Evie, I tried to see what Anna was up to in her class since she was in the same gym, just on a different station. I missed most of the first part of her class, but got to see her trying the cartwheels. Her teacher also let them jump on a giant blue mat, that seemed to be pretty bouncy and Anna clearly loved that. Next she had them jump off what I guess I'd call a vault. It was a long ways to jump down, but Anna seemed to be a good sport about it. I asked her later what was her favorite part and she said jumping on the big blue thing. I also asked her what was the scariest part of gymnastics and she didn't know how to answer that. So I asked her if any of it was scary and she said no. In the end, I think we all had a fun time.