Four, and Still Fluent...(whoohooooo!)

Kaya hitching a ride at her 4th Birthday Party, Jan.22

I'm writing this post merely to break my streak of silence. For about a week, about 3 weeks ago, I was on fire with topics to address, most of them having everything to do with the amazing sentences flowing out of Kaya's mouth. And for some reason, I'm not exactly sure why, I didn't take the time to sit down a share them. And now, when I'm feeling inspired to write again (mostly because I just looked at the page-views of my site and can't beLIEVE how many visitors I had last month--738!!), I can think not only of none of those topics (how's that for a double negative?!), but can't even recall the specifics of her cute Kaya-ism that she shared this morning on our way to school. Something along the lines of, "Gampa kann 'nein' sagen in Deutsch!...und Gams kann 'Auto Essen' sagen...!" [Grampa can say 'nein' (no) in German, and Gramms can say, "Car Food".] All of this said with this HUGE grin on her face, and this cute, high tone in her voice, like one of silly disbelief and simultaneous matter-of-fact. And I'm getting this visual of her arms out, palms up, twisting wrist, as she tends to do when she's sharing something with us that is very interesting to her. So cute, I gotta get it on video.

Alternative Cakeless Candle Ceremony...

And to these few details I'll add: I love 4. I've always loved the even-ness of the number, the cool shape of the numeral, even the sound of the word, but what I didn't know in my past is how much I'd would truly enjoy the snuggle time, the love that she has for mama, the giggles, the endless curiosity ("Warum haben manche Maenner Haare?" [Why do some men have hair?]--our Geoff is bald), and her amazing ability and tendency to switch back and forth between her two languages, as if that's just the way life is (because it is). With four comes a massive decrease in tantrums, at least in intensity and length, and this wondrous ability to reason. It's really so very wonderful. It's crazy how we saw this huge shift right about the time of her birthday (Jan.22). One would think these phases would happen gradually, and surely for some they do, but our experience has been one of "all of a sudden"s--wham. bam. different kid. 

As a snapshot, she continues to love her school experience, an outdoor immersion forest farm preschool, and will now run through the forest after school as opposed to kerplunking herself at my feet, crying. Her favorite day continues to be "Millet Tag" [Millet Day], as she loves to go to Gramms and Grampas to spend the night on Wednesdays (she'll often tell me on Wed. mornings, "Ich werde dich vermissen, wenn ich bei Gamms un Gampa bin. Aber ich habe sie auch lieb." [I'll miss you when I am at Gramms and Grampa's. But I love them, too. ] She is now willingly speaking German with Estella again (her 16 year old host sister from Germany), and shows no signs of resistance (speaking German) with me. At times, she'll throw in an English word when she can't think of the German--like the other day, after school, as she was attempting to explain the process of candle making and didn't have the words for 'wax', 'holes', or 'leaves' (it seemed more like a context thing, however, because she does know the word for leaves, and holes, actually).

My eyes are getting dry. It's late enough to end this.
So, my dear friends all over the world--I noticed 3 of you from Egypt this week!!, not to mention, all of you readers in Mexico (15), Germany (9), China(8), Sweden (7), Russia (5), Taiwan (5), Spain (4), and Poland (4), and 32 more from our lil' old US of A. Thank you, everyone. I do love this community, and am happy to have 'broken the spell'.

Sleep well!
Schlaft gut!
Que duermen bien!

~Tamara