Big, strong, and loud.

For one thing, she loves to draw. She’s going through notebooks like a fiend. “Draw! Draw! New page!” Her favorite shape to draw is a circle, and her favorite shape to make me draw is a star.

She loves to test. “Only paper,” I’ll say when she’s drawing. To which she’ll respond with slowly holding the marker out towards the floor while studying/enjoying my reaction. This is pretty much her MO around anything I tell her not to do, including and especially walking or running towards the road while we both say “no roads!”

She’s demanding and has plans. “Papa sit there!” as she’s walking around. “Papa draw! Circle!” as I try and get stuff done while she’s drawing. “Papa scoop it!” as she spends time in the garden. “Papaya do it!” as she climbs while making sure I’m still there to hold her hand when needed.

She’s a talker. Hundreds of words, and putting together four and five word sentences. My favorite is “I love you so much” and I prefer to assume she fully knows what that means and isn’t simply parroting what we’re saying. She definitely knows what I love you means because she’ll usually say it when we’re holding her and snuggling after we indicate we might put her down next. A new cute thing is when we ask her a question, she’ll often start it with an “um… ” before thinking about it and answering.

She likes her little rituals. There’s a few little sidewalk lights outside our bedroom window that we check out right before bed each night, and she’ll say “goodnight little light.” At the previous rental, there was a purple light outside so it was a nightly “goodnight purple light.”

She’s heavily influenced by her brother. She has learned that potty humor is hilarious, a belief constantly reinforced by seeing how much Nashi enjoys it. For some reason, Mama decided to sing the potty version of Twinkle Twinkle, going something like this:

Twinkle twinkle little poo poo! How I wonder what you poo poo!

No surprise that the four year old loves it, but now Papaya is not only singing it all by herself, she likely thinks it’s actually how the song is written. I will be letting all the future teachers know who this came from. Papaya also adds her own flare, replacing poo poo in the song with fart, papa’s fart, mama’s fart, etc etc. Hopefully this is actually an early sign of talents in eventual jazz improvisation.

She’s a good sleeper, good eater, has a great sense of humor, and loves her papa. What more can I ask for?