Happy 3rd Birthday, Kathryn!!!

Happy Birthday Kathryn!

Kathryn is 3 years old today! What a joy this year has been! She has grown SO much in the past year, and is no longer a baby or a toddler, but a full-blown preschooler. She is into all things learning, constantly asking "Why" or how things work or what something says. She loves to read, and can often be found "reading" her books by herself (sometimes quite accurately, as she remembers the words/story). She also loves to do arts and crafts, especially painting, playdoh, rice art, glueing, and coloring. She has a small memory game, and she does great at it! She's still working on counting to 20 (she gets some of the "teens" confused), knows all her capital letters (and is working on lower case ones), knows some of the letters in sign language, and LOVES to sing. It amazes us how she knows the words to so many songs. In addition to lots of common kid songs, she loves to sing hymns and knows the words to the first verses of: Come Thou Fount, Amazing Grace, Away in a Manger, Joy to the World, Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and probably a few more!

She still loves to eat, but is much more picky than she used to be. Some of her favorite foods are cheese, frozen veggies (as in, not cooked, but straight from the freezer), Chick Fil A, Bojangles, Craisins, and sweet tea. She also loves to chew gum, and asks for a piece of gum about 15 times a day! She also loves treats, especially chocolate, just like her mama!

She still naps once in the afternoon, although she will occasionally skip it, especially if I miss the window of opportunity to put her down. In that case, we are working on quiet time in her room, as I'm thinking she may be giving up that nap very soon. She wears her panties for naptime most of the time now, instead of a Pull Up, and wakes up dry pretty much every time. She still wears a Pull Up for nighttime, though, and once she is more consistently dry in the mornings, she will sleep in panties for nighttime then too. We do still rock her before naptime and bedtime...a bad habit, I know! It is a nice cuddle time for us, though, and she isn't totally dependent on it to go to sleep (we lay her down awake, unless she happens to fall asleep in the first few minutes of rocking).

Speaking of bad habits, she has picked up a terrible one: biting her fingernails. It has been a struggle trying to figure out how to break her of this habit. We got the hot tasting nail polish to put on her nails, but she just continues to bite them despite the taste. Any tips?

She continues to love to help me do things around the house, including cooking, vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning the bathrooms. She also still loves bathtime, especially laying down in the tub. She's really into pretending, and is often having her animals/toys/babies talking or doing other random pretend things. It makes for a fun play time with her, too!

She loves being tickled and chased, watching videos of her friends on the computer, and typing messages on Facebook. She loves her brother, and is learning how to play with him better every day. She also loves to fight with and pick on him, but I know that's just normal sibling stuff!

This past Christmas season was a delight, as she was so excited to celebrate Jesus' birthday. She loves to read her Bible and pray for other people, including dogs! She is showing a real heart of spiritual understanding, including repentance for when she's done wrong. She is quick to pray after a time of discipline, and we can often see a change in her heart when we go to God together with her for heart issues. We are excited about God's plans for her as she continues to grow in her knowledge of Him.

Now time to enjoy some cute pictures of her! These first three pictures are from October, when we took her and Jackson to get their pictures taken. I especially love the blue dress on her. KK got it for her at the beach this summer.

This sweater was a baby shower gift. It looked huge when I got it, and I can't believe she's already wearing it!
Kathryn is really into babies recently. She takes great care of her baby dolls, but is especially happy whenever there's a real baby around. She will ask to touch the baby, and then spend a good amount of time touching its feet, hands, cheeks, etc. This is Johnny's cousin's little baby that we got to meet on Christmas Eve. She couldn't get enough of him!
Over the New Years holiday, we had lots of friends in town (more on that later!). On New Years day/evening, we had them all over to hang out, eat dinner, and then celebrate Kathryn's coming birthday with cupcakes. When I asked her what kind of birthday she'd like to have this year (she had Elmo last year), she thought for a minute, and then exclaimed, "Strawberry Shortcake!" We didn't have a "3" candle yet, so we put a "2" and a "1" candle because, well, 2 + 1 = 3! It works, right?
Noa liked watching her blow out the candles. Maybe she was thinking about her birthday where she was robbed of the opportunity...
"I'm gonna be 3!!!" Funny story, she'll also say, "And that's a W!" because that's the sign for "W".
This was from a photo shoot I did with her this past Sunday. I thought she looked beautiful in her dress.
She actually wore this dress last year once. Click here to see a picture of her in it a year ago. (That post also happens to be exactly a year ago, her two-year-old birthday post!)
Beautiful...

Silly...


Finally, to see Kathryn's past 3 birthdays, click on the links below.

Two Year Old
One Year Old
Birth-day

Kathryn, WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH and have been so incredibly blessed by you these past 3 years, and can't wait to see all that this coming year holds for you!