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Monday, December 4, 2017

Nicole // 3 Years


Another year with this sweet, lollipop-loving, imaginative little gal! She has been so excited for her birthday, and has waited SO patiently for her special day to come so she could be the one to blow out the candles on the cake. Rainbow confetti cake with chocolate frosting, to be exact. She was grinning ear-to-ear when we sang to her, and blew her candles out like a pro!

She woke up this morning to a bunch of balloons in her room. She cheerfully paraded into our room with a balloon in each hand and refused to let Austin touch them, lest he pop any. To add to the birthday excitement, there was snow coating the ground outside--the first snow of the season for us! We spent part of the morning outside, and Nicole made tracks around and around the yard.

The cool swirly pattern on the ground was all her!


Oh man. Three already. She's going to be a Sunbeam in just a couple weeks! Crazy. For my non-Mormon readers, "Sunbeams" is the youngest class in Primary (which is Sunday School for 3-11 year olds.) I can't really call her a toddler anymore, but it feels weird to call her a preschooler since she's not attending preschool yet--should I call her a "threenager" then? Haha! I have noticed the beginnings of some sassy rebelliousness, but in general she hardly warrants that title. She's my helpful, good-tempered, book-loving Nikki B! She can get a little hyper if the situation is right, and emotions run high every now and then, and she's more likely to give me a defiant "No!" than in months past, but she's such a great kid. She brings so much light and joy to our family. We love love love her!


^^^Like I said... she's super silly!

Some little tidbits about Nicole at age 3:

+ Our neighbors across the street have a cat who visits us a lot, and Nicole firmly insists that the cat's name is "Cookie"--a name inspired by a book we have about a cat by that name.

+ Based on the order in which she consumed her Halloween candy, she seems to favor actual candy over chocolates. This hurts my chocoholic heart a little! Haha. Her favorites are lollipops, followed by tootsie rolls.

+ She listens to her Disney playlist on Spotify on the daily. Multiple times per day, actually.

+ Moana is her favorite movie, and she acts out scenes from the movie every now and then. She stole one of my round, clear magnets from the fridge, broke the magnet off, and has been using the stone as her own little "Heart of Te Fiti" for weeks now as she acts out her favorite scenes. So... we got her an actual glow-in-the-dark stone for her birthday, shaped and inscribed just like the Heart from the movie. She's barely let it go all day. You can see it clutched in her hand in the snow picture above. She took it to bed with her, as a matter of fact. She's obsessed. ;)

+ Sometimes, she lies on her tummy and wiggles her legs around. When I ask her what she's doing, she says, "I'm swimming!" and flops around some more like a dying fish. It's kind of hilarious.

+ If our house were on fire and she had to grab only one item, it would most likely be her blanket with purple flowers.

+ She used to watch an episode of "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" almost every evening on Doug's phone before dinner. Ever since returning from Disneyland, though, she's more likely to request watching ride-through videos of her favorite rides off YouTube. Her top picks these days are Peter Pan's Flight, Pirates of the Caribbean, and (even though she has never been on it) Frozen Ever After.

+ She's picking up on the lyrics to Christmas songs very quickly. She often sings them to herself when we're out and about. There are few things cuter than pushing a cart through the aisles of Target while your smiley kid belts "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" at the top of her lungs.

+ She sleeps with her door cracked open now. She has always slept with it closed with no nightlight, but a month or two ago she started getting nervous with it closed and would get out of bed, open it a smidge, and then fall asleep on the ground by it. We started leaving it open a crack for her, and that was all she needed. Now she's back to staying in bed and falling asleep quickly.

+ She likes to take my Julep nail polish collection and line all the bottles up in rows on the tank of our main upstairs toilet.

+ She loves to get the mail. She loves it even more when there's mail for her, such as a new "Friend" magazine or new hair bows I purchase from various small business shops.

+ Favorite place to play: the All-Together Playground.

+ Favorite store: either Macey's (grocery), Target, Costco, or the Disney Store.

+ Favorite shirt: her maroon tee from Target that says "This is what an awesome sister looks like" in sparkly letters.

+ Favorite pastime: reading, hands down. She has a daily ~45 minute quiet time during Austin's afternoon nap, during which she takes a huge stack of books up to her room and spends the entire time "reading" them. It makes me a proud mama.

***I have a little birthday interview video that I did with her, but I haven't pieced the segments together yet, so I'll share that in a separate post.

And now, because I can't resist, here are some pictures of Nicole on each of her birthdays. Kids grow and change so fast!

 Newborn
 First birthday
Second birthday
Third birthday!

We love you to the moon and back, Nicole Brielle! Thank you for your smiles, laughter, hugs, jokes, and the random times you say, "I love you, mom/dad!" You're my favorite silly goose!


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