Sylvie: Almost Four

I've been posting updates on Nora each month, so can we talk a little bit about this kid?

In four months Sylvie with be four. 4 YEARS OLD. How can this be true? And yet I know it is true, because these days she seems so much closer to 4 than 3. Her inquisitiveness and curiosity blow me away, and her questions have become so mature. Some recent examples:


"How old will Nora be when I'm ten?"


"Can you tell a reindeer it's fat or does that make it sad?"


"Why do we blink? What does it help for?"


"What is the red part on the chickens' head called?"


Many of her questions these days send me off to the Internet to look up an answer. I stand in awe of my parents and all others who parented prior to the Internet. How did they do it? No wonder we had a full set of encyclopedias.


She has also mastered the art of the never-ending string of questions. Such as:


"Why do we wear a hat in the sun?"


"So we don't get sunburned."


"What if we didn't wear a hat?"


"Well then I guess we'd wear sunscreen?"


"What if we didn't have sunscreen? What if we didn't have any lotion at all?"


"Maybe we could wear long sleeves and long pants?"


"What if we didn't have any clothes."


"We'd stay inside."


"What if we didn't have a house?"


"Why don't we have a house?"


"It fell down."


And on and on and on....

My little Sylvie who used to cling to me and hide behind my legs has taken off. At parties I very often have to search for her. When I come to pick her up from school she sometimes pretends she doesn't see me. When she has a friend over to play she wants to be left alone with them, often door closed. But when she is tired she still seeks me out for snuggles, and her snuggles are still the best.


One of Sylvie's favorite bedtime stories is the story of the day she was born. I always tell her that before I had her I wasn't a mommy and then she came and made me a mommy so "thank you for making me a mommy." Recently, in the middle of walking up the steps to a slide, Sylvie looked at me and asked: "If I made you a mommy, then who made me a kid?"


"Daddy and I made you a kid."


"You did? Thanks for making me a kid."


Oh my sweet Sylvie, we are so very, very, very thankful that we made you a kid.