Abbie’s 4 year check up

Abbie had her 4 year check up the same time Ben had his 18 month (at 19 months old).  They checked her out and said she was good to go.  She’s 43” tall (way above the 95%) and 40lbs (between 50-75%) and her vision is 20/40, which they say is normal right now.

We had Abbie take 2 weeks of swimming lessons for the first time in July.  She LOVED them, and I was so surprised at how quickly she picked up the basics.  We could barely get her to jump in to the pool to us prior to the lessons, and by the end of them, she was jumping in the pool by herself and swimming back to the side by herself.  It was impressive.  She can swim the width of our pool by herself now, but that’s mainly because she’s good at holding her breath for that long.  She is good at kicking, but her arms need a LOT of work and she forgets to use them half the time.  She’s learning how to roll over on to her back and float to catch her breath and then continue swimming and she might be able to do that once, unassisted, but then she gets too out of breath and too stiff, so you have to help her stabilize her float the second time.  Now she never wants to use her water wings in the pool and always wants to practice.  I wish our pool was a foot or to more shallow so she could touch in the shallow end.  She loves swimming though, so we’re excited about that.

Abbie is getting better at recognizing her letters and numbers and she’s learning the sounds of her letters.  With as well as she talks, I would have thought that she would be a lot further along with her reading and writing skills by now, but she’s getting there.  I’m hoping once she starts at the Montessori school, she’ll learn at a little quicker pace.  She’s smart enough to learn these things, she just doesn’t have the motivation, which I think is going to be our issue with her.  I think she’s better at wanting to learn when she’s at school, but at home, she usually wants nothing to do with us trying to teach her letters and numbers.  It’s a bit frustrating.

We’re working with Abbie on not being so jealous.  She is EXTREMELY jealous of Ben.  If Ben gets any sort of attention or toy or whatever, and she feels like she’s not getting equal attention or toys or whatever, she does her best to get the attention or toy.  Mark can spend the entire 3 hours Ben naps with Abbie, playing and swimming and doing whatever, and if Mark even looks at Ben when he wakes up, Abbie gets very jealous and tries to crawl all over Mark and divert his attention away from Ben.  It’s frustrating and annoying for us because we don’t exactly know how to remedy it and it’s a constant problem.  We’re hoping it’s just a phase that she’ll grow out of soon.  ??

Abbie overheard Mark talking to one of his friends last night, who is also a pilot.  After we got home, she said, “Daddy, I didn’t know your jet had TWO seats.  I thought it only had one.”  It’s amazing to us that she picks up on this kind of stuff.  She asked him a bunch of questions while he explained to her that it normally does have one seat but when new people learn to fly the jet, some of them have back seats so they don’t have to be in it by themselves, etc.  She understood that after he explained it to her.

This little girl keeps us on our toes, for sure.  She is constantly asking us for a little sister.  Constantly.  I told her she already has a little brother and she said, “Yeah, but I didn’t want a little brother.  I want a little sister.”  I’m not quite sure how to explain to her that you don’t exactly get to pick whether you have a little brother or a little sister…  She is VERY excited about her big sister getting here though and talks about her frequently.  Hopefully Emily will tide her over for a little while and take her mind off of wanting a little sister.