Peanut Post: Three and a half!

Wake up, little girl, it's yellow day at preschool! 

Flashback to her first half birthday :)

About Annalyn at 3.5 years:  You are our little sour patch kid - sour and sweet all at once.  You can be the sweetest, most genuine kid ever, then turn around and throw a major fit or push your sister down for no reason.  I'm told this is normal for your age, but it makes Daddy and me crazy. On the way home from Georgia we heard Faith Hill's "Wild One" and laughed about how well it describes you at this age - "when she was three years old on her daddy's knee, he said you can be anything you want to be... She's a wild one, runnin' free."  You, of course, now love the song about the wild little girl.

You love sleepovers on the rare occasion I let you sleep in bed with me, but kick and turn all night long.  Your latest thing is that you want every day to be "special."  Either a special event, special treat, special trip, or a special privilege (like staying up late or sleeping with mom).  I've tried to reason with you that if every day is special, no day is, but I think you're a little too young for that one.
You love, love, LOVE, to role play and we are constantly being told "who we are" at the moment. Usually, you are "mommy when she was a little girl," Emma is either "Uncle Travi" or "baby Lindsey", and we are "Grandma and Papa."  Sometimes we are various Frozen characters : you - Anna, me - Elsa, Dad - Kristoff, Emma - little troll.  Other times, you're Tarzan, and we are your gorilla family.  You get the picture - rarely are we Mama, Daddy, Annalyn, and Emma.

You desperately want friends.  Getting to see Remy, cousins, or the neighbor kids is a huge treat and you relish every second.  After two days of preschool, you tell me that Lily and Charlie are your friends and you also like the Spiderman boy that was wearing boots.  Oh my.

with cousin, Eliza, before the party (bridal shower)

You love dinosaurs and don't understand why they don't live anymore.  When I tried to explain it to you, you got sad and cried.  Then we saw a big t-rex statue along the interstate on our way down south and you proclaimed, "SEE, I TOOOOLD YOU THEY WERE STILL ALIVE!!!"  You also believe in mermaids and magic.  We decided to just stop arguing about those and let you have them for now.  On the other hand, you can tell us what makes an animal a mammal (babies in the mommy's tummy, drink mommy's milk, and fur), the difference between carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores, and the names of most dinosaurs we see in books or on TV (like parasaurolophus?  Really, that's a thing?  Are you sure she's not making it up?)

Reading remains one of your favorite things to do.  You will sit for 30 minutes at a time, flipping through various books, magazines, catalogues, etc.  Several of them, you can recite from memory. Dr. Seuss is your latest obsession.

PBK catalogues are a good alternative to Dr. Seuss, right?

Chasing birds "catching" butterflies (you never actually do), and finding spiders are a few of your favorite outdoor activities lately.  We've found some little frogs and toads, too, and you like to poke at them but won't pick them up.  Instead, you make Emma, who is all too willing to oblige.

Stats:
weight - 35 lbs.
height - 3 ft. 3.5 in.
sizes - shoe size 8-8.5, clothing size 4T (with some 3T and some 4 mixed in after a big growth spurt this summer)

Milestones/accomplishments:


preschool - Started preschool last week.  You go a couple times a week for a couple hours at a time.  The first day, you did awesome.  Jumped out of the car with your teacher, high-fived me through the window and bounced on in.  When I picked you up, you proudly exclaimed, "I had a good day at preschoooool!"  The second day, not so lucky - when I picked you up, the teacher said you had "a sad day" and missed your mom.  So we had several talks about how preschool is a time to play with your friends, learn new things, and do crafts and afterwards you get to see mama. Third day was somewhere in between. Apparently not as easy of a transition as I expected after your first day...

heart.can't.take.the.sweetness.

potty training - mostly done, still pull-ups at bedtime since you don't always wake up dry.  We took them away at naptime this summer and have only had a couple small accidents since.

dressing yourself - including shoes, you can dress yourself now.  Not that you always want to or will, but you definitely can.

why yes, that is shorts over a skirt over a romper

obviously, you have great style/taste

first dentist appointment - you had your first dentist appointment this summer and did great.  You listened to everything they said and asked you to do and had perfect sparkly teeth.  You and Emma do really like to brush your teeth, so I'm not surprised.

first trip to the ocean - as you've seen in previous posts, you made it to the ocean before you were 4.  Lucky duck!  It took me until I was 20 and on my honeymoon to see it.  You really liked running into the water, then running away from the waves as they came crashing in.

You are so incredibly smart, manipulative, sweet, stubborn, hilarious, sensitive, honest, sarcastic, goofy, sincere, ornery, and silly.  I can't think of a better way to describe it, though sometimes I just say you are me, with a double dose of Daddy.  I'll let you decide whom to attribute each of those traits.  Love you, too, Peanut.  I know, I know, it's Annalyn.  Oh, wait, Tarzan?  Oooook.  Love you, little Tarzan ;)

Love,

Mommy Gorilla