Elsie Lately-3 Years Old

It has been so long since I did a whole post dedicated to our little Elsie bug-although she would get upset if she heard me say that word "little"  Every time we call her little she corrects us with "I'm not little, I'm a big sister".  :)  She is growing up so fast right before our eyes.  I think back to when I did these posts on a monthly basis and feel a little sad that I don't do them more often, but lets just say she keeps us really busy.  I try to keep a little list of things she does or says that I want to remember but to actually get them all written down on the blog is another story.

Also on Friday March 6th we finally got around to getting her 3 year photos taken so I decided to include those in this post too.

So this is what has been going on with Elsie lately...

A few little things about her:
1.  She is obsessed with my hair being in a pony tail.  The minute I dry it, she wants it up.  If she wakes up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night she will comment that my hair is falling out of my ponytail.  It is so strange...she told me the other day that she doesn't like my hair down-only in a ponytail.

2.  Everything is "3 because I am 3".  This started when we were ask her to eat 3 more bits of something before she can be done.  We told her it is because she is 3 years old now.  But for her it doesn't end with food.  It can be three more kisses, three pieces of candy, three stickers, three pennies-everything is "3 because I am 3".

3.  She has started to develop a fear of monsters.  We actually started noticing this back in January.  She started to want a light on, now she wants her door cracked open.  She claims there are monsters in a room if it is dark.  It hasn't become a huge issue yet but her imagination is definitely kicking into gear.

4.  Speaking of imagination, it is so fun to see her imagination just developing.  I love to listen to her play and create things our of nothing sometimes.  I love to watch her as she plays in her kitchen, with her beauty shop, and with her babies.  Right now, one of her favorite things to do is to pretend she is a cowgirl and John is her horse.  He has so much patience for this as she rides on his back like a horse just about every evening.  The other night, her horse (who she names something different almost every night) broke its legs and she had to call the dr (which was me).  Thanks to being pregnant I luck out have to be the horse ;).  She will ride around and say "I'm a rock and roll cowgirl!".  No clue where she picked that up from.

5.  Other things she loves to do in our freetime (at least during the cold winter months):  She loves to read/look at books, do anything "crafty", makes cards, colors, cuts, and glues.  She could do that for hours!  We moved all the craft stuff into the dining room so she can help herself and most of the time you will find her on her stool coloring away or gluing something onto a sheet of paper.  She is also getting pretty good at cutting too.  She has started to make up songs too.  She mainly does this in the car and I just love listening to her.

6.  She LOVES to help out in the kitchen.  Every morning that I go to work, she helps John make breakfast.  She is in charge of the toast :).  She loves to bake muffins, help with preparing dinner, and just the other day she REALLY wanted to make a pie.  If one of us is in the kitchen doing something, she wants to be right there with us helping out.

7.  She loves to help out in general.  She is our super helper :)

8.  She loves Tally.  These two definitely have formed a bond and Tally is so patient with Elsie.  Elsie loves to try to get Tally to chase her tail, is excited to say good morning and gives her hugs and kisses before going to bed at night.  They definitely have a more active relationship and I have rarely seen these two just snuggle together.  They like to run around and be crazy!!  I really can't wait until it gets nicer and these two can run around outside together.

9.  Eating:  Elsie for the most part is a pretty good eater.  She eats most things we put on her plate but one thing she really doesn't like is beans.  Any kind of bean, although she refers to them all as black beans.  She is slowly starting to eat rice-something else we have struggled with.  Some of her favorite foods are fruit (especially berries, she doesn't really care for bananas), grilled cheese and tomato soup, yogurt, carrots, trail mix, and bacon.  One thing she has been doing lately is after eating a little she will say "I'm so full,m if I eat anymore I will be sick".  Elsie had her first real bout with throwing up/stomach flu and she thinks it was because she ate too much.  Now I think she is fixated on eating and making sure she doesn't eat too much because she doesn't want to throw up.  Which is frustrating for us.  Another thing with meal time is that she can take forever to eat!  Which isn't a big deal unless we are in a rush to get somewhere.

10.  Letters:  It wasn't too long ago I was worried because Elsie had no interest in learning letters or recognizing letters.  Well one day it was like a switch just flipped.  She wanted to know what the letters were in the titles of books.  That is where it all began-she received these little Mickey Mouse board books-the ones that come in a set of 10 in a little box.  They are like 2" x 2" books and she wanted us to name the letters on the front.  Since then she has begun to recognize letters one by one.  She can almost always identify these letters:  S, E, I, Exclamation mark, O, K.  I think she struggles a bit between lower case and upper case.  She is getting pretty good at writing her name and will actually sit down and want to work on writing letters.  When writing her name she would struggle with the "S"  She would say it is a "tricky one".  Well just yesterday she sat down and was determined to write and "S" and did it over and over and over and you know what, they actually looked like an "S"  It was fun to see her so proud of herself.

11.  At Elsie's three year doctor visit one of the questions was if Elsie could draw a picture of a person with three or more body parts.  As much as Elsie loves to dry and color that was one thing we never really drew.  I asked her to draw a picture of a person and it didn't look like much-ha!  Well now three months later her pictures of people are fairly elaborate compared to her picture back in December.  Almost everyday she is drawing a picture of our family-Mom, Dad, Elsie and Baby :).  They have all facial features, arms, legs, hair, and she even makes rectangles colored in for a body.  It is amazing what all changes in a few short months.

12.  Elsie's Stats:  At her three year appointment in December Elsie was 39" tall and around 31-32 lbs.  She is outgrowing her 3T clothes and is moving into 4T.  She is growing out of her size 8 shoes and into size 9s.  She is growing way way way too fast.

13.  Sleep:  Elsie is sleeping in her big girl bed since the end of October 2014.  She has maybe gotten out of her bed on her own 3 times-all during nap time.  She calls for one of us if she needs to get out or if she needs to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  I bet 4 out of 7 nights a week she has to get up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night.  Our bedtime routine hasn't changed too much over the last 3 years.  This is how it normally goes:  brush teeth, change into pajamas, go to the bathroom, pick out 3 books and climb into bed.  We read the books, I sing a couple of songs (these days it is rock a bye baby and hush little baby-she will sing along to my belly :).  After songs we might chat for a little bit about random things, I give her a little drink of water and we leave the room.  These days she requests for her bedroom door to be left open just a crack to let a little light in her room.  John and I still alternate nights so we each have a change to snuggle in her bed with her.  She will only use a small little baby blanket that hardly covers her up.  She also snuggles with a stuffed animal-currently it is the little bunny that John won her out of one of those claw machines-ha! She goes to bed between 7:30-8:00 and wakes up between 6:30AM-7:00AM.

14.  Elsie has a heart of gold-She loves her family and friends and talks about them often.  Some nights before bed she will talk about dreams and will share that she is going to dream about her grandma, grandpa, and cousins.  She loves to draw pictures and make cards and always wants to make them for her family and friends.  She gets really upset when she thinks she has disappointed us.

15.  It is not all sunshine and rainbows with Elsie though-she is generally a pretty good, happy child but she knows how to throw a fit, can be a bit whiny at times.  Most of the time the threat of a time out will calm her down and she is good at taking some deep breaths to help her calm down as well.  She knows there are words that are naughty that she can't say like "hate", "stupid" and "brat".  Because she knows she isn't supposed to say these words she will say words that rhyme with them instead-which we have to tell her is still not okay.  Everytime we hear "Shake it Off" she will comment of how we aren't supposed to say the word "hate" when the song goes "haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate".  I would say that our biggest frustration with her at times is how she just takes her time doing things and how many times we have to repeat ourselves for her to finally do something.

16.  Elsie has started extracurricular activities independently.  No more mommy and me classes.  She is doing pretty good but we had to talk to her quite a bit at the beginning about being a good listener and focusing on what the instructor is tell her to do.  She is currently in tumbling and dance and we just finished up her second session of swim lessons.  They recommend that she move on to Preschool Level Three when we start back up again.  She loves the water, jumping in the pool, she doesn't mind going under the water but she really doesn't like to retrieve objects under the water.

17.  She is getting so excited about the upcoming arrival of her baby sister.  She received a baby doll from my sister for Christmas when she turned one.  Over the last two years she has shown very little interest in this doll-until the last couple months.  Now her baby goes with her everywhere-she comes downstairs with us in the morning for breakfast and goes up to her bed at night-she has a little doll pack and play set up right next to her bed in her room.  She uses our cloth diapers for play diapers and she brought her baby with us to Hobby Lobby the other day are carried her through the entire store.  Now that we have the baby swing out that is where he baby doll hangs out with during the day.  Elsie almost always gives my tummy a hug and kiss when she leaves and reads to the baby in my tummy.  If I comment about my tummy getting big or how it is big she will correct me and tell me it's not my tummy but our baby.

I feel like I am missing so much and it is so hard to try to remember every little thing that she does so I never forget and can always look back but that's hard.  The main thing I need to remember is how much joy this little girl brings into our lives!  Her smile and sweetness melts my heart and no matter how many times I get frustrated because she is taking SO LONG to do something I have to remember that she has so much excitement over everything.  I can hear her little excited voice going "whoo hoo! Whoo hoo!".  John and I just reminded each other the other day that we have to be careful not to break her spirit-her spirit of excitement and happiness by our desire to have everything so neat and orderly and perfect.  Life doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful! And life right now is wonderful.  

Elsie Lately

Now that I am not doing monthly posts anymore for Elsie, I want to still post about what she is up to and how much she is growing up (It is happening way too fast!)!  
** I apologize this is a very text heavy post

So lately, 
Elsie is going to bed around 7:30 PM and waking up between 5:30-6:00-way too early so this is something we are working on. Actually just on Sunday she slept past 7:00!  I was up for a whole hour before anyone else-what a treat :)

Elsie's favorite little phrase right now is "I love _____ so much!" (This can be anything from mommy, daddy, flowers, pretzel goldfish, or her new shoes).

Elsie is counting so much better than she was two months ago.  Back in December she would count "1, 3, 9" and then one day we were in her room and she started counting at 1 and went straight through to 13! I was shocked! 

Elsie is getting better with colors.  She knows brown, pink, red, purple, and mostly blue all the time.  She sometimes mixes up yellow and orange and green is a wildcard.  

Elsie is getting more and more into playing with her baby dolls and her stuffed animals.  She puts them to sleep, and likes to read to them.  Her imagination is really starting to bloom!  It is fun to just sit and listen to her.  

Elsie likes to hold them books when we read to her at nap and bedtime.  Sometimes she just wants to "read" the book.  Some books she knows so well she gets the story line right on.  It is fun to listen to her make up stories.  

Elsie likes to play pretend.  One day she wanted to have a tea party and the only thing we had was a stool for a table.  Everything else was imaginary.  She would go upstairs to the "Store" to get more treats and bring that back down.  When we "finished" our treats she would say "More Mommy?" and then go upstairs for more.  Another time she laid out all the DVD's and was pretending it was a store and she would go shopping and buy them and bring them home.  

Elsie will wake up in the morning and the first thing she says is "Snuggle Mommy" or "Snuggle Daddy" depending on who goes in to get her.  We have started a bad habit of bringing her back into our bed to snuggle. Some mornings she will wake up way too early and say "Mommy and Daddy's Room".  It takes a bit of convincing but we normally can get her to lay back down.

Elsie is outgrowing her 2T clothes!  And she wears size 7 shoes! She is getting so big!  

Elsie is excited about the "new house".  We drove by it the other day to test out the garage remotes and she was pretty upset that we couldn't go it.  I told her we didn't have keys for the house.  So now if you ask about the house she puts her arms up and says "we don't have keys".  If you ask her when she will tell you "Friday".  She is still excited about her three windows and two closets in her room and will be happy to tell you that one is for clothes and one is for toys.  She also is really into helping up pack up for the "new house".

Elsie has the sweetest little voice!  Well, except when she is whining for something.  We are working on getting her to talk not whine when she wants something.  Oh and her fits have intensified over the past two months too!  We have learned if we just ignore her and don't give in they end rather quickly.  One day at naptime she threw the biggest fit I have seen her throw all because I wouldn't let her nap in her baby doll cradle.  Really?!?

Elsie loves pretty much all fruits and most vegetables and pasta.  Although that all depends on the day.  It seems her food choices change from one day to the next.  For example, we haven't been able to get Elsie to eat rice ever and then last night that was just about the only thing on her plate that she ate.  They do say that it can take 7-10 times of being offered a particular food before they will start to like it-maybe that is what happened.  We don't make special food for Elsie but I do make sure to offer a fruit and a vegetable because I know I can always count on her eating that.  

Elsie is still rear facing in her carseat, although I think the day will be coming where we turn her forward facing.  I just want to get through the winter/snow driving.  She enjoys car rides and likes to listen to "music" which is not the radio but one of her CD's.  She likes to wear her sunglasses in the car and snuggle with a blanket.  

Elsie started taking a tumbling class with parks and recreation.  She enjoys the bar and beam the most.  

Elsie loves to listen to music and dance.  She will ask for it almost immediately when we get into the kitchen and in the car.  She also likes to turn on her radio in her room.  Our favorite CD's are Raffi and Sharon, Lois, and Bram Greatest Hits.  She LOVES to sing too!  She is catching on with a lot of songs, especially ones where I make up actions.  The other day I looked over at her when she was eating lunch and she was doing the actions I made up for "home on the range". 

Elsie has started to say prayers.  We started with a mealtime prayer and then moved on to a bedtime prayer.  When we started with the bedtime prayer she kept saying "food" because this was part of our mealtime prayer.  I had to explain to her that our bedtime prayer was not about food but about sleeping and so now whenever we start our prayer she says "not food" ;).  I am impressed with how fast she is catching on with her bedtime prayer trying so hard to get the words down.  She also is getting down "Jesus Loves Me".  I tried to record it the other day but of course, she started being silly when the camera came out.  We have started getting these little books mailed to us by our church and without even telling her what the books were about she knew it was about Jesus.  I asked her how she knew it was about Jesus and she opened to a page of Jesus being baptized.  It amazes me what kids pick up on.  

Elsie's favorite books right now are:  Mickey Mouse Look and Find, The Way I Love You by David Bedford and Ann James, The Night Before Summer Vacation, and Llama Llama Bully Goat.  WE have started to go to the library and I let her pick out her own books.  These are the books she tends to want to read when she choose her books before bedtime.  

Elsie went through a hitting stage this past month.  There was a week we noticed her hitting us at home and she actually had a couple of time outs.  Then at the end of the week, JoJo mentioned to me she had been hitting her friends at daycare too!  Ugh!  So over the weekend we talked a lot about hitting and so far, we haven't had anymore issues.  

Elsie loves to get her nails painted!  I do her nails way more than I do my own :)  We use Piggy Paint which is a non-toxic nail polish and it works pretty well for her.  

Elsie is just growing up so fast!  I can't believe she is tall enough to ride the rides by herself, to walk down steps without hold on (although we tell her she needs to hold the railing), pick out her clothes, jump, hop, do somersaults, and have so many opinions about everything.  Her vocabulary and ability to form sentences amaze me just for the fact that I think she should still be a little baby snuggled up in my arms.  I just love her to pieces!