Baby Em: 3 years and 1 month already!

...and such a big girl. i mean, when she is 4, she'll be a grown up. according to emily, 4 year olds behave and listen to their mommies and daddies, don't cry, and can chew gum and drive. sometimes, she will tell me she's so grown up she's "like 10 years old."

which explains her obsession with shoes, earrings, and tialas (i.e., tiaras aka headbands).

without further delay, here are last month's emmy-isms:

she still loves candy, so we asked her doctor (at her 3 yr visit) to tell her not to eat it anymore. she got my selective listening skills because she'll tell us, "but dr. cook said a candy in a day." meaning she gets 1 a day. except he didn't tell her that.

she told tanner, "you are so freaking cute."

speaking of that, she told me that corbin mason (that's first and last name folks) says "'chill out.' and he says 'freaking', too." i'm not sure when corbin became corbin mason, but that's how she refers to him now.

she is obsessed with these (ugly) disney princess stuffed dolls. she has every single one (that they make). before she got snow white, who they did not sell at the disney store and who we had to order online, she would say she had all the princesses except for snow white and jasmine. and she needed them. maybe she would get them for christmas. i told her i wasn't sure they made snow white or jasmine. "silly mommy. the elves and santa will make snow white and jasmine!"

she says, "what the heck?!" oops.

each morning, she still picks a "dollie" to carry around with her. and each night, she chooses a different dollie to sleep with.

she likes to role play. "i am your mommy and you are my sweetie." and she will call me sweetie for at least 30 minutes. if i accidently call her anything but mommy, i have to reask/readdress her correctly. she is so bossy!

even ms. phyllis at school told her she was bossy.

she tries to wear her "tiala" to school every day. "tialas" can be tiaras or headbands. or crowns. even i get confused.

she usually gets milk for lunch, but one day i made some lemonade for her. she was so excited and announced to her teachers and auntie that "mommy made me lemonlade today!" yes, she calls it lemonlade.

we needed to leave for the day and she threw a fit because, "i don't look pretty. this outfit does not make me look pretty!" oh boy.

as of jan. 26th (yes, i had to write down the date), purple is no longer her favorite color. it's pink. for a while, she didn't like purple at all. but now she says she likes pink and purple.

she calls alice in wonderland "alice and wonderwild" (that's the venue where we had her birthday party).

she likes to play "brown bear brown bear." she'll find something and say, "rapunzeled, rapunzeled, what do you see?...i see a little girl looking at me. little girl, little girl, what do you see? i see mommy looking at me..."

she was talking about one of the chuck e cheese characters one morning and i didn't know what she was talking about. "you know, mommy. that bear at chuck e cheese. he was doing all sorts of things. remember?"

she had a bad day at school and had all of her stars erased from the board. this did not sit well with d and i, so we became those parents who had to conference with the director about how the teachers were disciplining the children. wouldn't you do the same if you heard from another teacher that the current one threatened to put your child in time out if he/she didn't answer the question about the states? whew, i can't even discuss b/c i can still feel steam coming out of my ears.

she has been wanting to wear her hair in a braid lately. i don't like this b/c that means no bows. and you know i love bows.

she told me, "hey is for horses!"

i got her some new shoes (omg, she is so picky about her shoes these days!) and asked how she liked them. "they are pretty awesome."

she associates wands with halloween. everytime she carries around one of her fairy wands, she'll say, "happy halloween!"

speaking of wands. she asked me the other day " can you pleeeeeese hold me in your bathroom?! i can't reach my play doh." i ignored her b/c i had already told her she could not play with it. a bit later, she came out and sat down next to me, then handed me her play doh. "uh, how did you get that?" "i just used my wand so i could move it closer to me." resourceful, she is.

sometimes when we've been gone for too long, we tell her it's time to go because we need to get home to tanner. he might be scared. "but there's no thunder. it's sunny outside." she knows tanner is scared of the thunder and is always very concerned about him when it rains. i guess not so much when it's nice out.

she is completely a daddy's girl.

but she likes to sit with me in the morning and pretend to put on makeup. she likes red lipstick so she can look like taylor swift.

she tried to use my makeup one morning and i told her, "please don't play with mommy's makeup. it's for grown ups." "but i need to be fab-e-us!" haha, don't we all...

she loves wearing her play earrings.

when i put her down at night, d usually uses that time to take tanner for a walk. lately, em has been getting very upset that he leaves her. she can hear the door/alarm beep. when she heard it the other night, she said, "is daddy taking tanner outside?" i told her no, he was just going to feed tanner. "oh. if he takes him out, i will cry." as if that was a threat.

she still has imaginary friends. sometimes they are her cousins, other times friends from school. she was playing with imaginary aaron one morning and went to tattle to donnie. "aaron is trying to take my ariel doll that auntie tina gave me, so his mommy is going to come and pick him up in a few minutes." hehe.

she recites books that she's heard at school. e.g., miss viola swamp! and silly sally went to town, walking backwards upside down! she even uses proper inflection. she calls miss nelson "miss nelison." and she sings, "i'll never teeeeelllll."

at night she tells us, "if you leave me, i will be scared." she says it in the sweetest voice, which makes it so hard to leave while she's still awake.

she yells at tanner sometimes if he comes over when she's in the middle of something. "tanner, don't mess up me!"

she has weaned herself of naps, which we are not thrilled about. she has been skipping her naps at school all year, but would still take them on the days she's home and on the weekends. until now. needless to say, she is a mess come 5:30 pm.

she likes secrets and will say, "mommy, i have something to tell you!"

she likes wearing shoes like me. if i'm wearing flats, she wants flats- without the strap, just like me. this can make it hard for us to get anywhere on time.

when she plays with any cars or boy toys, she'll say, "zum zum, ink ink!" i assume she's making car noises.

each night, she'll ask, "what do i have in the morning?" and if she forgets, she'll ask "where are me going today?" in the morning.

sometimes if i'm working late, d will let em call me. i came home to, "mommy, why on the phone does your voice sound funny?" add to that when she looked at me in the morning and asked, "why is your hair a mess?" sweet girl, i know.

she is obsessed with her kiddo lipstick. we caught her behind the couch putting it on not only her lips, but on her toes, too. she told us, "i was hiding so you don't see me."

she loves to play hide and seek. "daddy you count and i will go hide." if you find her too soon, she'll say, "no! go look for me some more!"

she traces really well and can write letters by herself, too! once i was looking at her school work and asked, "wow, did you trace this?" "yes. yes i did. that's my work."

she can recognize her friends' names when she sees it written. i wrote names on all of her valentines and she could tell me whose was whose.

"do you want to look at my helescope?"

em helped d pick out a valentine's gift for me. a cute shirt. ba really liked it and em told her, "ba. they didn't have your size because it's only for taller girls." hahaha. ba is only 4'9" on a good day, but i never thought em, who is barely 3 feet tall, would notice so soon!

oh gosh. em is becoming quite the handful at three. two was a breeze compared to what we are going through now. e.g., she always has to go potty first. if i go to the RR without asking if she needs to go first, she will have a meltdown. same if i use the stool in the kitchen. she refuses to share it. we've started threatening (not carrying through b/c a simple threat seems to be working so far) to take away her toys each time she does something bad or doesn't listen.

i showed her how to roll her toilet paper to wipe instead of balling it up. she thinks it's so fun and will tell me to take one end while she has the other. "you roll it and we will meet in the middle." speaking of the potty, we are still working on no. 2 in the potty. i'm afraid it is going to take a very long time.

i mentioned to her that her nanny, brittany, buys her good gifts because she knows what em likes. em said, "she knows what i like because i told her!"

she says, "guess what?!" and usually has nothing after that.

haha, if her dad tells her she can't have something or can't do something, she'll say, "but mommy said i could." then she'll come find me and say, "mommy, did you tell me that?" i think this is so funny.

we used our grill for the first time in a while and told em that should could not go near it. then we heard this, "tanner. stay away from the fire. it's really hot and will cut off your cute little toes if you get too close. then you won't be able to walk, okay?"