29 Months Old!

Can you believe in one month Nadia will be 2 1/2 years old? At least she's not already 4 years old like she says she is if you ask her how old she is. Actually she's getting better and sometimes does answer that question correctly, but it just so happens that four has been her favorite number the past 5 months. If you ask her how many pretzels she wants, she'll also say four.  As I found out on Sunday that yet another size 2T dress is now too short on her, I guess my girl is growing up and moving into size 3T.

Although Nadia often has to be reminded to say "please" when she's requesting something, she does a great job at remembering to say "bank you." In fact of her own initiative she usually is very specific in saying "thank you for xyz". It's rather comical at times how she ends that phrase. For example as we were leaving the grocery store a few days ago she said to the cashier "thank you for paying." Cracked me up! Technically I was the one who did the paying, but still I thought it was sweet (and cute). She says many other polite greetings to people (on her own initiative) such as "have a nice weekend." She makes me laugh so many times a day. For example this evening when I was telling her (by name) who we would be eating with tomorrow (Paul's family), she said "Oh my goodness that's a lot of people."

Some of her current favorite books include: We're going on a bear hunt, any Clifford book, The velveteen rabbit, The mitten, Have you got my purr?, Are you my mother?, The little engine that could, and The story of Thomas Jefferson. I knew she had a few books memorized. It turns out she has a LOT of books memorized. I can stop at any point, and she'll say the next few words. I haven't counted, but I'd say this is true for at least 30 books. She has a very strong auditory memory! Similarly, she can usually tell me what song is next on a CD before the next song starts. In January I'm going to start having her memorize a Bible verse each week.

Today I'm thankful that...

1. Nadia can go such long periods without going to the bathroom. I never went through the phase of needing to know where all toilets are (in stores), and she's never asked us to stop when we've been on a road trip. I'm very grateful she's potty trained!

2. I'm done planning for our vacation. Today I finalized our plans for the day we're at Cozumel and booked our hotel for New Orleans. I used the "name your price" feature on Priceline and got a really good deal!

3. Paul came home early today (4pm), and he'll be home the next four days. YAHOO! I'm also thankful that today he finished assembling a shelving unit for me in the basement. I bought three with some of my Amazon credit.

4. music is such a blessing in my life. I love singing in my church choir, listening to the radio, and singing with Nadia. Yesterday I bawled my eyes out while listening to this video. The "Hallelujah Chorus" often brings me to tears, and I was really touched to see it sung by so many in a public place. I am sure not everyone who was singing actually believed the words they were saying, but nonetheless it was such a great reminder of the freedoms we enjoy in this country and a wonderful way to bring glory to the Lord.