It's Birthday Time for You ---> Callie June

The day we've all been waiting for (and counting down to) finally arrived.  Callie turned four on Friday, June 9th!  She loves decorations so we made a special poster and hung up balloons after she went to bed as a surprise in the morning.  When she woke up, she had a quick hangout session with Grandpa and Grandma Blanchard, where she got to open up her present from them (a subscription to High Five magazine (a Highlights mag for preschoolers) plus a fun reusable animal sticker book). For breakfast she chose french toast with strawberries, cottage cheese and syrup. (We even broke out the strawberry milk mix, too! Happy birthday, indeed!)

Then it was cake-making time.  She is obsessed with the birthday cake matches in our "No Match" game (just plain Memory to everyone else in the world), and those pink-frosted beauties were the inspiration for her birthday cake of choice: (she came up with everything and I did my best to execute) "sprinkles, pink frosting and four layers high of vanilla and chocolate inside".  It took most of the morning to concoct such a masterpiece, but there was lots of beater-licking to tide the kids over.  We also got the pool out for some splashing before lunch.  She chose mac 'n' cheese and peas for that meal, eaten alfresco on the deck.  Our daily No Match rounds happened during Sam's nap.

Note the concave vanilla and convex chocolate - they fit together
like a glove later - haaa!

And then the presents arrived on the doorstep (I ordered them just two days before on Walmart.com with their new 2-day shipping - and everything arrived by Friday afternoon - talk about nick of time!)  I wrapped them while she watched an episode of Magic School Bus on Netflix.  When Gregg finished work a little early, she didn't waste any time opening them up.  Pool floaters, Let's Go Nuts! book (she'd gotten the previous two in the series for her previous two birthdays, so I thought I'd keep up the tradition), butterfly net, little cereal boxes, and popsicles.  She was in heaven.

bonus video!

"popsicles!"

bonus videos!

"mom what is this?"

"yeah, I love it!"

For dinner we had "colored curly noodles with white sauce" and broccoli. Eaten on the deck.  In swimsuits.  (I'm sensing a trend here.)  More swimming after dinner and then it was time for dessert.  We saved the big cake for Saturday's birthday barbecue, but each ate a chocolate cupcake (made from the extra batter) with pink frosting and sprinkles (think of it as a warm up for the big event), plus ice cream cones with pink ice cream (what she was most excited about).  It was a fun-filled day for our fun-filled four-year-old.

bonus video!

"hap-bi-doo"

New tricks on the slide!

And, as a bonus: here's a little bit of what Cal is like as a newly minted four-year-old:

• when you ask her how she is ("Hi, Callie!  How are you?"), she answers, "I'm four," and holds up four fingers to show you.
• loves to color, paint, draw, and "write" letters (as in notes of scribbled lines that she narrates aloud as she writes them)
• 4 year old well check: weight = 28.2 lbs (3%), height = 38.75 inches (29%), eyesight = 20/30
• is a great hiker and loves to be outside
• can make her own pb&j (if I get the ingredients out of the high cupboards for her) - and will even make one for Sam, too
• has quite the imagination and loves to pretend she's Minnie's mom (rocks her, feeds her a bottle, pushes her in a stroller, puts her down for a nap and reminds us to be quiet because she's sleeping)
• loves sunbeams (always volunteers to say the prayer/give the talk or scripture/talk in the microphone every chance she gets) and music makers, and our hiking group and story time at the library
• is quite outgoing and will make new friends at the park as quick as a wink ("Look, Mom! There are kids here I don't know - I can make a new friend!")
• favorite shows to watch: "Big Clifford", Magic School Bus, Phineas and Ferb, Daniel Tiger
• books she always picks out at the library: Curious George and Froggy
• refuses to do the "big" slides (even the ones she did and loved last summer/fall)
• still prone to tantrums, but doing much better as long as we keep her fed (hanger issues to the max) and enough sleep
• is getting better at some of her letter sounds like "th", "l" (that one is pretty much perfect every time now), but still makes an r sound like a w, and has a few words that I don't want to correct because they're too cute ("sanretizer" = hand sanitizer; "lusualy" = usually)
• loves routine and knowing what is coming up (we still "talk about days" every night before bed where we discuss what is happening for the next two days from wake-up to bedtime)
• is learning to sound out some words, and can "read" some words just from context/rhythm/rhyme as I'm reading along
• will listen to a variety of chapter books read by mom, including Little House, Boxcar Children, Beverly Cleary's Ralph books
• likes to wash herself at bathtime (though mom or dad still does her hair)
• says the darnedest things - this one made me chuckle: driving over the North Ogden Divide to the store, Callie was chatting away as usual. Then there was a pause in her talking for maybe a minute, followed by, "Mom, I just can't think of anything to say!"

Cal says "four is the coolest number" . . . and I think I'd have to agree.

Watch Callie grow:  3 years | 2.5 years | 18 months | 12 months | 11 months | 
10 months | 9 months | 8 months | 7 months | 6 months | 5 months | 4 months | 
3 months | 2 months | birth