Big Week for a Big Kid

I'd say it's been a pretty big week for Kiddo.

Which Kiddo, by the way, is the most recent nickname for our Miss Beans, formerly known as Chunkin. It's funny how kids naturally outgrow certain nicknames, and sad all at the same time.

Lyla turned three, had a birthday party with her little friends and started preschool all within a week. I'm not quite sure how all of that happened. But it sure happened quickly, and life has been pulling in so many directions, I haven't really digested all of this growing up just yet.

Yet, alas. Here we are. With a three year old preschooler.

I've heard over and over to watch out for the year of the threenager. But quite honestly, I really like three so far. It can't be that much harder than two. It just can't. Ly has never really been "easily adaptable", and there were a lot of life changes that took her nearly a year of adjusting. And this adjustment period was complete with a lot of tears, public tantrums and melt-downs (both Lyla and myself).

Needless to say, we've noticed a huge change in Ly recently. She has really matured, gained confidence, developed stronger coping skills and is learning to better adapt to new situations. Case in point : At last year's birthday party, Ly cried opening every present and through the entire happy birthday song. This year, she only cried once, and it's because she had her first potty accident in over 6 months - she was having too much fun to go inside!

Or last year when she started Kids Day Out, the teachers didn't think she knew how to talk for the first few months. Until one day she was finally comfortable and started speaking like an adult in full sentences. This year, she couldn't wait to start school and talked about "Big Kid School" for weeks. At Meet the Teacher Night, when her teacher asked her name, she put her hand on her chest and confidently said "My name is Wywa."

As a mom, it makes me teary and so proud to see her confidence grow!

And it was so much fun celebrating her birthday this year. She'd been talking about August 19th for so long, so we made sure the day lived up to her excitement. First on the agenda was to wake her with balloons and streamers, a breakfast picnic of eggs and chocolate chip pancakes and opening presents!

And to burn off that breakfast energy, the birthday princess took a ride in her birthday chariot. 

Her best little buddy Callaway came over for lunch, followed by a big kid nap and lots of post-nap mother-daughter(s) birthday fun. We got some birthday "coffee", got fitted for dance shoes and leotards, visited a local book store and met dad for dinner.

And then we finally went home for cake. Which is all she talked about all month long. "I'll be fwee on August 19th, and I'll get cake."

And then we celebrated some more a few days later with her Backyard Splash Bash birthday party. We have never seen Ly so excited, so confident and so in her element. She talked about her friends coming over all day and couldn't wait to go outside to splash about. Her favorite part of the day though was probably her big 3 balloon, in fact, she's still talking about it. "Moooommm. I want to watch a movie/take a nap/eat lunch with my big fwee." Oh, and her strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting from Brown Sugar Bakery.

Oh. But the fun was just getting started. Because then, we started preschool 4 days later.

Which, once again. Ly blew us away with the confidence. We talked a lot about preschool leading up to the first day, trying to prep her as we know how she tends to handle new situations. But she woke that morning and said, "I'm ready for preschool today! I'm going to meet new friends" and there was no whining, no struggle to put on clothes and no tears!

We got to school, she actually wanted to hold our hands and was excited to have Addie along for the ride to show her big kid school. It was so comforting and reassuring to see her in her element - happy to be at school, and proud to march into her classroom, hang her backpack and wash her hands.

We all got hugs and kisses from our new preschooler, and she even *happily* let us take pictures.

It was such a memorable day, and my mom-heart is exploding with joy and anticipation for the year ahead.