ZJ is 4 years old!

10.6.15

ZJ is 34.5 pounds (48%) and over 39" tall (38%). She wears size 9 shoes. She loves puzzles and can do 100 piece ones on her own. She likes drawing, painting and making art. She loves to play outside digging, climbing and now loves riding her balance bike. She can go quite fast on her bike and is starting to balance a bit. She occasionally rides to and from her brother's school. She loves books and being read to. She can write pretty well when words are spelled out for her, she's sounding out words and starting to spell 3 letter words.

ZJ has finally started school and loves it. She's in a preschool coop so I work there once every 2 weeks. She goes Tuesday through Friday 3 hours a day plus an add on program on Fridays where she eats lunch and stays an extra 2.5 hours. Her school has daily art projects and cooking projects or tea parties, lots of outside play time, and lots of creative indoor play time. Each week is a different theme and the parents are responsible for these. ZJ is one of the oldest in her preschool and she is starting to make friends and interact with the others. The first few weeks she mainly played by herself and talked to the teachers.

ZJ is a happy, joyful child. Seeing all the other personalities at her preschool has made me realize this even more. She is smart and loves to talk and ask questions. She loves to cuddle. She bonds with the parents of other kids, mainly IJ's friends' parents and loves to talk with adults.

ZJ no longer refuses to have her hair up and since she started school, it's up most days. We do buns, pigtails, a ponytail or other combinations. She always has clips in the front because we are growing out her bangs.

ZJ goes to sleep in her own bed every evening and wakes up and gets into our bed every single night. It is usually in the early morning hours. She sleeps about 11 hours a night and since school started she's napped a couple times because she fell asleep in the stroller heading home from IJ's school in the afternoon. She should sleep more but since she comes to my bed every night she wakes with my alarm every morning,

Other than colds and congestion which she gets over very fast, she's had one other illness. She woke up in the middle of the night vomiting repeatedly for about 2 hours and was then fine. This happened during the summer.

Here's her 4th year at a glance (last year here):