Happy Fourth Birthday, Eleanor Grace!
This year has been filled with transitions and new experiences for you – more transitions than many people experience in a lifetime! Your life has changed drastically from age three to age four, but you are learning and growing and maturing right along with it and we are so proud of you.
~ You have lived in four different homes this year (our house in Camden, our apartment at training, our first apartment in Latvia, and our second apartment in Latvia), not to mention the 9 (or more?) different transitional homes/hotels we have stayed in between Camden and Latvia. As long as you have your blankie, your thumb, and your mommy, daddy, and sisters, you have been perfectly happy to make a home wherever we have been. I do think you are pretty happy now to have your own bed and some of your very own things.
~ Speaking of your things, you are actually the most organized of all our girls. You like your things to be in their place. One day even I found you organizing our bathroom cabinet – and you did really well!
~ The only toys that you really talked about missing while they were on their six-month journey from Camden to Latvia were your dress-up dresses and your bicycle. You really missed your bicycle while it was on the crate. In fact, one day a couple months ago, you looked out the window and saw a little boy riding his bike. You exclaimed, “Look, Mommy, his crate must have come!”
~ As far as transitions go, you have done fantastic, but since moving to Latvia, you have come to Mommy and Daddy’s bed almost every single night around 3am. You are so funny though because you don’t just climb into the bed. You just stand there and look at me (or sometimes Daddy) until we will realize you are there and pick you up and put you in the bed. Sometimes I’m not sure how long you’ve been standing there! And I know all the parenting books say to put you back in your own bed, but when a baby has been through as much as you have, sometimes you just need Mommy and Daddy. And we might not mind the extra snuggles. You also need lots of snuggles in the morning before you are ready to wake up. Daddy and I get up before you, though, so when you do get up you come out to the living room and sit in one of our laps for quite a while before you even open your eyes!
~ Another big transition for you this year has been starting “Bernudarzs” – Latvian kindergarten. Kindergarten here is from age 3-6 and you have been attending for about 3 weeks now. You had some hard days at first, but you are now getting used to the routine. You lay out your own clothes and pack your backpack each night, and get all bundled up to head out the door each morning. This is more difficult than it sounds because it includes snow pant overalls, winter coat, gloves, scarf, hat, and boots!
~ Your favorite class at bernudarzs is dance. You love to come home each day and teach us the different things you have learned. You also love “sing time” which is what you call music class. It has been so fun for me to start hearing you sing Latvian songs and speak Latvian words that I didn’t teach you! None of your friends speak English, and your teachers only speak a little bit and never to you, and we are already seeing your language abilities start to grow!
~ You do have a couple of complaints about bernudarzs, though! The first is that your teachers don’t want you to suck her thumb. You came home and told me that, so I asked you if you stopped. You said, “No, because it’s only the old teacher that wants me to stop. The young teacher doesn’t care and I think she’s in charge.” Turns out you are pretty intuitive, but we are encouraging you to stop the thumb-sucking (and start obeying ALL your teachers)! Your only other complaint has been that you have dinner foods for lunch. Usually some type of soup or meat/rice dish. Apparently you were pretty used to sandwiches and cold fruits and veggies for lunch and didn’t think that having hot foods counted as lunch! You have now decided that it’s not so bad, though!
~ One of your favorite things about Latvia has been the snow. You weren’t really sure about the cold back in October or November, but once December came and we had some snow to play in, you didn’t think it was so bad! You really like sledding, and you even get Mommy or Daddy to pull you to bernudarzs if there’s snow on the ground! You also have learned to ice skate this winter! You have been several times and you do extremely well!
~ As for things you like to do at home, puzzles are near the top of the list. You are doing pretty well at simple jigsaw puzzles, and you may be getting some more advanced ones for your birthday!
~ You also love reading books. You love looking at books and being read to by Mommy, Daddy or your sisters. Most of your favorite books have been in our crate for the past six months, so you really don’t have many favorites. You do love God’s Very Good Idea which we gave you for Christmas and you want us to read it to you every day. We pray that you will always remember the truth that it teaches.
~ Speaking of reading, you have really been asking about starting to learn to read yourself. You are beginning to try to sound out words, so we’ve started the first couple of lessons in Alpha Phonics. This might be the year that you take off!
~ You have become quite proficient at writing your own name and the names of your family. You really like to draw pictures for us and write our names on them before you give them to us. You do occasionally write your name backwards, starting from right to left, so that it reads perfectly when you look at in in the mirror. But it’s only about 10% of the time, so I’m not too worried J
~ You are quite the talker and most of your verbal skills are very advanced (I credit that to your two big sisters that you have had to learn to talk over all the time), but you do have a few funny things that you say. Our favorite is that you call toilet paper “Poilet Tape.” You also have been known to call your toenails your “tailnose”. It’s pretty cute J
~ You have really enjoyed learning your open string rhythms on the violin this year. You can do pretty well playing “Goody Goody Stop Stop” on open E while the rest of us play Twinkle, so I think it won’t be long before we start working on putting fingers down.
~ Speaking of music, you are constantly singing. You sing while you play, you sing while you eat, you sing in the bathroom, you sing in the car, you sing when we put you to bed, you sing everywhere. Sometimes they are actual songs, and sometimes they are just your commentaries on life!
~ Your favorite things to play with are purses, baby dolls, your doll stroller, and anything pink, purple and girly. You are a very tender and loving little mommy to your babies and love to play that you are the grown-up.
~ You have made so many new friends here in our new home. You have several friends from church, and then you came home your first day of bernudarzs telling us all of your new friends’ names! You still are loyally devoted to your friends from back in the states, though, especially Henry. You also talk frequently about some of our new IMB friends that were in your class at training. All your friends are very special to you!
~ As far as family, you absolutely LOVE any chance you get to facetime Grandma and Grandpa, Mimi and Papa, Great-Grandma, or any of your many aunts, uncles and cousins. You talk about each one of them often and love getting to see them.
Eleanor, you are a joy to our family. You are an extremely passionate child (yes, that means you have high highs and low lows) and you certainly make our life interesting. But you love deeply and you feel things passionately and we pray that God will use those characteristics in mighty ways in the years to come. You are so precious to us and we are thrilled to celebrate four years of life with you today. We love you more than words can say.
Love, Mommy and Daddy
P.S. Here is a picture from each of your birthdays!
January 30, 2014
1st birthday
2nd birthday
3rd birthday
4th birthday!
