Happy 3rd, Hadley!

Hadley turned 3 this week!  

Now we have to start paying more admissions for her, but she does get to play with a lot more interesting toys.  Some of which even interest big brother.

You may have heard of the term "threenager", and it definitely applies to H, although she has been in that stage for over a year now it seems.  :)  She is, and pretty much always has been, overly dramatic and stubborn if things don't go the way she envisioned them. She is insistent upon doing things herself from picking out clothes to buckling herself into her carseat to getting her own water from the fridge.  This is a normal stage of independence, but H does it with attitude!  Oh, and she usually shuns any sort of hair bow or rubber bands, as you can tell from the pictures.

On the flip side, she is kind to others, especially smaller children.  She is very observant, already noticing when we make a different turn on the way to somewhere familiar and mimicking exercises from bootcamp at home, sometimes recruiting Owen for the video. The other day she did exercises unprovoked for about 20 minutes while the rest of us finished dinner. 

She hasn't eaten dinner consistently in months (see stubbornness above), but she loves breakfast and lunch!  (And dessert, obviously!)

Accomplishments this year:

• potty training, already handling everything herself 95% of the time (see above)
• pretty good with her "thank you"s  
• counting to twelve
• singing her ABCs and "Hona Donna" (Old MacDonald) 
• knowing lots of colors and letters by sight
• going off the diving board at swim lessons
• sleeping in a big bed and staying in her room until her clock lights up green

Her favorite phrase right now is, "... Right, Owen?", which can be repeated up to 5 times in a minute if he is not responsive.

Other favorites include:

• "I still love you, Mom." (When she used to get in trouble, I would tell her that I still loved her to calm her down.  Now she always includes the word "still", which cracks me up.)
• "I so firsty." (which makes parents of newly potty-trained kids nervous)
• "I ready for beppas." (First comment in the morning.  Breakfast.  Not hello or good morning.)
• "I ready for lunch." (Usually if we went out for lunch, she'll ask for it upon returning home.)
• "This one, mom?" (asked when putting her shoes on the wrong feet 90% of the time)
• "Because I want to." (no explanation needed here!)

Happy birthday to my favorite threenager!