4 years old!

Our town did trick-or-treating yesterday--we gave out 1,050 pieces of candy in an hour and a half! So today was exclusively for Zari (not that she minds having her birthday on Halloween). We got out her memory book and looked through pictures of her first days and weeks. We told her the story of when she was born. She hasn't looked at the book for a while, so most of the pictures were new to her. "Oh look, that's me when I was teeny tiny! Look, that's me nursing when I was a baby!"

If you're newer to this blog, you might enjoy looking at these posts and pictures of her birth:

• Birth announcement (I'm not wearing any clothes, so just be warned)
• Zari's birth story
• Eric's version 
• Videos of Zari's first day

As much as it is bittersweet to see my children grow up so quickly, it's also so fun to see them develop into their own unique selves. Zari is quirky and still sometimes solitary, but she is also learning how to play with friends. She loves dragons and dinosaurs and scary stories. She's developing a vivid imagination and will often act out various pretend scenarios in great detail. I love that she hasn't been inculcated with Disney or cartoon culture yet. She doesn't know who Dora is and I am quite happy with that! She loves to talk about her dreams and her daydreams. Most mornings we talk about our dreams. Often she'll hear mine and then pipe up with her own version of my dream. But sometimes she tells ones that must have actually happened in her own head, they're so strange! Her latest daydream involved riding on an elephant in the forest.

Zari is starting to sing. She still doesn't stay on pitch very well by herself, but she can match our pitches if we sing along. She surprises me with the songs that she knows. Every night when Eric puts her to bed, he sings The Beatles' "I Will." I've caught her singing it to herself several times now. When Dio gets hurt, she sings him the song I used to sing to her when she was sad or hurt.

I started a smiley face/frowny face chart a month or two because Zari was incessantly tormenting Dio. She gets smiley faces for being helpful, doing nice things for Dio, doing her "jobs" (putting the clean silverware away), sleeping all night long, etc. She gets frowny faces for temper tantrums, pushing, hitting, taking toys away from Dio, etc. I think it's working. She's very motivated by getting smiley faces; she'll often share things with Dio, then ask me right after, "Does that mean I get a smiley face?" Fine with me!

I'm so honored to be her mother. I love that she tells me almost every day, "I love you so much, mama." The past few days she's said during our morning family snuggle: "I love you as high as the moon, and I love papa as high as the sun" (or vice-versa).

Happy birthday!