Walking with the Cooks: Happy 4 years, Anna!

Anna is FOUR! She is funny and imaginative and the darling of her siblings. We love how our littlest one is growing into our family culture.

Weight: 41 lbs (87%- courtesy of a trip to urgent care on the eve of her birthday...story below!)
Height: 3' 4" (home measurement)

Clothing: 5T
Shoes: size 11

Likes: being read to, skirts/dresses, doing everything the big kids do (other than cleaning up!), "helping" cook, blowing bubbles

Dislikes: being excluded, pants

A Day Her Life:

7:00am Come out of her room for breakfast. She continues to start her day with warm milk in a sippy cup. She and I debate whether or not she is going to eat her banana (spoiler alert: she is . . . every day) and she has cereal with milk.

Morning: Anna spends the morning playing while we do school or joins the big kids in play. They are really good about including her. She makes a great patient in a hospital or baby in a home. :)

Lunch: Anna loves PB&J and fruit or veggies and hummus.

1:00-3:00pm: Slowly, but surely, Anna has been dropping her afternoon nap. We've been letting her look at books during nap time in the hopes that staying awake will help her go to sleep more easily at night. That does seem to be the case, but in the beginning she often caved to sleep right at the end of nap time. Now she tends to either stay awake the whole time or go to sleep right off the bat.

Afternoon: We love playing outside during these lovely summer months. Chalk and bubbles and the little pool are great.

Dinner: Her favorite dinner would be mac and cheese from a box. Anna isn't picky, but she IS lazy if she isn't excited about what we are eating. And she almost always need to go potty right after we pray. :)

7:00pm: Down for bed! Which jammies she wears may be the most important decision of the day. Ha!

How we celebrated:

Anna's birthday fell on a Sunday this year. Normally Sundays come with routine, but this week it rained and our outdoor worship became home worship. Upshot was that Dave got to be home with us to celebrate. It was a simple day at home filled with Anna's favorites. We started the day with cinnamon rolls, opened gifts, talked to family, and had mac and cheese and green beans for lunch. After nap time we had purple icing oreo cake (per the birthday girl's request), watched an Angelina Ballerina movie that she picked out at the library, and finished the day with purple pancakes. She was sad the day was ending, which we could call a success. Our baby is four!

Fun Things:

*Anna is remarkably good at not spilling when she eats from a spoon, such as with milk and cereal. She detests having wet clothes, so maybe that is why?

* Gross motor skills are vastly improved! She probably isn't completely up to age level (ex: hopping is tough for her), but does really well.

* This girl loves all things Frozen. Funny enough, she prefers Elsa over her name twin. She says Elsa is better because she has powers. Who can argue with that?

* Anna is taking dance lessons this summer and it is just as precious as one would expect. A room of three year olds all staying on their X per COVID regulation- it is delightful chaos and she is learning much more than merely ballet.

* We made it one day shy of a year without a doctor visit. As did her sisters before her, Anna put a bead up her nose. After trying everything at home, we took her to urgent care. Urgent care couldn't get it and referred us to an ENT. Yikes! While there they sprayed an agent to reduce swelling in her nose. Thankfully, we were able to blow it out before bed!

A chronological look at the past year: