Fourth Birthday

Today I turned four. I woke up at about 5:45 and came into Mommy and Daddy's bedroom. I told them I was ready to open presents. After some cuddle time in bed, we went into the living room to open my presents.

 Mommy and Daddy got me some power tools like my friend Joey has.

 I also got the princess hair kit that I saw in Target recently. I really love to pretend to do hair!

 After Mommy took Shadow for a walk and Daddy and I spent some time building with my new legos, we went to Pizzaiolo (the chicken restaurant) for breakfast. I had hot cocoa, a donut hole and some toast with brown butter honey.

 We then drove to Fairfield to visit the Jelly Belly factory. We took a tour to see how jelly beans are made. Then we went downstairs and tried some flavors and then made a bag of my favorite flavors.

 Then we drove home and went to Triple Rock for salad and cheese fries with root beer for lunch.

 Then we went to pick up my birthday cake from Marcia. She had made me a beautiful turtle cake!

 After my nap we went to a park in Emeryville for my weekly playdate with my friends.

 We took my turtle cake and my friends sang happy birthday to me and shared my cake.

 After playdate we went out to dinner at Chez Panisse. I wore the new dress and tights that I got for my birthday from Grandma Donna. They had a salad with sweet peas, a yummy cassoulet with carrots, sausage and beans with bread crumbs on top.

 For dessert we had citrus soup with a crispy cookis and a scoop of orange and lemon ice cream.

Then we came home and Mommy and Daddy lit candles on my cake and sang to me. We read my 2 new Elephant and Piggie books and then I went to bed. It was a long, great birthday!

Gymnastics

I moved up to the 4 year old level of gymnastics this last month. I am having to do much harder things and I'm loving it. Here are some videos from my recent class. The first is part of a rotation on some bars.



Mommy used to have to do this trust fall when she was in college. She would be blindfolded, cross her arms over her chest and she was supposed to fall back, knowing her friends would catch her. She could never do it. She always put a foot back to catch herself. I was listening to my teacher describe what she wanted us to do and I just fell right back. I am really good at it now.


Finally, the teacher had us hang from the bar over the foam pit and then she threw the foam blocks at us so that we could try to catch them with our legs.

Swimming

Here is a video of me swimming from my last session of lessons. Teacher Scott told Mommy I could move up to the next level, but that class meets in the lap pool right now while they are redoing the smaller pool and its cold in there! I will wait to move to the starfish class until August when they reopen the warmer pool!

May Day

On Sunday we went to a green May Day festival in the park close to our house. They had Chinese dancers that I was very interested in. We sat and watched for a while. My friend Dalia came and we moved into the shade to eat and listen to some singing. After a while my friend Emma showed up to and the three of us decided to dance around together.

Monkey Bars

After many months of trying to get from the first bar to the second on the monkey bars, today I just went for it. It was a big surprise to Mommy who had never seen me even go from one bar to the next without help. She made me do it a second time so she could get it on tape.

Wacky Wednesday

This is my outfit for Wacky Wednesday at school last week.

Easter

Last Sunday, I woke up before Mommy and Daddy. Mommy heard me come out of my room and then not go anywhere. Next thing I did was run into the bedroom and tell Mommy and Daddy to come look at the jelly beans that the Easter Bunny left all over the floor.
The jelly beans led to my easter basket in the living room.

The bunny left me a chocolate fairy easter bunny. I also got some other fun toys and candy from the bunny. There was another trail that veered off to the front door. I could see one of my eggs that I had painted in the plant pot on the patio outside the door. Daddy said we would go outside to hunt for the rest after he changed. I happened to look outside in the side yard and I could see more of my eggs!




After that we had to go pick up a cake at Marcia and Paul's for Mommy. They gave me a hot cross bun and some cocoa while they wrote on the cake and got it boxed up.

We hung out at home for the rest of the morning and after nap we went to Melina's for some play time and snacks. After our own snack like dinner on the couch we headed off to bed.