2011 - Year End Review

Happy 3rd Birthday, my sweet girl!

You just keep getting cooler and cooler, and keeping up with you is getting harder and harder. I can't believe how much you've changed this year! In keeping with last year's recap, I'll now present several Top 10 lists.

Top 10 Things You Love:

1. Bubble Guppies
2. Little Einsteins
3. Playing outside
4. Making up stories
5. Singing
6. Charlie
7. Playing Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, Uno Moo, and Hungry Hungry Hippos
   
8. Christmas lights
9. Reading
10. Your doctor kit
    

Top 10 Things You Don't Love:

1. Chili
2. Brushing your teeth
3. Getting your hair brushed (by me)
4. Using your indoor voice
5. Being quiet when someone's on the phone
6. When I don't get you from your nap when you wake up in a grumpy mood (our rule is that if you wake up grumpy from your nap, you didn't sleep long enough. So you either have to go back to sleep or you have to play in your room until you un-grump yourself)
7. Bringing your table and chair into the kitchen for mealtime (you always try to farm out that chore to whoever you can. Except me. You rarely ask me to do it because I (most) always say 'no'. Daddy, Bob, and Pep on the other hand ....)
8. Going to sleep (even though you tell us every day that you don't like to go to sleep, you're usually fast asleep in mere minutes after your head hits the pillow)
9. Time out (duh)
10. Soda (I think this is mostly my doing - I've told you from an early age that you don't like it. And you believed me. Score one for Mommy!)
    

Top 10 Things You're Good At:

1. Singing
2. Going to school (you're not always happy when I drop you off, but you always cheer up quickly and always have a great time)
3. Writing the letter L
4. Spelling your name
5. Memorizing song lyrics
6. Being a big sister
7. Eating
8. Sleeping
9. Using your manners
10. Making everyone around you laugh
    

Top 10 Things You're Not Good At:

1. Sitting still at a restaurant (Daddy and i take turns running around with you outside)
2. Trying new food (you'll do it, but not before making a MAJOR stink about it)
3. Being polite when you're hungry or tired
4. Leaving things at home when we run errands ("Momma, I HAVE to bwing my baseball and my doll stwoller and dis piece of stwing and dis spoon with us to Target! I HAVE to!")
5. Folding clothes (climbing into the basket of clean clothes and throwing underwear around the living room is NOT helping me fold clothes)
6. Keeping a straight face (when you pretend to be grumpy, you last about 2 nanoseconds before you burst out laughing)
7. Sleeping normally (you start out the night with your head on the pillow and your blankets pulled up around you. But you never ever end up in a normal position. You change positions approximately 75 times throughout the night. Sometimes you've got your feet the pillow, sometimes you've got your knees on the floor and your head on the bed, sometimes you've got your body on the bed and your head hanging off the side, sometimes you're curled up into a ball, sometimes you're splayed out at the foot of your bed. Seriously, even IF we wanted toco-sleep with you, it'd be impossible unless there was a mattress size that was 10 times the size of a California king and even then, Daddy and I would probably still get karate chopped in the head.)
8. Okay, so I've run out of things you're not good at. Stop being so smart and maybe I can think of some more.
   

From January 2011 to December 2011, you've gone from someone who only said 20 words to someone with a limitless (and hilarious) vocabulary. (Not two days ago, you came up to me and touched the area between my nose and my lips. You said - and I kid you not - "I just booped you in your filtrum!"). You've gone from someone who had all the potential (and gene pool) to be a nerd to someone who is, in fact, a certifiable nerd. (You talk about how circles don't have any angles; you talk about what things are vertical and what things are horizontal; you often say "Yet's talk about things that are [red/hot/tall/old/happy/other random adjective]). You've gone from someone who fusses and whines when she can't properly express herself to someone who can come up to me and say "Momma, I'm sad. Yet's talk about it." (Granted, you still fuss and whine at times, but I love that you can tell us how you're feeling). You've gone from being an only child to being the best big sister that Charlie Bear (and Daddy and I) could have ever hoped for. You've gone from someone who needed prompting to do just about everything to someone who (sometimes) puts her cereal bowl on the counter without being asked. You've gone from sleeping on the floor to sleeping in an actual bed. You've gone from being ambidextrous to ... still being ambidextrous. We haven't the foggiest idea which hand you'll use.

You're an amazing little girl. You're remarkably tuned in to other people's feelings, you have an uncanny ability to turn ANY phrase into a song (you inheirited that ability from Bob), and, unfortunately, and the ripe ol' age of 3, you're far smarter than either Daddy or me. It's kind of annoying. You're incredibly sensitive, practically becoming inconsolable when one of your friends gets in trouble. You're tirelessly curious, wanting to know what EVERYthing is and what EVERYthing does and what EVERY person's name is. You perhaps have a severe hearing problem because you ask the exact same question over and over and over and over and over and over again. You perhaps do NOT have a severe hearing problem because you hear me grumble something quietly under my breath and immediately squawk "What you say, Momma? What you SAY???!!!". You perhaps have a severe vision problem because you're incapable of finding your shoes when they're 1 nanometer from where you're sitting. You perhaps do NOT have a severe vision problem because you able to find scissors/a lighter/the annoying book we've read 1000 times/cookies even when we try to put them out of your field of vision. Leave our cookies alone, ya hear?

You, you talkative, expressive, helpful, singing, sensitive, curious girl with-or-perhaps-without a severe hearing and/or vision problem are simply astounding. Daddy and I the luckiest parents in the history of the world. To watch you grow and learn is an honor of the highest order. But seriously, leave our cookies alone.

Hugs and smooches,
Mommy & Daddy