January

We celebrated New Year's with my side of the family at Aunt K6's home. Little A made friends with Grandma R, who is Uncle K's Grandma. She had fun playing with play doh until dinner time. She had a blast with her cousins, and then snuggled up and watched Inside Out while we finished our game of Canasta. She was quite the little trooper. We didn't make it to midnight, but we made it to about 10pm! As soon as we put her in the car she passed out.

Our big girl is potty trained! It took her three days to get it, and then she was great! We have the occasional accident at nap time, but otherwise she's accident free and is really good about telling us when she needs to go, and when we're at home she'll sometimes just go on her own. We're so proud of her!

Little A has loved the My Little Pony play doh, and the apron that Grandma and Grandpa H gave her for Christmas. The play doh is so much fun! She loves to have me make her a pony and then smash it, ha! The apron has come in really handy. She loves to help me with dinner.

Little A had her first trip to the dentist. She did SO well! We had talked to her about it before hand, explaining that he would look at her teeth, and she needed to saw "ahhh" and open her mouth big and wide. She was a little nervous at first, but opened up and said "ahh". She also let them paint the fluoride on her teeth. She thought it was pretty cool that they were painting her teeth. To reward her for doing such a great job we took her out for ice cream! She was absolutely thrilled! We even got her a normal sized cone, which she loved! She also loved trying ours, ha!

Little A has discovered ownership of things. She will often grab something of hers and hold it tight and yell "Mine!" It's pretty darling. Our favorite is when she puts us in a head lock and shouts "Mine!" over and over again. Sometimes she'll say "My Mama!" or "My Daddy!" One evening I was reading her stories before bedtime. She put her arm around me (in a head lock) and shouted repeatedly to the characters "Mine!" Each time she yelled mine she would squeeze my head, lol!

We celebrated little A's 3rd birthday! We scheduled a family party for her but had to cancel due to snow. Daddy took her on a date for her birthday. They went out for lunch at a cafe here that we really like. The food took a REALLY long time, but she was very patient. She alternated between coloring, sitting on Allan's lap, saying she needed to go potty only to run away from the toilet, and dancing in an open area.

We still had our own little party. A was REALLY excited about her party this year. She loved all of the attention and excitement about it. She was very excited about presents and ice cream.

We got her some cutting food for her kitchen, some number and letter matching games, Biscuit books, Little Critter books, and some Daniel Tiger figurines and trolley. She was SO thrilled! We have been playing Daniel Tiger and reading Little Critter constantly since then!

Our sweet girl really hates cake and anything that looks like it. I wised up this year and made her an ice cream cone cake, because she loves ice cream cones! She was thrilled with it. She loved trying to blow out the candles too!

She had one ice cream cone and a whole bunch of circus animal cookies that went along with the circus animal ice cream she had. This is the first year she's actually liked what we had for her birthday treat!

We had a re-do for A's party. Her birth family was able to come as well as K6 and cousin P. It was the perfect amount of people for her. She did not let us sing happy birthday to her at this party; it was too overwhelming. She did love eating ice cream cones again and opening her presents. K6 and P got her an adorable Little People Lady and the Tramp set.

Her birth family got her some super cute clothes, a bunch of really fun bath toys (she loves them so much, she doesn't ever want to get out of the bath now!), and a Daniel Tiger game, that we've played every day since, ha! Her favorite thing to play with the Daniel Tiger game is that one of the characters is sick and has to go to see Dr. Anna. Then they have to get soup from Baker Bob, and then go get some "Get Better Music" from Music Man Stan, lol! We play this over, and over, and over!

K3, Uncle C, and baby R were all sick for her party, but they came over when they were feeling better and brought little A an adorable Sophia the First set. She loves tucking Sophia into her bed! Little A also got the most adorable dress from our friends B, S, and C. C and A are besties. We love having play dates with them because they play so well together!

Little A is a huge fan of the Little Critter books. I thought she would like the Biscuit books more because she loves dogs and always chooses to read Biscuit when we're at Grandma and Grandpa H's house, but she loves Little Critter more.

I joined United for Adoption (UFA) as a vice chair. I'm really excited about getting more involved. We had our first meeting via phone conference this month during A's nap time. I'm really looking forward to learning more about the issues surrounding adoption, advocating for ethical adoptions, and education about adoption.

I also am the new secretary for the Theatre Guild where we live. I'm glad that I can be involved in that capacity. Right now I'm helping organize the Valentines show, and working on choreography for "The Wizard of Oz" in July. I love musical theatre and dance so much! It's been fun to be involved in it again!

We've been working on getting little A into speech therapy. We went through the infant/toddler program at first, but before we got anywhere she had aged out of the program. Our options then were private speech therapy, and special needs preschool. We had a meeting with the school and then took her to preschool the following week. Ultimately we didn't feel like that was going to meet her needs. So, we are starting private speech therapy this month. I'm excited to see how it goes, and to finally hear little A's thoughts in full. This experience also made me realize how unready I am to see my girl go to school! It seriously made me SO sad!

I was talking to K6 on the phone one morning. Little A was playing really good with her toys. Toward the end of our conversation I looked over and saw little A sound asleep on her bean bag chair, ha!

The day I took her to preschool I talked to her about it all morning in an attempt to prepare her for it. She was extremely excited about going. I sat her on the couch to put her shoes on when it was time to go and said, "A, it's time to go to school!" She was so excited she started talking to what I thought was one of her stuffed animals saying that she was going to school. I voiced her stuffed animal and asked her what she was going to do at school. She got really wide eyes and then very slowly and exaggeratedly shrugged her shoulders! Ha! She then hopped off the couch, ran to the front door, gave it a big hug and kiss, waved and said "Bye!" And then we were off to school, lol! Her new best friend is the front door. Since then she has loved to play by it, dance by it, etc.

We've gotten a lot of snow. It's really powdery so we haven't been able to build a snowman, but A loves to play in it. We have quite the drift in our backyard against the fence. She slid down the hill and got caught between the snow and fence. She didn't even care, she just lay there and ate snow, lol!

Little A is almost in 4T clothes! We went shopping and got her new socks and panties so we could be prepared. She loved picking them out on her own, and was especially proud of the flower socks she picked. Lately she has been picking different colors of socks to wear each day. This day was yellow and pink. :) The other day she had a yellow and pink on each foot, ha!

Allan went on his first Klondike. The boys had a lot of fun playing games and having snowball fights. They got 6 inches of snow that night! Their tents were really weighed down! Allan is not a fan of camping in the snow, ha!

I gave little A her first wedgie! Poor girl! Her pants were sagging so I reached down to pull them up and got her panties instead! I yanked pretty hard. She gave me quite the look, lol!

While Daddy was gone little A and I had a girls night. We ate caramel popcorn and watched Mulan. She was so excited about the popcorn and movie that she cried all night long until it was finally time to watch it. Ug. She did really love the movie.