Happy 3rd Birthday, Gwen!

Today Gwen turns 3. I would like to say that it is shocking to me that my baby is 3, but really isn't. I don't think of her as a baby, I don't miss those days, and if you have been a long time blog reader, you know why! I like who she is, most of the time, but lets face it, 2-3 terrible adjustment period thrown in with huge family changes=chaos, for all concerned! We have some work to do with her, but I think overall she is cute and sweet and pretty darn funny.
Gwen is turning into quite the character. The first thing I have noticed about her is that when we go to cross the street, she puts her hand up, so as to stop traffic, people thing she is waving, but I don't think she is, the way she puts her hand up and her mannerisms make me think she knows what she is doing. I do not put my hand up to stop traffic like that, but when we attended our stroller group, our fearless leader did. It cracks me up, this morning she did it to a semi, who was parking to unload and he's waving at her, thinking she's waving at him.
Gwen loves babies. When she sees them she goes up to them and talks to them and pats them on the back, will return toys they drop and is generally standing near a mother and her baby when she needs a break from playing. She is still very good with Nate on the whole, but she would really like to carry him around and hold him, but he really doesn't want anything to do with that. She is still struggling to understand not everything is hers and we are working on trading, i.e. taking advantage of the fact that Nate will hand her anything and gets bored with things very quickly.

Gwen seems to be getting too smart for her own good. The other day I was doing some last minute house stuff, things we needed to get to the mortgage company and I think she was getting a little impatient to go outside, actually I know she was, I told we could go when I was done. I was in our bedroom and she was in the living room, waiting, Nate was napping. I heard the door open (the previous tenants had an alarm system that beeps when the doors open, quite handy when you need to make sure everyone stays in the house!) she knew I would come find out what was going on. She was just standing there by the door trying to explain to me it was time to go, she didn't go outside, just opened the door so I would come and take her.

All Gwen wanted for her birthday was a pink cake with sprinkles...I obliged! (I might have gone overboard, but there were no complaints from anyone, the cake might not be pretty, don't look too close Amy, but if I do say so, it is the tastiest cake I ever made!) I couldn't just leave it at a pink cake with sprinkles. I made a chocolate cake with strawberry cream filling and pink butter frosting! YUM!!!!

Waiting anxiously for me to bring the cake in!

Blowing out the candles! (Gwen actually sang to herself and then wanted to blow out the candles, I think Eric got it on video I will upload, eventually!) We sang to her and then let her blow out the candles, mercifully I didn't let Eric record us singing, I hope!

Gwen walked around the cake blowing out her candles.

We let her cut the cake for herself.

Here I am getting up to help her get a better piece, she is licking the cake cutter (she's my girl, after all!)

It was taking Gwen so long to eat her cake, we decided to call break and give her her presents...Nate was done and rather impatient to get out of his high chair, and if we let him out, he is going to forage for more food! Gwen was super excited to get out side and play with her toys!

Here she is with the requested lawn mower "pink and blows bubbles"!

On her new bike! She is pretty excited about it, but gets rather impatient and starts pedaling backwards, which puts on the brakes...so she'll take a break, as she says.

Gwen has quite the vocabulary and memory. She still loves to read books and always wants to do that, but now she remembers most of her books and reads them back to you, which is quite cute. A couple times I think she has been laying in her bed during quiet time and fallen asleep while reading. She also loves to sing songs and has started recognizing letters. And she can almost spell her name. (she knows it starts with a "g-w".) We think she is going to be left handed, which is making teaching her to write letters challenging, since I don't know which hand to give her the pencil to.

All-in-all I think 3 is going to be quite the interesting year, she has developed quite the love for pink and knows the princesses by name, but loves to be outside or reading her books. I just hope I can keep up with her!

***You might notice that this post contains pictures you would expect to happen later today, (all the pictures were taken yesterday) but we are heading to Frederick tomorrow, so as the birth mother, I decided that I should change the day (ok, not true, Eric and I decided), but we felt that since we were going to be in a car for 5 hours today, during dinner time, it would not be a good day to celebrate, I mean when would she eat her cake, not for breakfast, as she proposed, so we changed it! We figure she won't know the difference at this age, well we hope she won't care! I am just happy that we will be getting some much needed things from the old house, you know like the dining room table, and pillows and trash cans and well, the list goes on...