My 4 year old

For so long now I have wanted to write about Ruby.  The more I have not written, the more that has happened and the more she continues to change.  The last year has been an almost indescribable year for Ruby.  We started it with her as the center of my universe; she was stuck to me like glue, and I to her.  I remember I used to tear up just thinking about how long we would have to be parted while I was in the hospital delivering Baby Sister.  Then Lucy was born, and I was startled to find my relationship with Ruby changing.  For the first time in her life, she was challenging in a way that could not deal with.  In those first few months, she was dysregulated, couldn't make her mind up about anything, didn't feel like doing anything, became afraid of everything, whined instead of talked, and was no longer the joyful child who brightened up my days.  At the same time I had a new love, a little bundle who cooed at me and smiled in her sleep.  For months I felt horrible that I had replaced Ruby.  We wondered if she was depressed.  I worried about how she would respond to preschool at a time when her confidence seemed at an all-time low.  Would she handle the separation?  The new environment?  All the unfamiliar faces?

It turned out that preschool was our salvation.  Over the last year that Ruby was been at school, she has blossomed.  I literally look at her and hardly recognize her.  When I watch her playing with her friends at the playground, she has a confidence that I envy.  I wish that I could be as imaginative, as carefree, and as natural of a leader.

At our first parent-teacher conference last Fall, Ruby's teachers talked to us about how their goal each day was to move her away from the play dough table.  Even though Ruby never had an issue with separation at preschool, her way of coping with her unfamiliar surroundings was to find a station where she felt comfortable and stick to it the entire morning.  Each day her teachers would rack their brains trying to think of ways to entice her to move into a different area of the classroom, or even, she shudders to think, the outdoor space.  Little by little, I'd hear reports that Ruby danced in school (something she does non-stop at home but never in the outside world), or that she played with so and so for almost the whole morning.  Then, Ruby fell in love.  She made her first preschool best friend, and now instead of slumping in her stroller at pick-up, she skipped all the way home, hand in hand with her buddy, stopping every few yards to hug or play Ring Around the Rosie.  By the time of our second parent-teacher conference in the Spring, her teachers told us they could no longer keep up with her.  She was always so animated and funny and dynamic, and she was the kid who the other kids came up to and asked "What should we play, Ruby?"

Ruby transformed outside of school as well.  After she turned 3, many of the classes she took turned into "drop-offs" instead of "mommy and me."  Her first session of "big girl" classes at her ballet school, she sat with her limbs entwined around me, not participating, responding to the teacher, or looking at the other students for a month and a half.  I was still getting my sea legs around transporting 2 kids around town, and Lucy was still in her phase of HATING the car.  So for weeks, Lucy would scream the entire 15-20 minute drive to Ruby's ballet school, whereupon Ruby would hide behind my legs and refuse to participate.  I was the mom the other moms avoided looking at because I was such a mess with a crying baby and a whiny 3 year old.  I seriously considered pulling her out, and then one day I told her that instead of watching the class, I was going to go to Trader Joe's and would be back at the end.  When I returned, every other mom in class came up to me to tell me how Ruby had participated in the entire class and was chatting non-stop to the point where the teacher had to tell her to be quiet several times.  Ruby just completed her very first summer camp experience at her ballet school, with a group of kids she had never met, many of whom were much older than her, and teachers she had never had before.  I could not have imagined Ruby in summer camp a year ago, as it is the culmination of things that are difficult for her: a totally new experience that only lasts a week (so very little warm-up time), having to independently eat her own lunch, having to independently use the potty.  The camp day was also considerably longer than her preschool day (ending at 2:00 instead of 11:45).  She LOVED it, and she had no problems whatsoever, as if she was never even that kid who she was just a few months ago.

These days Ruby is always surprising me by doing something I never thought she would do.  When she turned 3, her list of fears grew to include trains, carousels, jumpy houses, hand dryers, all animals, and any tub-sized or larger body of water.  Several months ago, on a playdate with a couple of preschool friends at the Cal Academy, she surprised me by rolling up her sleeves and touching the starfish and then drying off her hands with the hand dryers.  Nowadays, there is nary a visit to the Cal Academy that she does not run over to touch the starfish.  At the beginning of birthday season a few months ago, we attended a party with a jumpy house, and she surprised me by agreeing to go in for the first time in her life.  She had so much fun that she now SEEKS OUT jumpy houses and has to be dragged away when it's time to leave.  Today, she surprised me again by going on a Ferris Wheel without me, the first time she has ever gone on any kind of carnival ride without me holding her hand.  She sat next to her friend and was definitely scared at first, but they hugged each other tight, and she hasn't stopped talking about it since.

At 4 years old, Ruby is back to being the joyful little girl I always knew.  She has a renewed confidence and is wise beyond her years.  She is highly sociable, LOVES school, LOVES her friends, and LOVES Baby Sister Lucy.  I have always been and am still in awe of her.