My 3 Year Old

You know, I still call Cadence a toddler. All the "early childhood" stuff says the "preschool" stage starts around 2 and I've been denying it all year. Now that she's three, I suppose I can't deny it much longer.

I can't believe I've been a mom for three years already. At the same time, I'm surprised she's not 5! How does that happen? Can you believe three years ago, this was my life (by the way, that blanket is TINY and whenever I see this picture and look at the tiny blanket, which is currently used in the playroom for their dolls, I am stunned at how tiny she must have been):

And now that sweet little girl has grown into the rambunctious ball of energy that I absolutely adore. She tries my patience a dozen times an hour and some days it feels like I spend more time saying "Cadence, no!" and chasing her away from whatever she got into that she knows she's not supposed to be in, than doing anything else. She's a stubborn little turd and most of the time I love her for it, but a lot of the time I just wish she was a little less stubborn.

She's crazy smart, though. I say that all the time, but I mean it. She's known her letters for close to a year now. She recognizes her numbers 0-10 and all her colors. She memorizes things so easily. The other day I was floored when I heard her reciting the opening few minutes of a Dora the Explorer episode (we watched the same one over and over at her request). Her imagination is flourishing. She'd take a ribbon halfway up our stairs and pretend it was Rapunzel's hair as she quoted the scene between Rapunzel and Mother Gothel (when Rapunzel's pulling her up while Flynn's stuck in the closet). She puts her doll on Taz's back and pretends Taz is a horse.

She loves books. Loves loves loves them. She has three memorized. She picked up one of my books and began flipping through it while reciting "The Very Busy Spider". She knows all the songs I sing at bedtime, but refuses to do much more than watch me make a fool of myself. But if we're stuck in the car for awhile, she'll entertain her sister with the same songs. She even knows most of "I am a Child of God", which should serve her well in primary in only 7 more Sundays (6 if you don't count Stake Conference this weekend!).

Cadence's greatest skill is as an artist, though. I already bragged about her drawing a person in August, complete with hair, feet, eyes and nose all in the right spot. She's recently expanded into cats, though the only difference is they have whiskers instead of hair. She's practicing coloring specific things, though she doesn't do well at keeping it in the lines she will have a condensed spot of color over what she intended to color. She's trying to write her letters, but I've confiscated most of her coloring items so she's limited in how much she can practice right now.

She's extremely independent and always has been, which is probably why I sometimes feel like I don't parent her as much as I should be. I always forget how much she does know. At least twice a week, I am stunned by something she says or does because I have no clue where she learned it.

She LOVES the outdoors and she LOVES water. So suffice it to say, the girl is crazy for rain. Luckily, Houston is pretty warm even when it rains so I can let her go play in it and not worry too much about her catch a cold. She recently discovered umbrellas and thinks life is just about perfect now.

I can't wait to watch her grow over the next year. She's been talking for the past year but I think she'll really get into it soon and we'll have all sorts of fun little conversations to go through together. It's going to be amazing at least as amazing as the past three years have been and I cannot WAIT.