Random things about Camryn now that she is 3.

Her vocabulary is outstanding. She still struggles with the pronunciation on things here and there. Here are some of our favorite words she doesn't get quite right:
girl = girr
excuse me = cuse me
ok = ho - kay!
spins = pins
not yet = not et
school = cool
strawberry = strawbiddy

She doesn't forget anything. I mean anything. Craig and I have to work to stay one step ahead of her. If we slip, she catches us. No question. She loves to wear skirts and twirl (or "pin") around. She's actually a pretty good dancer when she busts out her moves.

She learned the days of the week by a song her teacher taught her. Each kid was asked to stand up in class and sing the song ("There are seven days, there are seven days, there are seven days in the week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday!") by themselves. It's to the tune of "Oh my darlin', oh my darlin, oh my darlin Clementine, you are..."). Pretty cute.

Speaking of singing, she LOVES to sing her ABCs. She's known them for a while now, but has taken a recent interest in singing them fast and then slow and high pitched and low pitched. After she goes to bed Craig and I will hear her singing her ABCs and then she'll eventually drop off at one letter and we figure she's out.

She can recognize all of the letters when written, but hasn't learned all of the lower case letters yet. Those throw her off a bit unless they look similar (like a big P and a small p). When she see something spelled in all capital letters she will say each letter and ask me what it spells. She can spell her first name if asked, and can spell most of the kids names in her classroom. She can draw an O and a pretty good C, but the C is sometimes backwards. She likes to try to draw letters.

She counts pretty well. She can count to 13 with no problem, but then jumps to 15 and 17 and doesn't know where to go next.

Cam's a GREAT at stalling at bedtime. I swear a 30 minute process takes 60 minutes way more often than it should. Each morning we have a routine before school. After we get dressed we pick out ribbons or barrettes for Cam's hair, but then she picks out two barrettes for me. I fix her hair and then she fixes my hair. Only sometimes I forget to sneak them out of my hair before we walk into daycare or even to work. She notices everything, so I'm afraid to take them out too early. I don't want to hurt her feelings.

The other day at daycare we brought her toy unicorn with us so she could sleep with it at school. Only we left it in the car (accidentally) and I didn't notice until 5 minutes before I got to work. Her teacher made sure the next day we had that unicorn in hand as we walked in. She said she almost called me because Camryn got so upset, almost to the point of making herself sick, because her unicorn wasn't in her cubby at school. DRAMA! It took them forever to calm her down. I guess the teacher went around and recruited stuffed animals from other teachers, but Cam just looked at them and cried "These aren't my unicorn!" I felt terrible. Needless to say, we triple check we have an animal now. She told me the next day that she didn't need an animal because she left her baby bird at school and she would sleep with that. Her baby bird is an imaginary bird that apparently fits in the palm of her hands. I suggested maybe we better take an animal anyway. I didn't dare show up and tell the teacher she has an imaginary animal.

Besides the imaginary bird which is brand new, she has an imaginary dog that she talks about named Taylor. Only she doesn't live with us. She's pink. Last week they happened to have dog week at school and were asked to bring in a stuffed dog on that Friday. I was looking through her stuffed animals and came across a pink dog that Mom had given her for Valentine's Day one year. She was so excited that I found Taylor! She's such a little mommy.

She takes such good care of her dollies and makes sure they get equal time with her going to school. "Are you taking Pinky today Camryn?" I'll ask. "No mommy, she went yesterday. I'm going to take Emmy today."

Her favorite movie is Madagascar, and she enjoys Finding Nemo as well.

Her favorite cartoon is Little Einsteins. Which, I guess it could be worse. At least here she hears classical music and learns about popular works of art. (Aunt Linda should be so proud.) If there's chocolate in the house she's pretty good at finding it and sneaking a piece or two.

When we sit down for dinner, and Craig or I have cooked, she always stops and tells us "you did great Mommy!" Craig is trying to teach her the word stupendous. It's in one of her Fancy Nancy books as a fancy word for great. She's not caught on yet, but will, I'm certain.

And one of my favorite things she does when I pick her up to give her a hug, she tells me "mommy, you're a girl and I'm a girl. Us girls need to stick together. Not Daddy. He's a boy. He and Jake are boys. They stick together. Josie is a girl. Josie and you and me stick together. Who else are girls mommy?" And then she will rattle off the names of all of her female relatives. I love that.

Better be specific

So we've had some trouble the last couple of months with Camryn here and there at bed time. She'd get out of the bathtub, knew it was bed time and began crying or throwing absolute fits. So Craig finally told her one day that if she cried before bedtime then she wouldn't get to watch any shows the next day after school. Cam LOVES to watch Little Einsteins when she comes home.

So she was great for a few days and then one evening she went for the tantrum. Craig told her no shows and the next day stuck to it and they had a talk about why she couldn't watch Little Einsteins. That night she was an angel.

Well she did it again 2 nights ago. So no shows yesterday. Then last night she was great, except she wasn't super tired. I don't mind if she's up in bed singing or playing with her dollies, as long as she's in bed and winding down. Anyway, she and I read an alphabet book before bedtime and talked about different words that began with different letters. She went to bed with no problem. We heard her talking a bit, but nothing loud. Then she started yelling "Mommy!" about 20 minutes later.

"What Cam?" I yell from downstairs.
"We forgot turtle! It starts with a letter T too!"
"You're right Cam. Goodnight. I love you."

5 minutes later, we went through the same dialogue but with boy starting with b.

Craig said "Cam, do you want to lose your shows tomorrow?"
And she said "I'm not crying."
He said "I know, but you're not going to bed like you're supposed to."
Then there was a small pause and we heard "You can't talk to me like that. That's not nice. I'm talking to Mommy."

I just looked at Craig and told him she's right. He didn't say talking was part of the rules. He just shook his head and laughed.

Gotta love her. But if you ever give her instructions, make sure you're thorough, or she'll call you on it.

Happy Friday to me

It has been the longest week I've had in a long time. Can't explain why but each day just drug by this week. I got home from work yesterday and Craig and Cam were upstairs. "Uh, Jay...can you bring up the carpet cleaner." I walk upstairs and there is vomit on the floor and Cam's in the tub. (Ah, man!) There has been all kinds of stuff flying around school this week. I thought we had made it through to the other side unscathed.

Craig said he caught most of it in his clothes and hers and there were only a few drops on the floor so I've got to give him credit for taking one for the team. But he told me he threw all of the clothes into her bathroom sink and that was my job. That was only fair, I know. But YUCK! I sat there contemplating what I would see, starting to feel nauseous at the thought of it. I went downstairs, found some really durable rubber gloves and headed back up. They were bad, but not as bad as he made it sound. Still, who likes to scrub puke off clothes into the toilet? (Sorry, this is a nasty blog. Oh, and I forgot to mention by that time Craig was hungry so while I'm scrubbing out vomit, he's asking what I want for dinner. REALLY???)

Anyway, I gave her a big pot, which my mom used to give us to sit by and sleep by when we were sick. She called it her "pukey pot". For a while she thought she had to hold it on her lap. Craig thought it was worth taking a pic to see how pitiful she was, so I figured I might as well share. Like her outfit? Her sweatshirt is too small and didn't have much else clean.

And for the remainder of the night she kept it in that pot. After bed time, I think we went through 4 sets of sheets, but by the fifth time, she had gotten herself out of bed to use her pot. Poor thing. Craig and I had the clothing changes and sheet changes down to a science by daylight. Yuck, yuck, yuck. We've not had a night quite like that. I mean we lived through LOTS of baby spit up, but she's much bigger now. I feel like we went through some type of initiation last night.

She's better today. Hasn't had much to eat though. We are hoping we don't pick it up. I've disinfected everything she's touched about 3 times and don't think I've done this much laundry in the last 2 months combined...ha!

Sorry if I've made anyone nauseous. :)

Cam's birthday party

Happy Birthday Camryn! She got a card earlier in the week from GiGi Loree that had a cut out crown in it. So that evening she was running through the house with it on. I made her stop and pose for a picture.

On Saturday we had family over to celebrate the event. Camryn wanted a Madagascar-themed party since she loves the movie so much. Alex is the lion in the movie so she kept saying we had Alex cups and Alex plates and Alex napkins. She was most excited for her cake. I left it in the box until people started showing up. Good thing I did because it was like she could smell the sugar. She saw that open cake, climbed up on her chair and put her finger in the side of it to taste the icing. Good think I caught her in time.


Her cousin Charlotte was able to come and she seemed equally as excited about the cake. My brother and Liz call her Chi-Chi, and she was saying "Chi-Chi want cake." She even pulled on the table cloth to get the cake closer to her. As you can see, she must have liked it. Ha!


Then Cam was ready to open her presents. She got really neat things. They were activity-type toys like books and play-do and painting or drawing items. She played with every single thing the next day.

The play-do toys were a hit for Charlotte & Cam. They sat at that table and played for a long time.