Moira's Four!

Moira turned four while we were in Utah to celebrate my sister's wedding, and I was utterly overwhelmed with the prospect of giving her a special day so far from home. Luckily, my mom knew just what to do. Balloons and hats and cupcakes:

Presents. Everything she opened she LOVED! "It's my favorite!"

Belle dress from my mom:

A bike from Mommy and Daddy:

Clark, of course, had to try. He loves wheels.

And here's the birthday girl being sung to:

We love you, sweet four year old!

First Day

This is from last week (we had preschool at our house today. that's a different post). I love that she was so excited to start that she couldn't possibly look at the camera. Total Moira. (ok, and she might get that from her mother)

Sprinkler Swing

She set this one up herself. I love this girl:

Drawing

I love these pictures of Moira drawing.

Having a whole beach for a canvas was good for her

But she's getting really good at choosing paper, too:

Grateful

I'm so inspired by the near daily updates I get from my friend Jessica as she records a year of being grateful for the small blessings of her life on her blog.

Today, I'm grateful for peel off nail polish. And so is my bathroom floor. And Moira's leg.

What does this say?

Here is Moira's riddle. She wrote this (and as I type this, she's sounding out more letters and writing them down) and yet, she's not sure what she wrote. Um, neither am I.

So, you be the judge: what did Moira write?

(ps, yes, Nicole, she dresses herself :))

Spider

Moira LOOOOVES bugs. We've observed centipedes and dragonflies at close distances thanks to her, plus she requested an ant farm at the store and makes "bug charts" out of sand and buried bugs in our sandbox. So when we saw an enormous spider on our wall, I knew we had to catch it instead of killing it. Here she is with our find:

Incidentally, she's also wearing some flower pins that I made. She loves that pink Hawaii shirt and only wears it with a pair of pink pants. Yay for being monochromatic.

Swing

One day Moira ran to the door first thing and told me she wanted to go swing. "I dreamed I could pump, Mommy!" She told me. And guess what? When she woke up she could:

Oh no, she didn't

Oh yes, she did!

Moira's scratched nose

This girl loves bandaids and stickers more than just about anything in the entire world --except maybe crepes. She asks for crepes nearly every morning. And even though I put neosporin on the scratch on her nose, she insisted on a bandaid to make it feel better. And, somehow, the weight of the latex and plastic and sticker really did help.