Kayla is now 3.5 and I've been compiling some things for awhile now for a post on her.
It has been really fun watching her grow up these last 6 months. Overall I can tell that she maturing a little bit and that is making things a little easier (in terms of her behavior). We definitely have tough moments each day, but in general things seem to be better than they were last summer.
She started preschool in September, and I do think that has had a lot to do with her maturation. She absolutely loves preschool, and is very excited for the 2 days a week she spends there (well, the 2.5 hours she spends there those days). She comes home with lots of fun projects and reports of what she did that day. I can tell that she is learning some concepts that I wouldn't have taught her, which is one of the key reasons I wanted to send her there. She is learning how to play with her peers (although sometimes that is a huge struggle for her). She is learning how to line up (she LOVES to be the line leader and frequently she'll mention it when we are both walking up the stairs and she has to be first... or when we are driving she likes the other cars to be behind her!). She comes home singing new songs all the time and I love that! The first several weeks of preschool I got a “disciplinary report” from her teachers almost every day (which honestly was no shock, although of course it was disappointing). I’d hear things like, "She pushed a little girl off of her chair", "Could you talk to her about how it's not ok to drag her friends around", "Could you talk to her about how it's not ok to put her friends in time out"... things like that. They say it in a really nice and positive way, which I appreciate. Now the reports are much less frequent (more like once a month, rather than once a day!) I’ve talked to them and tried to find out if there is anything I should be doing to help her more than I am, and they basically just have said that she is strong willed child and has a dominate personality and the issues she has are nothing they haven’t seen and nothing I should worry about. She is learning and making progress and that’s what she is in preschool for. So, it’s great to have that kind of support, I really love her preschool!!
She can write her name, although the letters are not usually in order. I did have her "sign" all of her Valentine's. It was a bit of an exercise in patience for me (for her to write all the letters, in order, on such a small card!).
I think she totally has a crush on a boy in her class. She talks about him all the time. She saves her favorite dress to wear on a preschool day “so my friend can see it” and talks about how they played together the whole time, etc. I am not really sure what to make of this all. I didn’t think a 3 year old could be boy crazy already. I guess I’m glad she’s 3 and not 13! But for what it’s worth, this little boy is adorable and so sweet, so at least she has good taste!
Lately she has been starting to anticipate needs and offer help. I love seeing her develop like this. For example.... we were at the dinner table and I couldn't open the jar of salsa. She says, "Mommy wait!" and RUNS into the kitchen, goes in the drawer and pulls out the rubber can opener and brings it to me. Another example is when we were getting ready to leave the house and she was in her boots and jacket and I was putting Isaac in his snowsuit. She brought the car seat over to me so I could put him in it. Or David spilled some water and she went running and grabbed a paper towel for him to use to clean it up. She is starting to do things like that all the time and I love how she is interested in helping and I love how she is starting to problem solve and learn how to fix problems.
She likes to make us laugh and she can be so goofy!
She is starting to help out with "chores" around the house. When I'm emptying the dishwasher she puts all of the silverware away. She helps set the table. She helps me fold her laundry (her pants she can do on her own) and sort socks. She helps me pick up toys when I'm getting ready to vacuum and she also gets a turn to use the small attachment to vacuum. She likes to have a chance at using the hairdryer all by herself. She can brush her own hair (although I like to have a turn too) and can put in her headband and bows on her own (granted, she doesn't usually put them in in such a way that keeps the hair out of her face, but I'm proud of the initiative she takes). She can brush her own teeth, put on her own jacket and sometimes zip it too, put on her boots and zip them up, and do the top buckle to her carseat. She has taken responsibility of hanging her coat on the coat rack when she comes in from outside. She likes to pick out her own clothes each day and has her favorite outfits and ones she’ll refuse to wear. I’m almost to the point where I think I should take her shopping to pick out her clothes because then at least I know she’ll wear them! Despite the cold weather in Michigan, she pretty much refuses to wear a sweater or a sweatshirt. Too bad, because she has a bunch of really cute ones!
She got a 48 piece puzzle for Christmas and it includes 4 different puzzles. When we first started doing them I thought I might tear all of my hair out, it was so incredible frustrating. I tried to explain how we first separate all of the edge pieces, and then put those in place, and then work on the rest of the puzzle. For whatever reason, it just didn't occur to me that not everyone would choose to do a puzzle that way. And so I was giving her guidance on how I do a puzzle. But, she had her own way of doing it, and once I let her do it her way, she has gotten so good at them! She quickly learned how to do them all by herself and she loves puzzles. Her preschool teacher even commented about how she is very good at them!
She has TONS of energy. She also has an incredible ability to run or spin in circles for an extremely long time. She pretty much had given up napping by her 3rd birthday. She was napping less than 1 day a week at that point (I won’t say she never napped, but it was once in a very great while). But she’ll go in spurts where suddenly she’s napping nearly every day for several weeks at a time. Then she’ll go back to not napping at all. I don’t know if they coincide with growth spurts, or with major learning times or what. But every day she spends between 1.5 and 2 hours in her room, either playing with toys, reading books to herself and her dolls, or sleeping. She is really good at self-entertaining during that time and it is nice when I am able to put Isaac down for a nap during that time as well so I can have a few moments to myself!
She loves Isaac so very much. She enjoys making him laugh, helping comfort him if he’s crying, bring toys to him and of course also taking toys away. Some days I feel like all I do is try to preserve Isaac’s life and scold Kayla for the million and one things she’s doing to him (hitting him, pushing him down, stealing toys, etc). But I am so glad to know that overall there is a general love between them. Whenever she takes a bath she begs for Isaac to come too and they both splash up a storm and giggle and squeal .
I can’t say that she’s a mommy’s girl or a daddy’s girl. She has moments when she’s one or the other. Lately she has been wanting whoever she can’t have (in the morning when David is at work she cries for him, but then when it’s bedtime and David is taking her up while I nurse Isaac, she cries for me to put her down). She has a deep love for us both, and in fact would like to marry either me or David!! She does not like the days when David has to go to work. She loves, loves, loves the weekends when “both mommy and daddy get to stay home”. The picture below is of the flowers that David got her for Valentine's Day. He came home with flowers for both of us, a cupcake for Kayla and chocolate pecan puddles for me. And bang-bang shrimp for an appetizer (our favorite). He pretty much is the best dad/husband I know! :) Kayla was so excited about her flowers, it was very precious.
She has learned to be a bit gentler with the cats. She now likes to drag poor Wesley up on her lap, but once she man-handles him there she pets him sweetly. Since he is such a tolerant cat, he endures it and eventually purrs!
Her favorite treat is a lollipop! Here's a funny interview video that I took of her awhile ago.
Over the last 6 months I’ve tried to write down some of the funny things she’s done/said. Here’s my list, and the back-story when necessary:
me: (regarding the paper chain that David and Kayla made for her birthday) "your daddy is good at arts and crafts"
K = "yeah, daddy is good at cracks and I am good at cracks.... and Jane has a crack in her wall" (Jane is our neighbor who had a crack fixed in her basement OVER A YEAR AGO on a day she was watching Kayla for me! I can’t believe the things she remembers)
K: "wesley likes to drink milk from mommy"
me: "um, no.... wesley likes to drink milk, but not mommy's milk" (assuming she was talking about my milk, from the source)
K: "wesley likes to drink milk from mommy's cereal bowl.... Isaac likes to drink milk from mommy's breast... and when mommy is away mommy's milk comes out and goes into a bottle" LOL
k: "Grandma doesn't love daddy... she loves Kayla...
me: yes she does
k: no
me: she loves daddy AND Kayla
k: OOOOOOOOOOOh
“It's OK baby.” (she’ll tell me this if I’m sad or frustrated at something)
While in Savannah for Steph’s wedding in October, my parents took the kids quite a bit so David and I could do wedding stuff. One day they took them both to the beach, the same beach where David and I had taken them to the day before. My parents were following the GPS to get them there, and the GPS told them to turn right. Kayla started yelling from the back, “No, turn left, the beach is on the left!” Of course my parents told her kindly that they were going to follow the GPS. Well, they turned right and the road quickly dead-ended. They turned the car around and Kayla said very sweetly from the back seat, "I TOLD you to turn left but you did not listen!" And they just laughed because she was right!! Sure enough if they had turned left when she told them to they would have been right at the beach!
Sometimes she has a concept of time, but sometimes not at all. A few examples:
"I'm getting bigger, and I'm growing up to be an adult."
"When I'm a baby, I'm going to (fill in the blank of something Isaac is currently doing)"
She gets stuck on certain stories, things that happened to us or things she saw. She’ll ask us over and over again to tell us about them: "Can you tell me about the man? Can you tell me about the tornado warning*? Can you tell me about the time when we were driving home and we saw the train?"
(*oh my stars, the tornado warning. We had a tornado warning in October and I honestly think for a week straight we talked about NOTHING ELSE except that warning… what it meant, what we were supposed to do when we heard that noise, what we actually did when we heard that noise, etc. And to this day – many MONTHS later – when she prays at dinner or at bed she almost always says something like “please don’t let any tornados come to our house”, or “Dear God, please keep us safe from the tornado's”! )
She likes to talk on the phone to our parents or to David, and when she is all done talking she says, "Goodbye, that's all I have to tell you!" and immediately hangs up!
I try to infuse prayer into her daily needs, and stops to pray when we notice a need. She recently came to me and said, “Mommy my ear hurts, can you please pray to Jesus that he will make it feel better?” And also recently there was a car stuck in the snow on our road and its tires were spinning and it really didn't seem like he was going to get out (we had been watching him for several minutes). Kayla said, "I want to pray for that man. Dear Jesus, please help that man get un-stuck." And honest to goodness on his next try he got out. Kayla was SO EXCITED and how cool was it for me to show her how God answered her prayers. To a 3 year old, showing such a quick answer to a prayer was amazing. I do love the faith of a child.
I’ve been a mom now for 3.5 years, and it just RECENTLY struck me that we are molding and shaping a PERSON. This baby is actually growing up and will someday be an adult. And OH MY WORD we are actually raising a person and we have this huge responsibility and so much to teach her… and we have 2 kids now, so we have so much to teach THEM! And how are we ever going to teach them everything? Like how to be a generous person when she can’t even share her toys? And how to have patience for others when she is so impatient and when I lack patience myself? And like how to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind? Some days it’s all I can do to survive the day… but I am realizing that time is so precious and I don’t want to waste the little time that I actually have to be home with my kids. Before I know it Kayla will be off to school all day, and I will no longer be the majority of influence in her life. David and I chose for me to stay at home with our kids, and am I really making the most of that? Some days I do, and some days I don’t. I’m trying to figure out who I am as a mom, and what my priorities are, and how I can teach my kids the things that are important to me. Even three and a half years into it I’m finding that I still have so much to learn and so much to work on. And I’m trying to seize every moment and recognize that every moment is a gift. And not to sound dramatic, but you never know when life might change. Our church is doing a series on Ecclesiastes and it’s made me think a lot. It talks about how brief life is -a vapor - and how “everything is meaningless.” Well, the basis of the series is that meaningless should actually be translated as temporary…. And because it is temporary, it should be all the more precious. Life is fleeting, and each moment should be treasured so much because it’s so fleeting. And I want to make sure that I’m making the most of every moment, because life is temporary, and before I know it my kids will be grown up and gone. And I want to make sure I’m doing everything I can. And I just pray that one day I’ll be able to look back and have no regrets about what I did or did not do for/with my kids.
