Metal Meredith

I do understand that most 4 year olds are nutso. Luckily, Vivienne is no exception.

This year at school, they has opposite day. She chose to wear her clothing inside out and accessorize with a winter hat and snow boots. If that wasn’t enough, she insisted on making silly faces when we tried to get pictures:

She went through a phase where she insisted on having ponytails each day for school. Although I tried to not be my mother (who had the need to make those ponytails as tight as could be), Vivienne still had her moments where she could not accept that sometimes it would hurt, even just a little…

Thankfully, she forgives and quickly forgets.

When Henry was first born, she took her own sweet time adjusting. While we thought she was doing wonderfully and we had it so easy, she was quietly plotting. Mostly in another room. This is what quiet plotting looks like:

Of course, there is just a lot of silliness in this house to begin with.

I finally went through the piles of papers and projects sitting around the house and took photos of them all. I uploaded them to Flickr in order to preserve Vivienne’s artwork from last year and this year.

This was one of my favorites from last year, a jellyfish and crab from sea creature week. Phil thinks the crab looks very much like the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I agree!

We are also well past the human squid phase from a few years ago:

And have moved onto monkey, hands coming out of head phase (The 0 1 0 at the top was her way of writing DAD or MOM or Dear Grandma or I Love you):

We introduced her to the camera this year. She enjoys taking photos and she has a good eye, sometimes:

Her favorite medium as of late has been watercolors. I don’t mean to brag, but just take a look at these:

“Man Under Rainbow”

And markers:

“Rainy Day Series #1”

We hoped you enjoyed this phase of “Reflections from Vivienne, Part One”.

On Saturday, June 16th, Vivienne will turn 4 years old. I am happy to report that she has accepted this fact after almost 7 months of constantly declaring her refusal to age. It was helped along by the promise of a cake (a butterfly, superhero, dinosaur, SpongeBob SquarePants cake with no black because it isn’t her favorite color), many twinkly balloons (but not black, brown or grey because those are NOT her favorite colors...geesh) and a few gifts.

I hope to be able to share some insight on my first born this week, sharing stories and photos and recounting all the silly things she has done of late. Just tonight, Phil was helping her get ready for bed. They were joking around and I smacked Phil for saying something ridiculous. Then Vivienne smacked Phil just to be silly. The play fought for a few seconds before Vivienne said “Dad, let’s not fight anymore.” And she gave him a big hug.

My other most recent favorite story was when Vivienne and I were at Target, doing some shopping. We pulled into the cereal isle for a moment and she pointed and cried out “MOM! COCOA PEBBLES! I want those!” Now, we have never had those before that I know of. So I kept moving along. Then, she does it again, “MOM! Kool Aid Singles!!” So I had to ask just where she heard what a ‘Kool Aid Single” was and she replies, “ I saw them on TV. They are cool.”

I know she is smart, I know she is funny. But she is certainly easy prey for those crafty advertisers. 

Well, here is our first big milestone, right? 5 months old almost to the day and the big lug has his first tooth. Next.....off to college.