Look who's 3! I cannot believe it Katherine! You are such a big girl. You had quite a weekend of birthday festivities. We had a lot of fun.
You continue to be so much fun. The older you are, the more fun you are. You love to plan games. Tonight we played hide-n-go-seek. You were so cute. You would show me where to hide and then you would go count so you could come find me. Finally I got you to understand that I would hide on my own. When you find me or daddy you tickle us. It is fun. 
You also love puzzles and board games. We have assembled a large collection, especially of different variations of "Memory". You don't always understand or play by the rules but you are having fun, learning and playing fair. As you get older we will work on the actual rules of the games.
You love to do crafts. You take after your mom and both grandmothers. You like to color, paint, cut and glue. You would sew if I let you I am sure. We try to do a craft of some sort every day. Your crafts are starting to be more recognizable, at least if you are describing what you are drawing. You have drawn people if instructed on what part comes next. You can get a little frustrated though if it does not look right.
You are just starting to get interested in writing letters. I try to get you to trace a letter or copy it. You get frustrated because you know what it is supposed to look like but you can't do it. I don't want to push you when you may not be ready yet to write letters so we only do it when you initiate it.
You know all the letters and are starting to know what sounds they make as well. I guess you are learning it at school because I have not been teaching you the letter sounds. In the car we are always talking about letters and words. You like to "play alphabet". This is when one of us will ask, "What starts with the letter ___?" and the other will answer with words that start with that letter.
One of my favorite things that you have started doing this month is rhyming. You are obsessed with rhyming words. All day long you will think of a pair of words that rhyme and tell it to me. You really understand the concept well.
One day you were in your car seat and you were especially proud of your rhyme. You said, "mommy, did you know that boo boo and poo poo rhyme?" One of the ones that made me the most proud was when we were reading Fancy Nancy. The last page has the word "nestle" in it. You asked me what rhymes with "nestle". I said "trestle". You said, "you know what else rhymes with 'nestle'? 'pretzel'". Sometimes you are better at it than I am because I try to think of words that rhyme because they are spelled the same whereas you are just matching the sounds. Another example of this is when you told me that lock and talk rhyme.
You are so obsessed with rhyming that you literally do it in your sleep. Last night you woke up at 3am and came to our bed. I promptly picked you up and put you back in your bed. I laid there for a few minutes. I thought you were asleep but when I got up you said, "Wait mom, did you know 'hallway' and 'dallway' rhyme? Also, 'sleep' and 'sheep' rhyme too?" I affirmed you that yes, they do rhyme but it is time for your "head" to lay on your "bed" so you can sleep. You thought that was pretty funny.
You are doing very well with counting. You can count to 29 with almost perfect accuracy. It seems that you always skip something. You also continue with "twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven." It makes sense and you have the counting concept down, but you have not memorized that "thirty" is what comes next. 
You seem to already have a good number sense. You come from a long line of math and science family members. Mommy was a math emphasis education major, daddy is an engineer and majored in math and engineering. Nana taught math, Pops works in finance and Grandad is an accountant. So, it makes sense that you would be good at numbers too. You do small math problems all the time. You count your fingers and toes. You really count things all the time. We are starting to do simple word problems with you. Things like, "if you have 4 chicken nuggets and eat two, how many are left." You think it is fun. 
You love to sing and make up songs all day long. What is really funny is when you try to get us to sing with you and it is a song you have made up. You are starting to memorize songs at church as well and it is so fun to hear you try to sing songs like "I'm in the Lord's Army", "I've got the Joy, Joy, Joy", and "Zaccheaus". I am realizing how much explaining I have to do when you asked me what Joy and Heart were. 
I think your favorite song continues to be the Alphabet song though you like to sing it in silly voices, as fast as possible and to different tunes. 
When we are in the car you talk, sing and scream gibberish the entire time. It is quite entertaining to Caroline and you can really get her laughing. If she is asleep though, you want everyone to be quiet which is a very good thing. 
You love your school. Starting this week you will be the only girl in a class of 8 kids. The other girls have both left so that their mommies can work full time. I am sad about this but you said it is OK. Apparently you are quite popular and can be a bit bossy to those boys. You rotate who is your best friend each day but overall I think it is Cole. You tell me that you have lots of best friends. 
You continue to be very curious about things. Your latest interest is all of the controls in the van. We got a new minivan this month and this week you have started asking about things. From your car seat you will point to the front seat and say, "What's that?" The problem is that I have no idea what you are pointing to and you get frustrated when i can't answer. It has helped that when we get somewhere I will let you show me but it is actually quite annoying. 
One thing I taught you to do on one of these front seat visits was honk the horn. I know that sounds crazy but I did it after reading about a 3 year old who went to get something out of their mom's car (they lived in the country on the same property as their grandparents). She could not get out and died in there. Her parents are trying to teach kids what to do. So, we have taught you that if you ever are stuck in the car you go to the front seat and honk the horn. I hate having to think of things like that but I would never be able to live with myself if something happened because I did not take the time to teach you that. 
You are very snugly. Every morning when you wake up you come to our room and crawl into bed. Sometimes that frustrates me because it is early, but overall I love our morning snuggles.You say lots of sweet things. My favorite is still when you say, "I love you so, so, so, so, very, very much". You also tole me that I was your favorite mommy. Thanks.
You still absolutely love Caroline. As she is able to do more and more you are more interested in her. It is so fun to see you all actually playing together and enjoying one another. I have been so pleased with how you have adjusted to being a big sister. I have never seen any mean or jealous behavior on your part. 
You are very interested in my camera. You like to take pictures and have gotten pretty good at it. You are being a stinker when it comes to getting your picture taken though. You like to practice all of your faces so I usually end up with a series of pictures. You can see your bashful, surprised, silly and sad/mad face before finally having your smiling face.
You love the TV and computer. It is so hard to balance the amount of time you get with technology. I wish you watched less but it can be so nice that the TV will hold your attention long enough for me to get ready in the morning or cook dinner. The problem is when you don't want it turned off or you throw a tantrum because you do not want to eat dinner because you would rather watch TV.
As you turn 3, you have turned into a much better sleeper than you were as a baby. You take a nap almost every day. It is usually 2-2.5 hours long but some days (like today) it can stretch past 3 hours. You often tell me you don't want to take a nap and it can be a struggle but you almost always do. A few times I have encouraged you to just read books in your bed if you don't want to nap an dafter about 5 minutes you curl up and go to sleep. At night you usually go to bed about 9 and wake up at 7 or 7:30.
Your eating habits can be frustrating. You technically like and will eat a lot of different foods but on any given night you may decide that you do not like something that you previously liked. It can be very frustrating. My goal is to be a bit more strict with your eating and to have you always eating what we are eating. Now that Caroline is eating baby food I do not want to be making separate meals for you too.
You have turned into quite the girly girl. You love anything that has to do with princesses, Fancy Nancy or ballet. Your favorite colors are pink and purple and you like to wear dresses. I finally have gotten you to wear your hair in either a bow or ponytail though you have quite an opinion on how you want your hair.
You are doing a great job of using adjectives and adverbs. Your vocabulary and sentence structure are exploding. Daily you amaze me with the new words that you use correctly. You have started to use your hands to describe things like big, bigger and biggest. It is pretty cute.
The other day you said, "mom, this is my brain. We use it to think about God." I love that! You are learning so much. Another thing about your body that you have learned and you say often is "mom, I can't see my eyes but I can see your eyes. You can't see your eyes though."Katherine, you are such a delight. This year has been amazing. I cannot wait to see what the next year has in store for us.
By the way, I have decided that this is my last monthly post. I figure that a birthday is a good place to stop. I love having them but they are a lot of work and I put pressure on myself to do them every month. From now on I plan to do just periodic "Katherine Tributes" as stuff happens.
