Tuesday, February 6, 2018

The Peanut is Three!

Our sweet gal is three -- which calls for an update on our Peanut.

Nicknames: sadly, she no longer calls herself Sheena (which we all miss)!  Most recently she has been calling herself Sera or Seras but does use Serafina pretty often too -- we mostly just follow her lead in what to call her :)

Looks: still curly blond(ish) hair -- although it is straigthening out a bit and is darker now that it is winter.  She is tall but skinny and has no butt to keep her pants up (ha!), so she wears a lot of dresses and leggings if she isn't wearing her school uniform!


Eating: lucky for us, Peanut eats great at school!  A three course extremely well balanced meal -- you name it, she's probably tried it and eaten it at school.  And thanks to school, she LOVES eggs now -- LOVES!  She and Trevor make vegetable omelets almost every weekend!  And she could eat a whole tortilla de patatas if we let her (kind of like a big omlete with onions and potatoes).  At home she loves any and all fruit and does fairly well with her vegetable, but still hates broccoli!  She loves fried rice, anything with quinoa, spaghetti and meatballs, chili, yogurt and more!  And I should note that our sweet gal self-weaned at just shy of 2.5 years -- while bittersweet, it was time and I am so happy I was able to nurse her as long as we did!


Sleeping:
 ugh, I thought sleep was supossed to get better after age two but that sure did not happen in our house... shortly after her second birthday, our Peanut started having awful, horrible, really bad nightmares -- and even some night terrors.  We'd be up for hours trying to calm her down and/or to get her back to sleep.  We got more sleep when she was a newborn; it was awful.  And yes, in the beginning, it was almost every single night.  And yes, we tried everything -- including tracking everything she ate and did every dang day to see what was causing the wake ups, nightmares, etc.  And it went on for months (and is still going on...).  But we did learn that keeping her on a pretty strict routine and having a very long calm down time in the evening seemed to help the best.  And that she is very sensitive to any changes within her little life (like moving to a more full-time schedule at school).  It makes things difficult for travel and our social lives (as a family) but we just take it one day at a time....


Health: well, she is a toddler... and goes to school, so we are right on track with the average of 10-12 illnesses a year (ugh).  She got Hand, Foot and Mouth a second time -- just 3 weeks after the first awful round.  She got pneumonia in May and has had her fair share of ear infections and random super high fevers... but that is just life with a toddler, right?

Saying: I don't even know where to begin with this one -- she talks all the time!  And it is so much fun to have conversations with her and I pretty much crack up laughing on the daily with her phrases and commentary :)  I think I love this age the most and their talking -- so funny!  I miss the cute, baby way she'd say some things, but it is really fun to have full conversations with her!  Now, with that said -- her English has actually regressed a little within the past few months (nothing to worry about, I promise), but it is because she FULLY understands Spanish and speaks it very well.  Her teacher was telling me that she does not use English anymore at school -- only Spanish!  It is so amazing to watch her understand when someone speaks to her in Spanish and to hear her say things in Spanish.  There are many times she struggles to find the English word for something, especially right after school pick up.  It really is amazing how easily language can come to kids when they are young.  


Likes: lots of things -- 
- building with anything: legos, blocks, magnatiles, and this includes using her play tools as well as Trevor's real tools -- pretty sure girlfriend loves it when we go to IKEA since she then gets to help Trevor build everything
- cooking and baking: we actually got her toddler safe knives so she can help more in the kitchen and she LOVES it 


- swimming: still taking swimming lessons and still loving it, she was moved up to the next class a little early which was amazing since it meant we didn't have to get in the water with her!  She is by far the littlest and youngest in her class, but it sure it fun to watch
- art: loves drawing, painting -- anything to do with art and art projects
- princesses: we sure didn't teach her, but she has learned all the Disney princesses and loves them, along with anything and everything she thinks is a princess castle or princess related (she is going to LOVE going to London in the upcoming weeks)
- animals: oh man, if we were stateside, we would've gotten this girl a cat or dog already -- but it's just too hard here with traveling and such!  Luckily for our little lady, we have a frequent cat visitor (totally domesticated and super sweet).  Serafina has named it Kia or gatito depending on the day and it is always a good day when it comes to visit


- baby dolls: she loves her baby dolls and loves taking care of them like a little mommy (and trying to bring them everywhere)
little blurry but her baby dolls go everywhere :)
- Little People: which she calls her "babies" (not to be confused with her actual baby dolls!) and she loves playing with all the people in their various houses, farms, etc. that we have for them 

What Else: She is doing so great in school and is such an independent little lady, she waves "adios" to me every morning and runs to her teachers.  They had a cute little celebration for her birthday at school -- I brought in cupcakes and American candy!  I am not sure what we are all going to do when she has to go to the big public school next year.  We have a few trips coming up and I am so excited to see how she does and the things she falls in love with (we haven't traveled with her since July).  While we have officially hit the threenager stage (and holy cow is it rough!), overall, our sweet gal is so much fun and brings us so much joy -- and her little personality just cracks us up!  We can't wait to see what this year bring!

celebrating at school
Some of my favorite pictures from the past year --





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