Anxiously Tranquille: Claire is 4

Amazing to think that she is 4 already. She has changed so much in the last year. She has grown and matured quite a bit. She is actually growing taller as we speak it seems. She has hit another growth spurt lately. I bought her shoes a few weeks ago, thinking I would save them for when she needed them. The very next day I was helping her put her old shoes on and was having a hard time and realized that her toes were very scrunched. I asked if the shoes hurt her feet and she said yes. I sent her upstairs to get her new ones. Up until this point, she never wanted to wear her tennis shoes to preschool. Now she will put the new ones on without a fuss. Silly girl. If it hurts, tell me! I was just thinking it was strange that she had worn the same size shoes for almost a year. Oh well, at least the old ones weren't too beaten up. She only wore them for a few months. Elizabeth can have them. And then, a few days after giving her the new shoes, I realized that none of her socks fit her. So I had to buy new socks. And her shirts were all short, so we had to change those out for her 4t shirts (Thanks Aunt Jenn!) And now when she stands next to Alex, he seems like a midget and she is super tall. We just did her birthday measure- she is 3 inches taller than she was last year.

Otherwise, she is doing great. She still loves preschool. It is so much fun for her. We are working on getting her evaluated for speech therapy. She has an appointment in March. Her teachers mentioned that they can't understand her very well, and while it is getting better, there are consistent things that she does. Like she says "ay" instead of "s" at the end of words. She can say S at the beginning or middle, but not the end. And Alex is starting to pick it up. So we really need to get this fixed.

I put her big girl car seat in the car too. She is very excited about that. I'm glad that I can move Elizabeth to the Britax, because she doesn't really fit too well in the baby seat any more. Claire can unbuckle herself from her big girl seat, and she can unbuckle Alex now. It makes getting out of the car a lot easier. And so far, she hasn't abused the privilege. We have always been very strict about car safety. Alex and Claire will actually start crying if I forget to buckle them. They always tell me if I forget. (Come on, I have three. It's easy to forget one of them sometimes.)

Her birthday was all about princesses this year. She got some Belle dolls and some dress up shoes and I made her a Belle dress. She wants to wear her Belle dress to church on Sunday. She asked for a chocolate butterfly cake, so that is what she got. It actually turned out pretty nice.