Last Month

On this day next month, Nadia will turn four years old. This is the last month I can say I have a two-year-old and a three-year-old.

Because of her obsession with princesses, she has one outfit (that Grandma got her) that she'd wear every day if I'd let her. The top is pink with princesses on it, and the skirt that goes with it is sparkly and pink. She wears it at least twice a week. She's been known to retrieve it from the hamper (before it's been washed) and put it on before coming down for breakfast. She has three pairs of summer pjs that have princesses on them (one with pants, one with shorts, and a nightgown). The nightgown is by far her favorite.

She's been wearing size 4/4T pretty much exclusively. She had still been wearing size 3T pants, but I think by the fall she'll be ready for 4/4T pants. On Mother's Day she actually was wearing a size 5 dress, and it fit her perfectly.

Her favorite foods include ham/cheese hot pockets, egg salad, yogurt, bananas, applesauce, raisins, pretzels, chips, grapes, spaghetti, ziti, pizza, macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, cheeseburgers, french fries, crackers, fruit snacks, pancakes, most breakfast cereals, raisin or peach oatmeal, and any dessert (especially if it contains chocolate).

Her favorite drink is milk. She'd drink that exclusively if we let her. She also will drink fruit punch (the American kind not the Caribbean kind), water, apple juice, and cranapple juice.

She can do 24 piece puzzles very quickly all by herself, even if it's a new puzzle. The biggest puzzle she's done is 100 pieces, and she can only do one of those by herself if she's done it with someone else before.  She needs to develop more patience before she'll be able to tackle a new 100 piece puzzle by herself.

She's been asking me LOTS of questions about Joseph every day the last few weeks. Pretty soon I think I'll have all his brothers' names memorized (I have to keep looking up that passage in the Bible as I usually can't recite all of them from memory). We don't talk about Jonah as much these days. A few weeks ago the Youth Pastor preached on Sunday morning (the Senior Pastor was away), and his sermon was on Jonah, and he said it was in honor of Nadia. He said he's had many conversations with her about Jonah. I wasn't expecting to hear her name mentioned during the sermon! She's still looking forward to seeing Jonah at Sight and Sound in Lancaster next month.

I've started teaching her a few sight words. She's asking me All The Time how to spell different words.

She takes an average of one nap a week, and about 75% of those are taken in the car (and are less than 30 minutes long). Every once in awhile she still takes a 2+ hour nap in her bed. I actually would prefer that she didn't take any naps in her bed. Yes, you read that correctly. The reason is that when she takes a nap in her bed, she takes FOREVER to fall asleep at night and then gets up too early the next morning. The brief naps in the car don't have any effect on her nighttime sleeping pattern. I've shortened her "quiet time" (when she plays in her room while Ian is napping) to one hour. On this vacation I didn't even have her take a quiet time although she did ask for (and take) a nap yesterday afternoon in our bed while Ian took his nap in his crib in their room.

She still is obsessed with the color pink. One of the books we've read 5 million times while we've been here on vacation is Pinkalicious.