I <3 4-year-olds

For the first few months after we came home from China, I held my beautiful, healthy, and sweet nine-month-old and thought, "I can't wait until she's four." I felt terrible about having such a thought; I had asked for a baby "as young as possible," and not only was Sergeant young, she was gorgeous, healthy, good-natured, smart, and attaching beautifully. Even so, it was hard to go back to bottles and diapers and cooking with a baby on my hip. And it was really hard to go back to frequent night wakings. With time, I stopped wishing for time to pass and got used to my "new" life with a baby, and then a toddler. Time marched on, as it always does. The terrible two's kinda sucked, and the attachment difficulties this fall really sucked.

Sergeant will be four next month, the most magical age. We've (mostly) moved past the attachment issues of the past month and she is turning into the sweetest, funniest, smartest little creature. Every morning when she wakes up, she asks to "snuggle" in bed. She cracks nonsensical jokes and feels likes the world's funniest comedian because you can't help laughing at her. She knows all the lyrics to all the High School Musical songs and sings them - in tune. She makes a trip to the grocery store an adventure - insisting on pushing the cart, even though she's not tall enough to see where she's going. She's circled everything in the toy catalog and yells, "I want that" at most of the toy commercials. Unless, God forbid, it's a "boy toy." She thinks the Christmas lights I put up (I know, prematurely) are the most beautiful she's ever seen. While I tried hard to enjoy each of her ages and stages (and did), I was right to daydream wistfully about this time. Four-year-olds rock!