Mae at 4 years is

-Clingy. After an infant- and toddler-hood where she seemed to prefer strangers to her own mother, she has become much more focused on Mom and Dad. She wants to follow us down stairs for the quickest errand, wants us to stay with her while she gets dressed, wants us to stay in the room when she's falling asleep. One day in the garden, when I went all the way to the other side of the tomato plant she complained, "I want to be next to you so I can hug you". Really, she's always preferred having people around to being alone, just now she seems more particular about who that is

-Helpful. I think this comes from wanting to be with us. She begs to help cook dinner, do construction projects, wash windows, hang out the laundry. And now she's capable enough to actually be of help some of the time

-Persuasive. "Let's go to a restaurant for dinner. We haven't been to a restaurant for a long time." She convinced me one night to take the family to our town's summer street faire, by countering every argument that I put up against it. (We ended up going and had a good time).

- Social. She frequently invites people to dinner (or herself to their house). She says she wishes her friends from school lived with us, or we with them.

-Fearless (physically). Her physical talents continue to amaze us. She started riding a pedal bike without training wheels after a few months on a balance bike and loves jumping (slanted) curbs and riding as fast as she can in little circles. When our neighbors got a small skateboard ramp, Mae laid on her stomach on a skateboard and rolled, face-first, down the ramp. (Although this did not result in the seemingly inevitable trip to the emergency room, it did convince us to upgrade to properly fitting helmets!). She can jump from bench to bench on stadium bleachers, run a 1/4 mile race, climb a 6-foot tall boulder; but go on a boring hike? After 2 minutes, her legs were tired, she was hot, she wanted to take a break, she wanted water... But when we reached that 6-foot tall boulder, her legs miraculously recovered and she wanted to climb it over and over again. So if we had to guess, we'd put her in the extreme sports rather than endurance events. Basically, when she's interested in the challenge, she's strong and can do anything. When she's not, pulling teeth sounds like an easy job in comparison to getting her to move.


-Fearful (emotionally). She doesn't like scary stories, or really any story with even a 'bad guy' or something bad happening. Movies especially seem to bother her, but she is also sensitive to books (like Snow White). She likes to play at being a monster or a bear but quickly tells me not to reciprocate (or to be a nice bear who doesn't eat little girls).

-Wanting to be entertained. She seems to know that she can push Adi's buttons to get a reaction from her, often just by making a mean face or growling at her. I really think she does it just for the entertainment.

- Energetic. She has so much energy that she bounces, runs, jiggles and dances constantly, leading me to question frequently if she needs to use the bathroom. She can quickly become wild if she's around wild kids and has even made the 'tough guy' neighbor boy cry. She likes to bang on things-- tables, walls, floors, her own head-- and has trouble not fiddling with nearby objects. When people talk about how different their female and male children are, I often think that, if Mae had been a boy, we would have attributed all of this to her sex.

-Interested in how things work. "How does the gas make the car go?" "How does the food get out of your tummy", "How does the wire stay on the sticks [fence posts]."

- Interested in death and life: "When you die, will your tattoo go away?" "Do [road] signs live forever?" And we've had lots of questions about how the baby got in my belly. We've answered them honestly which has led to even more interesting questions.

-Grasping math concepts. I was surprised that she can recognize up to 6 objects (on a game card) without counting them out. She also shocked me one day when she announced to four of us that, since there were only two cookies, we could each have half. I've tried to test her on this since and she isn't perfect but I think it was more than coincidence. It seems to fit with the engineering questions and her spatial skills anyway. Just this morning, she told me we needed to invite 2 more people to breakfast-- Dave had just said that 6 pieces of French toast were ready.

- Organized. My parents commented early on in her toddler-hood that she didn't like things out of order-- she would close an open cabinet door or fix something crooked. The latest example has been with her clothes; we typically stuff clean clothes into her dresser drawers but when she helps put away laundry, she folds everything neatly and then wants to take all the existing clothes out of the drawer in order to fold them as well. I find this cute (most parents complain that their kids pull out all the clothes and make a mess-- can I really complain that she wants to make them tidy?) and have to bite my tongue to keep from telling her my opinion that folding is a waste of time.

Wearing rollers in her hair:

- Pouty & trantrum-y. We've avoided a lot of behavior problems with her in the past and she seems to be making up for it now. I don't know how much of it has to do with my pregnancy-related fatigue and therefore unavailability and impatience and how much is her deciding she doesn't have to be easy-going about everything after all. When I talk with her about it, she says, "I just don't want to do what you tell me." I'm not sure if it's because she doesn't want to do the actual thing or she doesn't want to be told what to do.

- Finally out of pullups. We waited for her to show signs of readiness but her pullups were still wet more nights than not. We finally decided to take her out of them and see if the subsequent bed-wetting would train her to wake up and go or be able to hold it. Although it seemed doomed to fail the first two weeks, we've now had a good run of dry nights. Once asleep, she sleeps quite deeply and I think she just doesn't wake up to go.

- An artist. She is able to copy a simple line drawing and likes drawing people. She loves drawing, writing letters, cutting paper with scissors and decorating paper with huge globs of glue. Making cards for other kids is one of her favorite things.

- Generous. Wrapping presents and giving them to other kids is another favorite thing. I've struggled with helping her find acceptable things to give away and end up feeling selfish for not wanting to part with her toys and books! I think this is just an expression of how much she cares for other people-- objects are insignificant compared to the act of giving them away.