Ever Four-ward

Dear Mercy,

I've often told you that I wanted to be a mommy my whole life. But the truth of the matter is that I wanted to be the mommy of a three-year-old girl my whole life. So this year was a dream come true and I was not disappointed. I've joined in your play world as a hairdressing client, pedicure client, doctor's patient, optometrist's patient, restaurant patron. Oh the tons and tons of play food you've carefully prepared for me. When you play princess, you call me the queen and for a moment I feel regal. When you play hide and seek, you always tell me where you're going to hide just to make sure you get found. Lots of silliness and giggling and funny faces. Knock-knock jokes that don't make any sense at all. Lots of art. You learned to skip. You learned to write your name. You learned you could do all sorts of things.

The dress-up, pretending, curiosity, constant questions I anticipated. I was not prepared for your depth and insight and maturity and capability. This year you danced in a class for 4-6 year-olds. You started to play an instrument. You helped your Sunday school teachers with the much younger 2-year-olds. This year I learned from you.

Three was different than I imagined because of the circumstances. After "terrific twos," you started tantrumming at the beginning of Three. And I was a cranky pregnant lady. I wanted to take you fun places like I did when you were two and do lots of special things together and teach you how to read before the baby came, but I was just...so...tired. You understood. You were patient and picked things up off the floor for me when I couldn't. We both got better.

Your three-year-old-hood was mainly marked by becoming a sibling. How much we both cried in the first few weeks because of the intrusion on our relationship. We spent the rest of the year establishing a new normal, as a threesome. You adapted more quickly than I did. You naturally assumed the role of dutiful first-born. You love to help and make Sister laugh and do so many things instinctively, without being told. That's just you. She is so lucky to have YOU as her big sister.

I'm looking four-ward to the future, don't get me wrong. There are lots of good things coming up. I'll just miss Three, that's all. Tomorrow you'll just be so much older.

So I've spent the week in tears. You keep silently bringing me Kleenex and rubbing my back because you know it's okay to be "emosonal." Your compassion astounds me. Today will be no different than others, we'll have our routines and do what we do. Except that it is different. Today is the very last day that you'll be Three.

(Mommy)

Violin Lessons

Dear future us:

Mercy is 3 and a half and here is what she is like. She loves to play restaurant and dancing and wedding. She has started honing her mothering skills by playing momma to her dollies including feeding, burping , pottying, and putting them to sleep. She is also learning to hold her sister although Haven is a little large for a 3 year old to handle. She likes her ballet and tumbling classes and sings all kinds of spontaneous songs. She has a high sense of fashion and makes a running commentary on both real and pretend things from morning to bedtime. She is a sweetheart and a handful (very dramatic for better or worse). I enjoy telling her bedtime stories. Over the past year I have made up countless "sad animal stories". They start with an animal that is sad for some reason and end with a plot resolution where they become happy that expresses some moral like playing nice or eating your vegetables or some such thing. She is graceful and musical. She is 3 going on 10. I am getting more serious about purchasing my shotgun to keep the boys in check in the future.

If there's anything in the world better than a three-year-old girl, I don't know what it is. (SS)

Chicken and Rump

Mercy cooks a lot of pretend food for us in her room and a lot of her recipes involve “rump”. I honestly don’t know how she arrived at that term but I just go with it.

Mercy’s Chicken and Rump Recipe

“Sugar and cream and a little water and smashed French fries, then a little chicken you smashed up and then French fries and then that’s all, but you have to put a little more sugar in there, then two more cups of water and then we put sugar again and then we put ice cream but they all get smashed until they get to rump.”

Make sure you don't forget that last step or else you ain't got rump.

Thermospectral

Mercy having some fun with the ipad. She is such a little lady now. I suppose having an infant around makes everyone else seem larger and more grown up. I still have trouble not calling the baby Mercy instead of Haven. It's probably preaching to the choir but despite the complexity and work of expanding the family, it is amazing to have two little blessings.

Your Goat

Mercy's speech is remarkably clear, but she still has a few funny pronunciations that we don't want to correct because they're cute. And fleeting. I was so sad a couple months ago when she spontaneously stopped saying "lellow." Anyway, a favorite family activity is going out for frozen yogurt. Mercy has long pronounced it as "yor-gut." Recently she was talking too fast I guess, and it came out as "yor-goat." And that's what it shall be known as forevermore. (SS)

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Elephant poem

(Not sure where these poems come from but here are some candidates:

Dr. Seuss influence?

or maybe free association

or maybe an insight into Mercy's pretend grown-up language that has never really been captured on paper before...)

ELEPHANT POEM

Elephants love kids

But if the swim they'll get Hippos

And Mercy is the name

They're them will get Bippos

The with our in the shower with a hat and a mix

And a very bit mix

With they ear they will hear with the shower

In the elephants place the jungle

And the elephants are ever good with swimmy elephants

And the elephants may be lifened at you

I green with little binch of elephants

Inch the lie elephant's pippo

In baby elephants may be paste where to

Mercy's Dictated Poem

and I quote...

Golden fishies are ever good with all their swimming.

With goldfishies they will be good swimmers at all.

With they are good little fishy swimmers at night and day.

And they will be good swimmers forever.

And the fishies swimming in the water are very complicated.

That those swimmers are good swimmers, with the fishies are ever good.

If die the swimmers we don't have any.

If flowers they eat and they will swim carefully with the fishies.

They have flappy cheeks.

Seven fishies in a goal, and six all.

And pink fishies with good swimmers, with Lani ever.

And there's a little boy who takes care of them too.

Ballet Recital

Mercy has been taking a ballet class for about a year. The academy had a recital for her class and all the other age groups as well.

Shells and Cheese

Mercy really likes shells and cheese. Many times we give her a little bowl and by the time we sit down with our own food she is already asking for more. Of course the shells always taste better eaten off of fingers rather than a fork. She sure doesn't like tomatoes though.

Right now I am asking Mercy herself what she wants to tell people about herself.

Chris: Mercy, what would you like to say about yourself?

Mercy: I'm nice.

Chris: What else?

Mercy: I'm good and soft

Chris: What does that mean?

Mercy: It means I'm good and soft.

Chris: Is there anything else you'd like to say?

Mercy: Whatevaza.

There you have it.

New Header

Well I looked through our photos to find some fancy headshot of Mercy for the blog header. This is her perpetual way of smiling for the camera so I figured I would go with it since it represents her personality.

-cs

Last Night's Potty Encounter

Sara: "Can I wipe you now?"

Mercy: "You can. It's happy. My bottom is happy to see the wipe."

Why?

Mercy asked her first "why" question last week: "Why are you doing that?" I was making the bed. (Yeah, really, I don't know why we do when we're just going to sleep in it again.)

Why must be some type of milestone in her cognitive development. I'm not sure if I'm ready, though, for the flood of why questions that are sure to come. It's going to force me to really think about things. Today she asked, "Kitty, why are you being so naughty?" Ha! I'd like to know the answer to that too. (SS)

Random Recent Pics

She's seeming so much more grown-up lately. I'll probably always keep saying that. (SS)

It's Puzzling

Here is something I find fascinating. Mercy enjoys doing puzzles. Sometimes when they get easy for her she puts them together upside down (rotated 180 degrees) or face-down (without the picture showing). Hmm. Very interesting. (SS)

Tiny Dancer

Ballet. When I was a girl I COULD NOT WAIT to grow up and get married and have a daughter so I could take her to ballet class. So today was pretty much the goal of my whole life.* The idea of Mercy in a leotard and tights? So cute it hurts. But it's been a long journey of indoctrination, I mean encouragement, getting her to this point (no pun intended). Let me walk you through the process.

You see, as soon as baby Mercy started standing up I started putting a tutu on her. She would usually get upset and take it off. She refused to wear one for a LONG time, much to my dismay. I kept trying, though, and good thing nobody but her saw ME wearing it around the house hoping she'd want to imitate me. Then we started watching ballet on YouTube once in awhile. Then I hung up a handtowel for her with embroidered ballerinas on it that she dries her hands on several times a day, heh heh heh. Then, this spring, we went to go observe a class so she could see other little girls dancing. So over the course of a year my overt and subliminal schemes worked and she finally came around. Yes! Now she loves to put on tutus (of her own accord!) and dance around the house.

I found an instructor that accepts 2-year-olds and holds classes at a church (they have to be 3 at all the studios). Mercy will be learning worship ballet, because if you're not dancing for Jesus, why are you dancing? There are 6 other 2- and 3-year-old girls in her class and they were all so precious that the other moms and I could barely console each other. A couple of them joined me in making the hair bun effort, which is not that easy with such super-fine hair. Well, after all the monumental build-up and a lifetime of expectation my camera weenied out. So this is it, but don't worry--there will be many, many, many more to come. (SS)

*I do tend toward hyperbole, so relax everybody. My real goal in life is to one day own a laundromat.

Mercy hamming it up during class...

and conked out afterwards.

Half-Day-Trip Mania

Photos from the Children's Garden at the Huntington.

May was a sick month at our house, so when we were all better I had the compulsive urge to GET OUT! In the last two weeks we have been to the Aquarium of the Pacific, Adventure City, Atlantis Play Center, and the Huntington Library. We enjoyed all of them and look forward to more! (SS)