The Mind of a 4-year-old

Riding an elephant at Hidden Valley
Before Stephanie's wedding ceremony, Michael was showing Gabi the aisle that she would walk down.

Michael: "You're going to walk down the aisle and throw... mud?"
Gabi: "Yeah!"
Michael: "No, you're not going to throw mud. You're not a mud-girl; you're the flowergirl! What are you going to throw?"
Gabi: "Flowers. Daddy, you were just being silly. You're always silly."
Gabi thinks for a minute and then adds: "Daddy, are you always going to be silly?"
Yes, Gabi, your Daddy is definitely silly by nature.


Gabi at Hidden Valley Park
Of course, Gabi inherited her Daddy's silliness. Shortly after I related Gabi's laughsing story, she made up another pun. She and Bella were eating some crumbly snacks at the kitchen table, and Gabi started singing a song from the radio that has the line "I'm so clumsy" but she replaced the lyrics with "I'm so crumbsy." When she stopped signing, she said, "Look at the floor! See: 'I'm so crumbsy!'" Indeed, there were crumbs all over the floor under both girls' chairs.


Feeding a lorikeet at the LR Zoo
One day I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the couch while watching the girls play. I woke up to find the house covered in white baby powder. Apparently Gabi was "building a bridge" with the powder, so she sprinkled it on the floor all around the house. I'm not sure what the purpose of covering all their toys in baby powder was, but the house definitely smelled much nicer when I woke up from my unplanned nap than when I fell asleep.

Michael came home and commented that Annabelle must have been naughty. Gabi took ahold of that phrase and repeated it to Bella. I had to tell Gabi that she, also, had a part in the baby powder game and therefore she was naughty, too. Michael and I weren't mad enough to impress upon her the meaning of naughty, so she didn't seem to mind having that adjective attached to her.


Lorikeet biting the nectar cup
Gabi has decided to teach herself to read. Her reading skills are very impressive. At one of our trips to the hospital for Annabelle's specialist appointments, Gabi pointed out a sign and told me it said, "No exit." Certainly it did, as it was hung on a door that is closed due to the construction of the new building taking place outside there, and there were no pictures or any other clues.

Gabi's favorite bedtime story this week has been Orange, Pear, Apple, Bear because she can read the entire book by herself. Last month we were reading some beginning-reader Dora books each night, and we'd read some of the story but pause to let her add the words she could sound out.


Rainbow Lorikeets
Gabi loves to write notes, so she asks for crayons and paper almost every day during quiet time. Gabi also has an easel with magnetic letters on one side and a chalk board on the other. The chalk note below is from back in March, before Gabi had completely learned to spell Bella -- vowels can be tricky. (The note was written around St. Patrick's Day, hence the shamrocks.)

Gabi is very resourceful with the magnetic letters. For instance, when she spells GABI and BELLA and runs out of As and Ls, she'll use a V and 7 upside down. One day she decided that she didn't want to use the letter B to spell Bella; instead, she found two 0s and a line (technically a minus sign) to create a B. She also likes to show me that she can use the P as a d if she turns it upside down. She explained to me that it can also be a b, but then the magnet doesn't stick.


One of Gabi's notes to Bella
I took the girls to Larry's Pizza, and Gabi read the sign and then asked me why Larry has two rs. Gabi knows how to spell Bella, Daddy, and Mommy, all of which have double letters, so the Larry incident was not the first time I heard that question. Obviously I don't know a good explanation for my four-year-old as to why sometimes letters are doubled, but I am impressed that she can think about words enough to conceive that question.

At the grocery store last week, Gabi announced, "W starts with a D." My first thought was confusion, but I have learned not to say "no" too quickly. Gabi continued, "Because it is double u; it's not wubble-you, so it starts with a D." Very observant, Gabi. I have heard so many impressive comments like this from my daughters, and I'd like to start posting more often so I can share these stories with you before I forget them.


Sliding at Villages of Wellington
Gabi is also interested in other languages. Lolo taught her to count to 4 in Chinese, and she's been saying Xie xie ("thank you," pronounced "shay-shay," I think) and Ni hao ("hello") in regular conversation. George taught her some French when he came to visit, and she still uses S'il vous plaît and merci and bonjour. Her favorite greeting is currently buenos dias, which she learned in Spanish class at school, and I have added buenos noches for her to use at night. Of course, often these phrases are accompanied with the sign language version as well. All this language interest is certainly teaching our daughter to be very polite!

Gabi is learning math skills, too. She can do single-digit addition and very simple subtraction, even with zero. She knows that 1+1=2, but she must have recently learned that ten is written 10, because she asked Michael, "What is 1 and then another 1?" Interesting that you can count and even do verbal math with numbers like 11 but not know how to write them down. She can count to 29, and after that she tried "twenty-ten" and "twenty-eleven." I told her that 30 comes after 29, and she asked why. Ah, the "why" stage! Gabi can also count to 20 in Spanish, but she doesn't know those numbers well enough to use the counting pattern to continue with 21, 22, and so on.