The Challenging Fours

On Friday, January 2nd, Leila turned 4.

On Saturday, we had her first real birthday party with friends. It was an absolute success and the number of toys that Leila now has officially reached the level of obscene.

On Sunday, she outgrew half of her clothes.

On Monday, she suddenly started informing us (me, actually) what she would or would not do. She did it twice within the span of an hour. "No Mommy, I am not going to wait until after dinner to have my eyeball. I am going to have it now." (The eyeball was frozen vanilla pudding with a life saver for the iris and a jelly bean for the pupil. Pretty clever actually.) Excuse me? Did you just disagree with me and then tell me what you were going to do instead? Where did she learn that? I thought only other people's kids did that. Is there some sort of terrible 4's that nobody bothered to tell us about?

Fortunately for every sass moment there are 10 melt-your-heart moments. Like when I look in the rearview mirror and Leila and Sabina are quietly holding hands. Or this one: