Kalena at 3

Kalena says "you not" instead of "don't."  As in, "you not say that!" instead of "don't say that!"  She even does it when she's "reading" Where the Wild Things Are-- the line that says, "Oh please don't go, we'll eat you up we love you so!" turns into "Oh please not go" it's pretty awesome.

Instead of telling me that she doesn't want Will doing something, she'll tell me that Will doesn't want to do it.  I hear a lot of, "Buster not want to play with that!"

When she goes to get something she'll say to me, "You stay RIGHT here.  I be RIGHT back."

If I ask her to do something she doesn't want to do she'll look at me with her hand on her hips and say "I busy."  She's definitely got a sassy streak.

If she knows only adults are allowed to do certain things she'll tell you that only mommies and daddies can do that.  (Open our back gate, for instance.)  Of course, it's a little amusing when she tells me that only mommies and daddies can use mascara.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, so sorry if I did.  When we moved in to this house, I started making Kalena go to her room if she wanted to cry.  I don't mean when she gets hurt or anything-- just when she's crying for no reason or pitching a fit over something ridiculous.  When that happens I tell her that if she wants to cry she can go do it in her room.  And now, if something happens that makes her want to cry she will often go to her room before she even starts crying!  Sometimes I have to remind her, but she is good about it most of the time.  It has saved me from having to listen to a whiny crying child MANY times.  Plus, lots of times she gets so distracted in her room that she forgets to cry in there at all.

Some days, to encourage her to go to sleep at nap time I'll tell her what we're going to be doing when she wakes up.  Playing outside, going to Grandma & Grandpa's house, watching a movie.  Then I remind her that she needs to take a good nap before we can do that.  But some days I don't have anything in particular planned so I'll just tell her that when she wakes up we're going to "do fun things."  And now when she wakes up from nap she'll come find me and say, "I want to do fun things."  I guess I need to get together a "fun things" list.

In the few days right before she turned three, if you asked her how old she was going to be on her birthday she would say, "I fink I be free."  I pretty much tried to get her to say it as many times as I could.

So far I'm enjoying age 3 quite a lot.