For her card...

This is what I want to write in my daughter's birthday card this year. 

Dear C,

Months ago you started talking about your birthday. How you would eat cake and be three! Then you decided you loved ballet.  I think you dress up as a ballerina (aka princess) every single day. You also love kitties right now, and talked about the kitty-fleece-fabric we saw one day at Wal-Mart for three months. Since we're celebrating you today, it's all about the things you love. So we're having a ballet birthday party. You're dressed up as a ballerina. I'll be making your cake this year, and I've made the ballet ribbon wands for your friends to dance with at the party. I bought that fabric and have spent hours making it into a blanket for you. I really wanted it all to be perfect, because I love you so much. I tried really hard to make that blanket perfect. Then I realized something: you'll love this blanket. Right now you'll love it because you're three, it's soft, it's got kitties on it, and it's pink! But later I hope you still love it, when you realize how imperfect it is...because your Mommy made it, thinking of you and trying to make something you'd love. Mommy did her best. When you're older, maybe it will have a message for you about perfection, about love, or about doing your best. I hope it does.

Oh, how the days go by...

Well, I wanted to make sure that C and I had plenty to keep us busy with F gone. I have succeeded far beyond my wildest imaginings. Our ability to "go and do" at this post is so far beyond our ability to "go and do" at Irwin, it astounds me. Let's see, lately we've been to gymnastics class, dance class, a Raggs concert (visit www.pbskids.org for who Raggs is.) the Louisburg Cider Festival, the Weston Apple Festival, the Weston Red Barn Farm and pumpkin patch, a production of Richard Scarry's "Busy Town" by Theatre for Young America, the KC Renaissance Festival and KC chocolate festival, and that's only in the month of October! Of course, there's still more on our calendar to get us to the end of the month, then even more to get us to Thanksgiving and I think we get to breathe a little before Christmas...oh yeah, then we get to get ready for Christmas! If I have a chance later, I'll give some of the details of our outings, but right now, I just wanted to let y'all know what we're up to. 

We said bye-bye...

to the diapers. That's actually why I haven't updated this in a while. My life has revolved around the potty-training issue lately, and I didn't want to scar C for life by publicizing every detail of her potty-ing. However, it's been a week since she said that the diapers could go away and she'd use the potty. She's doing quite well so far, and her Mommy is keeping calm...mostly. 

Her own preferences

We have a photo frame that shows a slideshow of C photos that she'll just sit and watch for ages. Some of the photos are of last Halloween, when C was "Little Quack." Randomly, in the car the other day she started talking about the day she was a duck in the dark and how it was fun and she got treats in a sack. She was saying that it was "so much fun," (which, incidentally is one of her favorite phrases lately). I explained that it was a game we played every year, called Halloween. I asked if she wanted to be a duck again. Her response: "No, I don't want to be a duck again. I be Minnie Mouse in the dark next!" I never thought a not-quite-3 year old would understand Halloween enough to have a preference already! Thankfully, the Minnie costume is available online, so I'll be getting that soon. 

Another quip...or two

Last night we went to a dinner at the chapel and a little bunny was outside munching on leaves. We stopped to watch it--for about 10 minutes. We actually had to sit down on the sidewalk, we were there so long. C was very good about it too, she didn't chase him, she just sat and watched, and talked to it and about it. My favorite though:

C: Hi bunny, *points to self* I C, *points to me* and this is my friend, Mommy.

She looked at me a little later and said, "I want to pet bunny."

By this time I was ready to be done watching the bunny so I said, "Go ahead and try."

C very cautiously walked toward the bunny, and the bunny hopped away, of course. C looked up at me very solemnly and said, "I don't think bunny wants petted."

Quip of the day

C decided she wanted cereal for lunch today, and since she had an egg and bacon for breakfast, I went along with it. I was talking to her while she ate and she decided to tell me all about her letters (The Letter Factory is our latest obsession, but I don't object because she knows almost all the sounds of all the letters now.) and she put her empty spoon in her mouth.

"Oops. No food there."

Little Bibliophile

I'm raising a little bibliophile. For those of you who aren't big on the greek/latin word roots, "biblio" means book, and "phile" means love. We went to the library last week and got C her first library card, and while we were there, my friend Danielle (*waves*) was asking me about my favorite books growing up. I thought about it and realized that I don't know much about which books were my favorites when I was C's age, except for my mother telling me that I tortured my grandmother by making her read "The Farmer in the Dell" for hours upon end. I could think of a multitude of books I loved after about the age of 8, but before that *shrug* nobody knows what I was fond of. That made me decide to blog about what books C loves right now. And boy, does she love books. She has a stack of them that she carries around the house, pushes in her stroller and takes to bed. The _same_ stack all the time. She will also sit and "read" her books for, well, half-hours at a time. She loves her Clifford, Curious George, Thomas the Tank Engine and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, but in particular she loves "Minnie's Rainbow" (100 times a day!) and "Curious George Builds a Home". In addition to her television characters, she has developed a fondness for "Miss Spider's Tea Party" that we got at Sophie's tea party birthday last year. She's also recently discovered our Dr. Suess books, and while she doesn't understand Horton Hears a Who, she likes looking at the elephant. She prefers Mr. Brown says Moo, There's a Wocket in My Pocket, Cat In the Hat and the Lorax though. She also loves "The Monster at the End of the Book" and her feels-real books. Her favorite board books seem to be Are You My Mother and Put Me In the Zoo. Before bed we have several books that we read, all bedtime related: Goodnight George, Just in Case You Ever Wonder, Kittycat's Lullaby, Little Quack's bedtime and The Going to Bed Book. We were reading Goodnight Moon until the air conditioning unit in C's room started leaking and got it all wet. Ick. Yes, I am raising a little bibliophile. I doubt that anyone is particularly surprised by that though.