ZJ's 4 year pictures

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):

September 2015 Pics

ZJ started drawing a wide variety of things. This day was robots.


IJ started guitar lessons. This is his fancy new left handed acoustic guitar.


ZJ started preschool!!!


Her school changes themes each week. The first was all about bees.


Every day there is an art and cooking project. The O bracelet was the cooking project.


Two days each week the kids can have a tea party. They have to invite a friend, set the table, make a sandwich and lemonade to share, serve each other and wash their dishes when they're done.




On Fridays ZJ stays at school longer and packs a lunch. This was her first packed lunch and she helped make it.


IJ had 100% positive marks in his first week's visit to the literary center at school.


There's an easel set up for painting any time at ZJ's school. She painted her daddy with facial hair.

August 2015 Pics

We turned ZJ's car seat to the forward facing position.

The kids swam at the RV park when grandparents visited.


IJ is finally figuring out swimming but still struggles.




  

Lots and lots of fun park visits before summer ended.




















1st day of 1st grade.

July 2015 Pics

I went out to dinner with my new mama friends from IJ's class.

We walked/biked to the neighborhood juice place so the kids could share an acai bowl.


IJ built his new birthday legos.




We took the kids to a play with some friends.


IJ had 2 weeks of writing camp right after a week of soccer camp.

IJ's 6th birthday parties

The day before IJ's birthday, a Sunday, we had a family celebration. We started with Kayaking.





Then IJ opened gifts and we had homemade chocolate (coconut milk) ice cream with toppings. IJ received a set of pop up soccer goals, a LEGO set, a new rain jacket and his sister got him a new hat.

 



On IJ's actual birthday we started a new tradition of birthday breakfast chocolate chip pancakes.


The following weekend we had his birthday party with friends. We set up at a local park with splash pad, playground and lots of shade trees. IJ wanted a LEGO party so I made some LEGO decorations and we had LEGO activities. We set up a table with homemade lemonade, watermelon, mixed fruit, popcorn, veggie chips, coconut wafer rolls and veggie sticks in sunflower seed butter. We had a container of LEGOs for the kids to guess how may it contained. The kid who guessed closest got a LEGO prize. We also gave each kid a bag with pieces to build an airplane and NJ showed them how to build it. I made chocolate cupcakes with coconut whipped cream and chocolate LEGO topping, which didn't do well in the heat. IJ had a number 6 sparkler instead of a candle and a fencing mini figure on his cupcake. Each kid got a LEGO Mixels as their parting gift with a cute LEGO thank you tag. I did not take enough pictures and some of these are from attendees.











Here's how the cupcakes look when prepared in my slightly cooler kitchen.