Today my baby girl is 3.5. And my little boy is 16 months. I can not believe how fast they are growing! Noelle is blossoming into a beautiful little girl. I can't believe how grown up she is looking these days. I feel like it is happening overnight - slow down world! But since I can't make things go any slower, I'll just record a little info about my princess on this milestone half birthday.
Noelle is a great big sister most of the time. She absolutely adores Kellen and is really helpful with him. She likes to get things for him, tell him what to do, play with him, read with him, etc. She also loves him so much she prefers to keep him awake all day at daycare, but that is another story. She looks out for him and is trying to teach him things like colors, parts of the body, etc. with me. I trust her enough at this point that I'll let the kids play together in her room or in the basement for a bit while I cook or do chores because I know she is really careful about making sure he is ok and there isn't anything around that can hurt him. Watching Noelle interract with K is definitely one of my favorite parts of being a mom.
Noelle is also really self-sufficient in many ways. She picks her clothes out, gets dressed, and puts on her shoes in the morning, brushes her teeth, cleans her room, puts things away, gets food out, etc. Of course we need to prompt her to do some of these things on occasion, but she does them no problem and has been doing them for quite some time. There are certainly times when Noelle is needy (mostly when we are paying attention to her brother, cooking, or it is the middle of the night and she needs to go the bathroom) but otherwise she takes pride in being a big girl that does stuff.
Noelle absolutely loves school and learning. She now can identify all the capital and lowercase letters, knows all the letter sounds, can tell us what words start with, and can do some simple sounding out of words. She can count to 30 (19 is sometimes a problem), can do simple addition and subtraction up to about 6 or so, and is starting to work on telling time. She also is getting pretty good at opposites and rhyming words. Noelle is less good at writing/drawing. We are working on holding pencils correctly and making lines and shapes. She is decent at writing her first name but we are still working on making that prettier and smaller! Noelle has inherited her parents' personalities and gets frustrated easily when things don't come easily on the first try. We are working on that too and it is definitely our biggest challenge with teaching her new things that aren't easy!
Noelle is very social and has lots of little friends at daycare, school, and our mom's group. Actually another mom just told me after learning my daughter is Noelle that her son is talking about her after school. First crush perhaps? Her imaginary brother and sister are gone and while she changes who her best friend is constantly (other than Kel), Evie, Nathan, Emme, and Katushka are all current favorites. Her grandmother is probably her favorite person that doesn't live here and she loves calling and skyping with my family and Bryan's mom. The phone with other people is harder for her - her attention span for the phone with others just isn't very long!
Noelle is finally fully potty trained. She has been wearing underwear to bed the past week and it is going well. Noelle also is listening better, helping more, and being nicer most of the time. She certainly still has her moments particularly when she is tired, but overall the terrible twos and torturous first part of the threes are over. Sort of like naps are over. Oh well, you win some, you lose some!
Some of Noelle's favorites right now are the colors yellow and purple, the fresh beat band, tinkerbell movies, music and dancing, looking at pictures, reading Dora and other books, and running around at playgrounds or riding her bike when it is nice out. She mostly plays with whatever toys Kellen gets out which is nice!
So that's my big 3.5 year old in a nutshell. Love you, sweetheart!
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