My Peanut.

My sweet sweet baby face.

Oh, what a wild thing you are. So wild, and untamed and unabashedly gorgeous. You are your Daddy's "Mini Me" but with my little ears and feet. You are this tiny little peanut of a thing, but your personality can't be contained in this house alone. You are a hurricane, both a natural disaster at times and a stubborn force to be reckoned with. Regardless, you are my sweet sweet baby.

You love art, whether it's glitter, paints, stamps, crayons, chalks, you don't care. You just want it out there for all to see. You don't lean towards any one color or medium, every color of the rainbow is useful through your eyes.

You love to dress up and pretend. One minute you're Dr. Lillie and the next you're a bug. Sometimes you're the Princess and other times the dragon. I love every inch of whoever you are at the moment, more so each day.

You love to read and (attempt) to write. Your Christmas and Birthday gifts were all educational for a reason. You swallow up facts whole like you're starving to death. We were lectured yesterday at your 3 year check up for flipping through the informational illustrative books the Doctors keep on hand in the rooms. You were fascinated by the ear and that there is a tiny "drum" inside that receives noise like a hand thumping a real drum. You sat saucer eyed in my lap while we compared Mommy's purse to the illustration of the brain. "Mommy's purse is like your head and skull and Mommy's wallet is like your brain. All of this important information inside the wallet (like your brain) is stored inside the purse (like your head and skull.) When you learn how to walk - I placed an insurance card into the wallet - you store it in your brain to remember later. Everything you learn goes into your brain so that you'll always remember how to speak, run, dance..." And then the Doctor came in and ruined everything. He told Mommy that some of the images were frightening (rashes, which oddly enough, you pointed out and said it was like your rash - you have Mommy's finicky skin) and that I should use caution when exposing you to images such as this. If it hadn't been for the fact that we don't have a real choice who we see in this Pediatrics practice, we wouldn't have had him for our Doctor. Your regular Doctor at this practice would have been elated that you were so interested. He also made a liar out of Mommy. I promise you, Peanut, I never would have told you that you weren't getting shots if I'd known about the finger prick. I wouldn't have allowed you to look so betrayed when they had me "bear hug" you to test your anemia. Of course, we wouldn't HAVE to test if you'd actually eat real food, but that's neither here nor there at this point.

There is a part of Mommy that guiltily wants you to always stay 29 pounds and small enough to fit in my jackets like "Mama's Joey." I don't want you to tell me to stop singing to you or not to dance with you before bed. I don't want you to stop holding my hand as I whisper my love to you each night. Even though I complain at times, I don't want you to ever NOT want to come sleep with me... even though it means kicking Daddy out of bed.

Three is hard. Three is hard for Mommy. This is when you become more "Me do it myself," and throwing tantrums. This is when I have to start counting to ten more often under my breath because you need to do these things on your own, and I can't get angry at you for your attempts at independence. I can only attempt myself, to talk you down after you fail or applaud wildly when you succeed.

Oh, my goober girl. I'm so lucky to be your Mommy. How did I ever get so lucky in my life? Between you and Brother, I couldn't have asked to be so blessed.

She got caught sneaking donut holes from Grandpa's stash and then proceeded to pitch a fit at the dinner table which ended with her spitting her dinner out at me. To time out she went. "Deep breath... 10, 9, 8, 7..."