To My Four Year Old Girl

Wait, didn't I just write your 3rd birthday letter? Has it already been a year? And yet, when I look at you I can see the changes this past year has wrought, imperceptible at first from one day to the next, but looking back I wonder where my baby girl has gone. To start with you are taller, and you are slender, barely any baby fat is left. You've suddenly started doing things independently, emerging from the bathroom wiped and washed and clothed. You've started wanting to stir your own yogurt and choose your own outfits and do your own "school work", and make your own bed, meticulously. I feel a sudden twinge whenever you come out of the bathroom as I realize that in the past month you have suddenly grown up in one more area without me saying or doing anything, besides not running to wipe you the instant you called. You got tired of waiting until I was finished whatever else I was doing before coming to help you. You can pronounce the letter l now. Sometime th