47 months old

Only one more month to go until Emily's birthday (thank goodness!).  Her birthday fever is getting worse by the day.  I have already been informed that she is going to have a pink and purple princess cake and wants to wear the birthday crown while everyone else wears party hats.  I can do the hats.  We'll have to see about the cake.

Anyway, Emily continues to absolutely love preschool.  Sometimes she is dressed and ready to go by 8:00am and spends the morning "packing" her backpack, which means I have to unpack most of it before she actually goes at noon.  I'm very glad she's in the afternoon class, though.  Not only do I get a big break while Lincoln is napping, but it would be a challenge to get out the door on time in the morning.  Sometimes it takes 20-30 minutes to convince Emily to get dressed or change her clothes (when she dresses herself it's not always appropriate attire or remotely matching).  One day this month I sent Emily upstairs to get dressed at 9:00am.  When I went to check on her progress 20 minutes later I discovered that she had pulled every single article of clothing she owned off the hangers and out of the drawers and it was all in one giant pile in the middle of her closet.  She told me she was looking for something to wear.  Apparently she hadn't found it.  So we spent the next 20 minutes hanging up and putting everything back.  It was a good opportunity to sort out some of the clothes she had outgrown, but not exactly on my to-do list that day.  Oh well.

I have also learned that preschool means a lot of work for parents.  Emily comes home with lots of activities to do together at home.  Unfortunately, I have a feeling that doing "homework" together is going to be a challenge for years to come.  Emily is very headstrong and opinionated about how she wants to do things.  I have to control the incredibly strong firstborn urge to make sure she does things "the right way".  It will be a learning experience for both of us.

As noted above, Emily can make an incredible mess.  However, sometimes she gets the intense urge to "clean up".  This mostly happens in her room.  She'll spend a good chunk of time picking up everything off the floor and meticulously making her bed with a collection of stuffed animals neatly lined up on the pillow.  There are a fair number of items that just get stuffed in a bin or swept under the bed, but I'm just glad to have the floor picked up.  Here is a picture of a princess birthday party in her dollhouse after one of her cleaning sessions. (She took the picture herself.)

Speaking of princesses, Emily recognizes most of the Disney "princesses" but really has no idea about their actual name or story.  Utilizing the large video collection at the library, we have made attempts to watch several Disney movies this month but haven't made it all the way through a single one of them--Little Mermaid (which Emily calls "Wormy"), Aladdin (my favorite Disney movie), 101 Dalmatians, Toy Story, Toy Story 2.  At some point Emily decides they are too scary and either asks to turn it off or turns it off herself.  If you think about it, there really are scary parts of all those movies.  I guess I don't blame her.  So for now we'll stick with 12 minute episodes of PBS Kids shows. :o)  BTW, Emily loves the new Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That show that was added to the line-up after Labor Day.  One day I caught her getting a little crazy with "Thing One and Thing Two" in the house.  Hmmm...

I'll end this month with a few funny sayings from Emily.  We're working really hard to correct "bres-theck" to "breakfast".  It also took awhile to convince Emily of the correct pronunciation of "zero", which she learned about in preschool this month.  She kept insisting it was pronounced "zee-ree-oh".  Emily says things are "grumbled up" when she means "crumpled up" or "crumbled up"--usually in reference to napkins or cookies/crackers.  Now that the weather has turned cooler, Emily refers to shirts as having "up or down sleeves" instead of "short or long sleeves".  :o)