Brooklyn turned 4 on the last day of our Sicamous trip nearly a month ago. She spent her birthday in the car on a 12 hour drive home with mini breaks. We did let her pick the fast food restaurant of choice for dinner (McDonald’s in case you were wondering). We were able to celebrate with Grandma, Grandpa, aunts, uncles, and cousins the day before with homemade pizza, cupcakes, and ice cream and a few presents! We had a tea party with a few friends when we got home. No cake- she requested smarties, mini eggs, wunderbars, and chocolate chip cookies. Then, because her and Grampy didn't get to share a bday party this year, we had pizza and chocolate mousse in Calgary with them a few weeks later. Dad took her bowling for her birthday date!
Brooklyn birthday interview
Favourite colour: All of the colours of the rainbow…and indigo and violet
Favourite animal: All of the animals… I didn’t see a zebra at the zoo. So the zoo.
Favourite food: pizza, McDonalds, and I like noodles and pasta and that’s it
Favourite movie: Raya and Red Panda (Turning Red) and Encanto
Favourite book: The one you got me for my birthday (Pinkalicious)
TV show: DC superhero girls
What are you scared of? A giant cat
What do you want to be when you grow up? I just want to write on lists when I grow up like you (guilty as charged). **The next day she told me she wanted to be a babysitter and “make my own breakfast and cut it, and my own lunch and cut it, and my own supper and cut it”
What makes you happy? Going to the waterslides with my family
What makes you sad? When somebody’s be rude to me and don’t let me to play with them.
What is your favourite thing to do? Go to the indoor playground
What are you most excited for being 4? Going to the pool
Some of the random funnies I managed to write down (it pains me to think how many I may have missed!)
Calling the fruit in the garden of Eden “the evil apple”.
Picking which banana muffin she wanted. “This is a classic muffin.”
“Mum if I fall in lava, it’s hot and I will die. You will hug me when I come back.”
Browsing Netflix “A show’s a show, a movie’s a movie, and cats are cats.” Indeed they are.
Brooklyn is hard to describe in a few words. She can be super goofy, but also really serious. She can be outgoing, but also really shy and reserved. She’s a big girl and wants to do things on her own, but then she’s also too little and wants you to do everything for her.. You kinda don’t know what you’re going to get with her. It changes from one day to the next. For a week she will love bananas, then the bananas are yucky. She will always want all the light blue dishes, but a few weeks later she hates that colour.
One thing that seems to never change is her love for water. She loves swimming, the spray park, playing in our “crab pool”, and having baths. She could spend hours in the bath every day if I let her. But her “regular” clothes must not get wet or they are unfit, even with a couple drops of water. So she spends a lot of time in her bathing suit.
B did preschool this last year, and spent her time with Edmonton with teacher Debbie who she was very sad to leave. I enrolled her in kindergym here (classroom time and gymnastics combined), and it took a good 3 or 4 months for her to settle in there. It was only 2 afternoons a week, so nothing crazy, and after she stuck it out, she ended up loving it. She is going to do French Immersion preschool in September, so we’ll see how that goes!
She has started to branch out and be more comfortable making friends. She has been very used to having Scarlett with her as a built-in friend, especially during COVID, and while I love that they play together well most of the time, I’m happy she’s finding her own friends as well.
Brooklyn really loves letters and numbers. She memorizes house numbers and has started memorizing things like 1+1=2, with very little assistance she can count to 100 in English, and 10 in French. She knows her birthday, how to spell her name, the letters in the alphabet. She is always asking about if words rhyme or how to spell things. I was able to go to her last day of preschool with her, and to dismiss kids from the carpet to the line, they held up a flashcard with a letter. If someone’s name started with that letter, they could go line up. If there was no one, the teacher would just name what was on the flashcard. The teacher held up a “z” and said “z” is for Zebra, forgetting that there was a girl in the class who started with “z”. When she was about to move on to the next one, Brooklyn yelled that her friend started with a “z”. I was pretty impressed that she knew her friend started with that letter and her confidence in correcting her teacher about it.
She is very frank, and doesn’t try to hide her feelings. Along with her dad’s super sensitive sense of smell, it can be an unfortunate combination if you are on the receiving end. You have bad breath? “Your face is stinky”, or if you need to take a shower, she will tell you. You know where you stand with her. She wears her emotions on her sleeve at home- the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Once she is fixated on something, there is no changing her mind. She is stubborn to the core. You just have to ride out the marathon tantrum that will ensue.
She hates being interrupted or not being able to say what she wants to say right away. If she starts talking to me and I ask her to wait because I’m talking to someone else, for example, she will just start over and the volume in her voice will gradually grow louder and louder. It’s the same if one of her siblings starts talking to me over, she will just ramp up the volume to 100 and make herself heard.
B is good at making her own fun and playing by herself. I very rarely hear “I’m bored” out of her. She happily invents games with her toys and just narrates her play to herself. She will actually ask to just be alone sometimes so she can play by herself. Most of the time her play involves dolls, barbies, or figurines of some description.
She’s been into superheroes lately, especially superhero girls (Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl…). She asked me to borrow Justice League early readers for her from the library.
Brooklyn is very possessive (probably a 3rd girl thing), and likes her things to be in her spots. She has a veritable treasure trove of random items under her pillow that she sleeps on every night. Currently I believe there is a wooden spoon, a batman flashlight, a pipe cleaner bracelet and some other odds and ends.
She sleeps like she is 3 people. She can be in the king bed with Gordon and I and she will keep us up all night with her restlessness. She also gets warm easily, and is always kicking the blankets off. I like the blankets on, doesn’t matter how hot it is, so this isn’t ideal for me. She also likes to be touching some part of you at all times. Usually her foot in your back. But I find if I sleep with her and Scarlett, if Gordon is out of town, she usually curls up with Scarlett (who sleeps like a corpse) and leaves me alone. She will often be found in someone else's bed.
Brooklyn eats really well. She is probably my least picky kid overall. She is always “hungry”. For lunch she will have an entire grilled cheese, sausage slices, pepper and some fruit (usually peach or strawberries). Her favourites are any pasta dish and pizza. One day she asked me for watermelon (there was still snow on the ground), and I said that they aren’t really good until the summer. She says “I’m tired of this Christmas food!”. She loves cheese strings, and I only give them cheese strings for school or when we go out, so they can have a snack with some protein. One day when I got home from errands, and Brooklyn had been with Gordon, she ran up to me all frantic “Dad ate a cheese string! It’s not my fault! I didn’t eat a cheese string!” She was in absolute shock that Dad disobeyed the cheese string rule.
She always has a reason or excuse for everything she does. Even if it’s ridiculous. I asked her why she was picking her nose and if she needed a kleenex. “Nope, I’m just taking the boogers out of their home”. If she’s doing a pee dance “I’m not doing a pee dance, this is my regular dance.” If she doesn’t want to clean up toys “My legs are too tired to clean up toys. I’m not the mom.” or clenches her fists “I can’t, my hands are closed.”
Brooklyn has been very much into painting lately. (PSA snag some crayola watercolour pallets on amazon for cheap- they are the best for quick setup and easy clean up). She paints with her watercolours almost every single day. Just random blips on the paper normally. She’s very into abstract art.
I’m not going to say 3 was my favourite year. It hasn’t been my favourite with any of my kids. But I have loved watching B gain confidence and grow into miss personality. Can’t wait to see what 4 brings for her!
