mimi letter 4 years old

4 year old Mimi is a proud Mimi.

When you accomplish something, you skip around the room. (Like riding a horse, one leg in the front, one leg in the back, never crossing each other, shuffles in one direction until hitting a wall, then turn around and do it the other way) 

Things you're proud of: 

Being 4 years old. When I praise you, for good counting, good cleaning, or good reading, you'd proudly say 'because I'm 4 years old already'. 

You identify with being a helper. Once after you helped me feed Frank, I called you 'little helper for feeding dog'. The next day when I was standing by Frank's food, you bounced to me and said 'mama I really like it when you call me little helper for feeding dogs'. You've been feeding Frank since. 

One night you and Ella both wanted to take a toy rider upstairs to bed. You picked the metal cart, Ella picked the lady bug. Ella took hers up one step, and started to whine to me (cutely with squeaky voice) 'I'm a baby Maiasaura and I can't lift this, you help me'. I encouraged her while you and I made our way upstairs. You turned back and said 'don't worry I'll come to help you'. Upon getting to the top of the stairs, you bounced back down quickly, said 'I'm coming to help you'. Ella then came up by herself. You followed her, carrying the ladybug. You carried it all the way into the bedroom. Ella did spot your metal cart, and after squeaking 'oh I'll help you', carried it right inside the door frame. I praised you for being strong, you said 'T Rex is very strong so I help little Maiasaura'.

4 year old Mimi is full of mystery.

You love to move around. You fidgets when we read story or practice math, frequently turning away from me. But you remember the plots, and you remember how I taught you to count. All without looking!

You write in your own way. Probably from being left handed. You started writing all numbers and letter mirrored, and from right to left. Then sometimes you started writing in the 'normal' direction, but when I sit from you at an angel, you'd write the letters in my direction, even if I sit directly opposite of you. And you right them perfectly for my orientation!

You ignore lao ye's instructions for how to write Chinese letters, and you write them well. 人 is 3 strokes, 天 is 5 strokes. When lao ye first announced 人 had 2 strokes, you said 'but there's one more stroke for the stick on the top'. Lao ye stopped teaching strokes. You're free to learn in your own way!

4 year old Mimi knows what she likes.

Lao ye promised to bring back some chocolate eggs from Nainaimo, as reward for attending his google hangout Chinese lessons. On the last lesson before lao ye was coming back to Surrey, when he said bye, you said with the cutest voice 'Don't eat our chocolate egg yo'. When lao ye came back to Surrey, as soon as he opened the back door and said hi, you said in the cutest voice, while stretching out your hands, 'lao ye did you bring back the chocolate eggs?'

For a while you wouldn't fight back when Ella pulled your hair. But during the same time, whenever you saw lao ye or I eat snacks, you rushed to us, pulled our utensils down, and grabbed a bite so quickly that we could never parry.

You like to see boys getting their diapers changed. I'm waiting to see if you'd get over your shyness and ask Silvia to change Myles's diaper in front of you. 

You like my armpit hair. You frequently ask me to show you my armpit, then rub my armpit hair with furious strokes and cute rage murder face, while saying 'muuhmmmmm so sooooft'.

You are a cool kid. You pretend to be dudes from stories, you love being Flynn from Tangled. You want to be Eris because in a video Eris has sunglasses on. One day you scavenged a pair of sunglasses from one of grandma's most hidden drawer's deepest corners, put them on, and claimed you've really became Eris.

I love reading manga with you, you get so excited by all the super powers and action. We'll enjoy more shonen manga together!

4 year old Mimi has the cutest way of complaining.

During time outs you've accused me of killing you with my words, letting ants in to bite you. Once I wiped your tears with toilet paper and you said toilet paper is dirty and I was trying to kill you by infection. 

Once you you said you were dead, laid on the floor, and slowly spun around in circles horizontally. After a while came back up and joined our activities.

4 year old Mimi is working out her relationship with 4 year old Ella. And it's the most fun thing to watch.

Once when you and Ella were arguing, Ella tried to pull your hair, but retracted her hand at the last moment.

You: 'you wanted to pull my hair but didn't?'

Ella: 'hmm you have a lot of hair. I see your hair and I want one.'

You pulled some hair out of your braid, said to me 'mama I have to cut one'. 

I permitted. You got the scissors and tried to cut, but kept tiling your head too far back and cutting one inch chunks. I helped you aim and you cut a good long strand. 

You walked to Ella purposefully with the hair in your hand, then suddenly stopped, said 'mama I lost it'. 

We sat by Ella and cut another long strand. Ella took it, said in a sing song voice 'eiiiahhhmm', and repeatedly brushed it on her cheek.

Mimi: 'if you eat it you'll obtain T-Rex's tail swing powers'

Ella chewed the hair. I didn't stay to see if she swallowed.

You get very offended when Ella say anything that you interpret as disliking you. Ella saying 'this is not what you think it is, it's actually something else' is a dynamite trigger for you. You immediately turns off, explodes something like 'you don't love me' with death stare, and hair pulling usually ensue. Your fights can be vicious, you've both scratched up each other's faces like wild raccoons. You're starting to work it out together. You would let Ella explain her thoughts more, and agree with her sometimes. Even if you don't agree, you are starting to voice your disagreement in words before the hair pulling. 

When you play pretend together, if one decided to be a person from one story, she demanded the other to be from the same story. Like Rapunzel and Flynn, Pluto and Eris, planets and dwarf planets don't mix either. You can always work out an agreement now.

You used to love it when I yell at Ella. One time you repeatedly asked Ella 'did you think mama was yelling 'MIMI WHY?'' You stared at Ella until she said 'no', quietly. You then happily bounced around repeating 'I thought mama was criticizing me but she was criticizing Ella'. Ella seemed to not mind. Recently you try more to comfort Ella, like fetching her softie pajamas and stuffing them into her arms when she cries. Sometimes you denounce me as bad for making your Rapunzel / Saturn sad.

You depend on each other. You look for each other when one is pooping and the other didn't realize where she went. Even goes all the way around the house calling for 'Flynn' or 'Rapuuun'. Your daycare teacher reported that you really liked to dance. She'd play a song and kids would circle her and dance. You'd join the other kids at first, then look for Ella. You always tried to invite her to dance with the other kids. Ella always refused. So you always went to where Ella was and you two would groove together.  

You always wait for each other to finish eating main course / finish homework, to eat dessert together. Once you were finishing up your homework, when Ella asked 'Mimi can you eat buns'. You said 'oh don't worry, I'll eat buns, because I know you'll wait for me'.

Sometimes at night you call baba and says 'sister doesn't love me'. When we don't hear Ella we know Ella's asleep and you're lonely. Baba would sing you a song and tuck you in, you'd drift to sleep soon after. 

Once Ella held the door closed and wouldn't let you into the living room. Afterwards, I demanded her as a consequence to give you something she loved. She threw a brown pen at you, said 'this is a good brown pen for you'. I informed her it had to be her favorite red pen. You picked up the red pen, said 'mama please this is for sharing, we both love it, please let it be shared'. 

4 year old Mimi is getting more comfortable with herself.

You are swayed by others's emotions. You take pride in helping others, on the other hand beat yourself up when you do something wrong. You get defensive when I point out something you do I don't like. If I look at you sternly, you'd preemptively say "you're not my mama / you don't love me" before I even say a word. You cry if I raise my voice. Recently you've been trying so hard to squeeze out tears when you think I'd start criticizing you. You are so relieved when I say I forgive you, you'd immediately say something funny, 'Kristoff tried to do xx (the bad thing) and made a mess', with the cutest smirk. I need to guide you more to fix what you mess up, not beat you up more than you already do yourself. I know you want us to love you, and I love you.

When you start to cry I try to let you cry it out. I remember when I was little, lao lao used to plead for me to stop crying, when I just wanted to cry because I was sad. I wish she could acknowledge things were hard, sometimes so hard that we cry. Although right now you're more about crying and enumerating all the people, then all the toys who don't love you. You can always reach a point where you make eye contact with me, say 'mama hug', and take comfort in my arms. You'd then tell me a seemingly random thought, like 'why does mastodon have hair'. I hope you feel OK to cry, OK to take time to grief for your failed efforts.

Every night I tell you what I liked that day, and ask you to tell me what you liked too. One day I said I didn't have anything I liked that day. In fact I couldn't get rid of how angry I was that someone organized a presentation on a topic everyone already knew. You were so interested and asked me to repeat the story many times. I also told you how I got rid of my anger. When I'm not afraid of using others's time, I'm not too stringent on giving my time. After that day you frequently asked me if there're things I didn't like. At night I also asked you what bothered you. Although what makes you feel bad is always something weird like a planet peed and your planet had to clean it up. You always chuckled hard when you told me these. Bad feelings are OK, suffering is a part of life. You're not alone. We can lean on each other when life is hard.