Dear Bridget –

I’m so thankful that you are my daughter! You bring joy, laughter, and sweetness to everyday. Here are some things I want to remember about you at this age.

• You started preschool at Trinity Baptist Church in the fall. You only went once a week but you really enjoyed your teachers, your class, and the projects you did there. You jumped right in. There were a few times towards the end of the year that you were (or pretended to be) bashful and didn’t want to go in, but without much convincing, you were fine. 
• You had your end of the year school graduation and said your class memory verse, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” – Psalm 23:1. You also sang Jesus Loves Me and the ABC Song. 
• You continue to be quite the talker. You have a pretty big vocabulary and I am amazed the
  

  sentences you speak these days. You still talk in a “little-kid” way that is really adorable. And for some reason you have a twang and make a lot of single syllable words into two syllables like “Be-ear” 

• Speaking of bear – you still love your white polar bear and sleep with him every night. You are pretty flexible and can still go to sleep without him, but you much prefer it if he’s with you. You also pretend that bear is your baby – even though I try to convince you to play with your baby dolls, that worn out bear is still the favorite. 
• You have always been such a sweet child, but turning three has brought about an attitude we haven’t seem before. You have been questioning our authority and not obeying very well lately. You are pretty sneaky in your disobedience and won’t outright disobey, but will somehow not do what we ask. You are just in the normal three-year-old testing phase and I’m glad that I at least know from experience that it is just a phase! 
• Still you remain very sweet and tell me all the time that you love me, that you are happy I’m your mom, that you like some part of my outfit or hair, etc. Yesterday I was wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt with the emblem on it and you pointed to it and said “Mommy, I like your cow” – 😂
  
• You are extremely emotional. You cry at the drop of a hat and it is sometimes hard to distinguish if you truly are upset or are just wanting our attention (or trying to get your sister in trouble). It is also hard to get you to stop crying. We have been working on “taking some deep breaths” to calm down, or calming down in your room. I think these cry-fests are your version of a tantrum. 

• You are a great big sister to Josiah. You a eager to play with him and love to make him laugh. I trust you to watch him and play with him and “make sure he doesn’t put anything in his mouth” while I’m doing something in the kitchen or have to step away for a few minutes. 
• 
  
• You are also a great little sister to Lucy. You are a faithful playing companion. Most of the time, you are happy for her to take charge and decide what you will both play. Sometimes you put your foot down and have you own opinion – there are lots of learning opportunities when y’all play – especially recently because y’all can communicate pretty well together. You have both gotten more imaginative lately. We are at the beach this week and you, Lucy, and your cousin Wyatt were playing that you were going on an adventure and I heard you pipe in “We have to get a map!” 
• You have had to show some patience and understanding with Lucy doing more things than you because she is older. She played soccer in the spring and you really wanted to play too, but you cooperated and cheered her on and would sometimes kick the ball or run down the field while she was practicing. You were totally fine with Lucy going to school an extra two days and seemed to enjoy staying home with “Mommy and Josiah” – I think you enjoyed getting to be in control of playtime on those two days and more attention from mommy.  

• You continue to try to keep up with Lucy and succeed a lot actually. She LOVES to draw and do art a lot at the dining room table, and you are right there with her a lot of the time. You don’t have quite as long of an attention span, but you do enjoy being able to do art with her. Recently you started using her scissors – apparently you aren’t interested in your all-plastic ones anymore. 

• We had a “Frozen” birthday party for you a week before your actual birthday since your birthday fell on the day of your preschool graduation and also the day we drove to Atlanta for a homeschool conference – Teach Them Diligently. So the day of your birthday, Gigi and Pops and your aunts and uncle watched you. 
• You got some Polly Pocket dolls for your birthday and enjoy playing with those. You also enjoy playing outside. 

• You are a really loud talker! At least around the people you know well. You seem to shout a lot of your words – especially when you are excited. 
• You potty trained around the time when Josiah was born – so you were probably 25 or 26 months old. It took about 3 months to really get it down. You are a pro now and only have rare accidents when you get distracted with playing in a new environment. 

• You have always been a good eater, but in the last 6 months it has become a little more difficult to get you to eat. Rewarding you with dessert seems to help, but you can get really SLOW eating things you aren’t crazy about. 

• At your three year old doctor appointment you were 50% weight and 80% height. You didn’t get any shots, but we did talk to the doctor about your constantly runny nose and made an appointment with the allergist. 

• You wake up around 7:15-30 each morning, take a nap from 2:00-4:00, and go to bed around 8:15 or 8:30. You still nap pretty consistently but we have started to have about 1 day a week when you just refuse to take a nap. Those days, you are pretty tired in the evenings. 
• Sharing a room with Lucy has gone pretty well. The only downside has been when one of you wakes up early, then wakes the other one up 😮 It also is tough when one of y’all is sick. In that scenario, we put the sick one in the formal living room for the night.