Helena is FOUR years old!

And one month. But the reason I haven't been able to blog is because I wanted to post her birthday interview before I did anything else. Then there were technology complications. And so now she is practically five but I will post this remembrance of four anyway.

This little lady is a delight about 95% of the time. She wakes up early, gets dressed in ensembles that are sometimes really cute, and sometimes not. Then she plays in her room. Then she goes to the kitchen to get her vitamin. Then she brings me a vitamin in bed. Then I eat my vitamin, we convince Sasha to unburrow from the covers, and we head to the kitchen. Helena eats a gigantic breakfast. This morning it was a waffle, some granola, some kefir, and an oatmeal muffin. Then she asks what we are going to do. She likes to go and do, but she is also usually content to be at home. She loves costumes, and got three new ones on her birthday: a monkey, because for months she had been saying the only thing she wanted for her birthday was " a BROWN costume," a Degas-inspired tutu (which she enjoys wearing on her head) to go along with a new ballet book, and Sleeping Beauty.

Dancing.There is constant dancing. Perhaps this year there might be some lessons, though she has picked up quite a bit from books and a DVD that came with one of her books. "Look Mommy, at my pas de chat!" she says. Here is the pas de chat birthday cake masterpiece:


She is a little wisp of a girl--just 32 pounds. I don't know her height, but people comment that she is tall. Then they comment about her hair.

She still takes a 2-3 hour nap each afternoon, though lately she wakes up cranky and clingy and sometimes she will burst into tears if, for example, I tell her I won't be able to sit in the rocking chair and hold her for 30 minutes while she sorts herself out because I need to get dinner started or fold a load of clothes. I believe this was taken post-nap. I call it "Surly Fairy":


Her favorite book is probably this really beautiful, origami pop-up book of The Twelve Days of Christmas. We just read it tonight and she can sing the entire thing. The eleven dancing ladies in a music box are her favorite.

At the rodeo last week, she repeatedly (and loudly) asked if a man next to us had a baby in his tummy. She also loved climbing on the tractors and petting the baby goats and llamas and lambs.

Things are gradually getting better in her relationship with the big kids. I think in another 6 months there will be great harmony. And less tattling and bursting into tears over light sabers etc. I will confess that there is usually one moment of extreme discord each day in which I consider getting a light saber myself  and just taking them all out in one fell swoop. The Darth Vader Defense, I'll call it.

I think the interview will have to wait until tomorrow because I need to transcribe it from the video camera and 'tis late..