4 years + 6 months

Wow--Emily is officially 4 1/2!  Her biggest accomplishment this month was finally learning how to spit water out when brushing her teeth.   We have been trying to teach her for well over a year, but she would always just end up swallowing it.  Something finally clicked, and she pretends to be a water fountain.  We haven't quite mastered swishing around yet, but we're well on our way to graduating from toddler toothpaste! :o) 

Blowing her nose, however, is still another story.  I finally got so frustrated the other day I pulled out a candle and a lighter and made Emily try to blow out the candle with her nose.  She did manage to get it once, but I'm not sure it sunk in.  Luckily, her nose stopped running after that incident, but I know it's only a matter of time before it comes up again.  Listening to people sniffling is one of my big pet peeves.

Another major change this month has been Emily's breakfast cereal of choice.  For the longest time (I'm guessing well over a year now) she has always eaten a cup of Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats Chocolate Little-Bites cereal dry every morning along with her gummy vitamins.  I actually really like this cereal, too, with or without milk.  It's whole grain, high fiber and easy to eat with your fingers.  At one point this winter I had six boxes of it in the pantry because of various sales.  I thought I might be going overboard, but she plowed right through them.  When there was only two servings left in the last box I just about freaked out when I discovered that Fareway was no longer carrying "chocolate cereal" as she calls it.  I mourned when Kellogg's discontinued the Vanilla Creme flavor of Frosted Mini-Wheats, and I thought the same thing had happened to the chocolate.  But the next day Emily suddenly decided that Life was her new cereal of choice and it has been ever since.  Whew!  I did find out that the chocolate flavor had not been discontinued and you can still buy it other places, but now we've moved on to the double-packs of Life from Sam's Club. :o)

As you probably know, Earth Day is in April, and they talked about it at Emily's preschool.  She really soaked it all in and is constantly talking about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (and singing a little song about it), and looking for the three arrows on packaging to see if you can recycle it.  For a few days whenever I had an empty package she wanted to use it to make something else like the soup cans they made into pencil holders at preschool.  However, if she couldn't immediately think of a practical use for it, I made her put it in the recycling bin in the pantry.  (For the record--we recycle a LOT of stuff.  More than we actually put in the trash.  The city of Waverly has financial incentives for residents to do so.)  While we have rolled our eyes at some of the things Emily has said, there have been some perks.  That night I convinced Emily that she could do her part to keep the Earth clean by picking up all the toys before bed--and she did!  ;o)

After all the games she has played at grandparents' houses lately, I decided that Emily was probably ready to tackle the game of Sorry! Now she is hooked.  I kind of helped her out with strategy ideas for the first few games, and she caught on pretty quickly.  It still took her a while to beat me, though.  She is so eager to play that she plots out all the times for the coming week that she will be home while Lincoln is napping so someone can play with her.  (She quickly figured out that having Lincoln around does not work well.)  She's so dedicated that one day I told her I had to lay down for a little while first.  She quietly sat on the chair holding the timer for a full 30 minutes until it went off and I got up from my nap.  She had the whole game set up and waiting to go.  However, that was also the day that I discovered whenever Emily "sets up" the game (she decides who is going to be which color and always wants to go first), you better reshuffle the deck before you start.  A couple times now she has magically started off drawing a "2" and a "12" on her first turn.  For any of you who are familiar with the game, you know that's the best possible draw you could make off the bat.  It's no coincidence.  Sneaky little girl!

Emily doesn't always handle injuries very well.  After I bought Disney princess band-aids she thinks she needs a band-aid for everything, including little bonks on her head or a stinging funny bone.  She skinned her knee one day outside this month and was super dramatic about getting two princess band-aids to cover it.  She carefully protected her knee in the bathtub and refused to take them off for six days.  Those are some sticky band-aids!  She has had a cut on her lip for over a week now that keeps scabbing over, which she picks off and it scabs over, etc.  I'm surprised she hasn't asked for a band-aid for that!

If you were waiting for an imaginary friend update, you will be happy to know that Dirs (pronounced "Dye-rus") had another birthday this month and is now 13 years old.  Emily also has a new friend named Emma.  I'm not sure how old she is.  I recently returned a sprinkler ball thing to Wal-mart that I found out probably wasn't going to work as advertised and Emily was quite distraught about it.  She went on and on about Dirs wanting one but Emma's Wal-mart didn't have one or something.  I finally ended the conversation by telling Emily that she can just go to Dirs' house to play with it. ;o) 

Side note:  This month's picture was actually taken on Friday.  You can tell because Emily has her yellow "Friday" socks on.  She was also super excited to wear her brand new Crocs and insisted on wearing shorts because we had been talking all week about how it was going to be sunny and warmer on Friday.  Never mind the fact that the day started out at 27 degrees.  Gotta love her!