Four

Four? How is that even possible? My baby is turning four tomorrow. Four is hard to deal with. It's as hard to deal with as Seven was except I was too busy telling you about the day Amanda was born to whine about Seven. I hope to get around to telling the story of the day Alyssa was born, but first, I'm going to whine about Four.

I'm not ready for four. Especially since, before I know it, four will turn into seven. And then thirty. Four is tough. It's so big girl-ish. So not a baby anymore-ish. So mind of her own-ish. I'll be latching onto Four for dear life because I'm certainly not ready yet for Alyssa to get any older.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I will adore Four. I have no doubt that Alyssa will be amazing at any age. She is happy and funny and completely fearless. She's also bossy and has a bit of an evil streak but we're focusing on the good stuff.

We went to the Renaissance Faire last weekend and there were people dressed up in scary costumes who would parade through now and then… witches, goblins, skeletons… The older kids would run away when they showed up. One of the other 7-year-olds we were with would cry and hide behind her mom's back, but Alyssa… she would walk right up to them and let them twirl her around. During the belly-dancing show, she went up and stood right in front swaying her hips until one of the dancers came down and danced with her and then another invited her up on stage to dance with them.

She still loves shoes, dresses and baby dolls. She would have three zillion baby dolls if I would allow it. This gives me great hope for a future jammed full of a LOT of grandchildren. They will mostly be naked though until she whines enough and I finally give into her demands to dress them. She plays endlessly with her baby dolls but she also plays with little people and Barbie dolls and she makes up the funniest storylines, complete with all different voices.

She loves to sing and dance and she is LOUD. I'm pretty sure she picked up these habits from Amanda. Sometimes our world comes to a complete halt while Amanda and Alyssa turn the house into their version of a Broadway musical. She can be very self-sufficient. She hardly ever wets her pants but when she does, she cleans up the mess and changes her clothes before she mentions it.

She's at an especially adorable stage too. She's constantly telling me she loves me, but not just normal I-love-you's. She does those too, but lately she's also starting to say she's sorry when she does something wrong and sometimes she seems to use the phrase "I love you" interchangeably with the phrases, "I'm sorry" and "I forgive you". So sometimes if she's unhappy with me for something or if I'm unhappy with her, she'll burst out with this very emotional, "I LOVE YOU!"

You'd really have to hear it to understand but she's just so dramatic about it, and sometimes the dramas play out so FAST that it makes me want to laugh but I can't because she's so completely serious. One second it's like her world is shattered because I've said no to a second cookie. She's clearly upset with me, but then a second later she lets out a very distraught, "I love you!" and then she flings herself at me in an embrace dripping with feeling as if she was mad, but all is forgiven. She loves me even if I don't get it right every time.

The other day she grabbed my hammer when I wasn't looking. Mind you, my hammer is pink, so it probably looks pretty harmless, but in Alyssa's hands it won't be harmless when she starts pounding on the furniture or her sister's head. When I asked her to give the hammer back to me, she refused and then sat on it as if that was a surefire way to keep it away from me. When I picked her up and took the hammer away from her she was LIVID. I mean seriously angry and she stayed angry for quite a while. She kept saying, "You won't say you're sorry!" and I kept saying that, no I wasn't sorry that I took it away from her, because she knows better than to play with a hammer and she or someone else could get hurt. She went on and on, really upset until finally I was about to tell her I was sorry if I'd hurt her feelings but… I didn't get as far as an explanation because as soon as I got the "I'm sorry…" out of my mouth she yelled out an ever-so-dramatic, "I LOVE YOU!" and flung herself so hard at me that she nearly knocked me over. She stood there clinging to my leg and I knew once again that all was forgiven. She still loved me.

Nope, I'm not ready for Four. It's just that I have loved Three so much. I'm not ready to let go of this stage when she acts like I'm some kind of magician when I do the simplest little things. She oozes with gratitude over tiny things. I can strip down the bed to change the sheets and if Alyssa sees, she will be overwhelmed with appreciation: "You did this? You did this for ME?!?" To her, I didn't just yank the bedding off and throw it in a pile on the floor. No, in her mind, I just turned the bed into a trampoline and the bedding/pillows into a soft landing place perfect for jumping into.

"Amaaaaaaaaaanda!!! Come see what Mommy did!"

And it's like that all the time. I never know what amazing feat I've performed until it has been declared magical by Alyssa. By the time Seven rolls around, it is much harder to perform magic. Seven is a tougher audience. I adore Seven. But I have to work a whole lot harder for Seven.

Alyssa told me yesterday that she's decided that instead of turning four, she is going to turn two! For a split second I tried to decide if we could make that work somehow. As if it was her turn to perform magic. Really? Would you? You would do that for me???