Sarah Koa turns 4!

I nearly started this post by saying that Sarah hasn't changed much on the outside this year. But then I went to look for last year's birthday photos and realized that was just plain wrong. Granted, she hasn't changed as much (physically) this year as in the years before, but still. A few inches and a few pounds just ain't nothin'.

And besides, the stuff that isn't physical - the myriad ways she's grown emotionally and intellectually and spiritually this year - those things are also there in her outward appearance, even if they require a mother's eye to see them. Because when I look at last year's photo, I see that three-year-old girl: the one who adored brides and all things pink, who floated along to her own piper, the one who played easily but mostly on her own.

This year, I see the girl who can identify letters and sounds and count to ten in Spanish, the girl who can tell you just about any Bible story with startling accuracy, the girl who has discovered in Queen Elsa how to be spunky and still be a princess, the girl who has made many new friends in preschool and who values each of them because she notices how they are unique. This is the girl who enjoys singing and can ham it up with the best of them (often breaking down into a million giggles at the end). This is the girl who holds her own against her big brother, and loves him enough to have hurt feelings when he is mean to her. This is the girl who can elicit the purest joy from her baby brother with a few silly faces, and a girl who happily trails her mother around the kitchen (or Target), who is just a girl but also a young lady and a future mommy and wife.

She continues with her love of clothing, but she has expanded her color preferences a bit and has fine-tuned her fashion experiments so that she still manages to raise eyebrows but mostly just in an appreciative way (read: it usually matches). She even, every once in a while, wears outfits that don't have skirts. And once or twice I've even succeeded in getting her to wear something she didn't want to wear, but I may have to stop doing that: today we were talking about times she's felt alone or scared (that was a question at the end of a book we read, not just "fun, everyday talk with Mom"), and she informed me that people might feel alone "when there is a dress they don't like and their mommy makes them wear it."

She only lets me trim her nails if I will also paint them, and she often spends the following days requiring everyone she meets to admire them. She won't let me do anything with her hair except the occasional ponytail, often wrangled through trickery on my part ("You'll get oatmeal in your hair!").

She has hit the "chatterbox" stage, so there is not a quiet moment when you are around this girl, especially if you have her to herself. She talks on and on about anything: what she sees outside, stories from the past, comments about my hair or clothing choices...

We are working on her tendency to shriek and cry and be "huwt" when she doesn't get her way, and we are working on her r's. We are also trying to make a point of letting her pick the bedtime stories sometimes, as we've discovered that she isn't always as keen on the choices her brother makes.

Over the next year, I anticipate that we will need to plan more individual time with Sarah as she begins to feel the squish of being a "middle." But that's something I'm rather looking forward to. Last Friday night, we had an impromptu date to Target when I remembered (last minute) that I needed to buy a gift for a shower the next morning. Sarah was thrilled to go with me and leave the boys at home ("There are three boys at home, and two girls in the car!"), and she was beside herself when I allowed her to ride in the booster seat since we were taking P's car. She talked about the booster seat and the "two girls in the car" all the way to Target! But it was really fun to have time with her by herself; she helped me pick things out at the store, and she made the trip a lot less lonely.

She may just be four, but she's got quite a lot packed into that four-year-old body! She is "her own self" through and through, and we are blessed beyond measure to have her in our lives.

Happy birthday, my Sarah girl!