my big 3 year old girl

oh goodness. there are a million things to say. and i think i keep putting off writing this letter because i'm afraid i'll forget things. which i no doubt will. and none of these things are monumentally important, but i just like to have a little record of what happens with us....so here we go.

you turned 3 and we had a super fun birthday party=) some might argue (myself included) that a slip-n-slide lacks a certain "class" that i generally like to aim for...but the slip-n-slide was the hit of your party. that morning as daddy and arnold were setting it up, you kept falling on it and he slipped and cut himself and i was convinced it was gonna be a disaster and what was i thinking ever wanting to have this be part of a 3 year old's birthday party??? but it was most definitely a success=) here are pictures:

happy girl on your actual birthday=)

you and gigi made a bunny cake=)

you and your "baby doctor" - you had been asking if you could have it for weeks!

birthday party!


my loves


i think this smile is hilarious=)

you and that cousin of yours love each other SO MUCH!!! we wish anna cate could have been here to join in all the fun...

maxy-moo

major was the master of the slip-n-slide

you and hazel having a talk about slip-n-slide strategy=)

beautiful hazel girl

miley trying her hardest to just get a kiss=)

jackson enjoying the mud puddle caused by the slip-n-slide

max and catherine loving on rachel (there are two babies in her belly and we are so excited!!!)

talented aunt nikki made your dora cake=)

two beauties=) this might be my favorite picture ever of you and aunt nikki.

the two little davis princesses

moving on...you like to tell everybody that you are 3, and hold up your 3 fingers. not the conventional 3 fingers, but the 3 fingers that get held up when you make the "a-ok" sign with your hand. and then you like to tell me that "mama! there's a hole in it!" (meaning the little hole that your index finger and thumb make...i love the inner-workings of your brain=)) there was a picture of it up there where you and daddy and jackson are showing us how old you are...

you are OBSESSED with all things babies these days. several months ago i asked you if you would ever want a baby brother or sister and you said no twice, but ever since then you say "i want a baby brother AND a baby sister" and that has been your answer every single time we talk about it. i don't even bring it up anymore, but it's still a part of our every day conversation because apparently you think about babies all the time. you always ask if you can go to the store with gigi and get "that thing" you saw for your babies. (you and gigi saw some kind of crib or something in sam's, and you haven't forgotten it) you always tell me that you are going to bring your babies passies and diapers and bottles when they get here, and when we pass toys in the store you say that you think your babies would like that. no, i'm not pregnant. i feel like that's an important note to make. but if you had it your way, i would have at least two babies growing in my tummy right now. actually you'd probably prefer to snap your fingers and the babies would just appear. i don't think you're going to be very patient with the 9 months of waiting. but you go around telling people that mommy and daddy are having new babies and you pretend to give your babies (both baby doll and invisible baby) pretend pacifiers and bottles and you still tell us most mornings what baby you are that day: baby lion, baby kitty cat, baby piggy, baby puppy, baby inchworm (my favorite), or just plain baby, which we can only assume to mean human baby. you tell me that you can't walk yet in the cutest most pitiful voice and so you go crawling around on the floor. you tell me that i'm the baby and you're the mommy and you say "baby? what's wrong baby? just talk to me..." and daddy and i can't quit laughing wondering where you got "just talk to me...". and when you're the mommy you rub our face and pretend to pick us up and tell us it's ok but then you whisper for us to cry when you leave the room. and we obviously do as we're told. you pretend that the little mushroom in your play kitchen is a passy and you walk around with it in your mouth all the time. i'm a little worried that, whenever we do get you a real baby to play with, i'll find his/her pacifiers in your mouth...either way, this is a super fun stage and i hope you still love babies when we add another one to our family=) and if we ever have twins, which don't really run so strong in our family, i will give you full credit and call you a prophetess. (also-our friends lance and rachel are pregnant with twins. what a fun story that is for another day. well, it's not my story to tell, but it's still a GREAT story. they live in clemson, and before we moved we were with them pretty often, and you got familiar with the fact that there were two babies in her tummy. that's all i can figure out with your obsession with two babies...maybe you think that's the norm???)

a few weeks ago you had a little cold and you were coughing all-night-long again. so around 2 or 3am for a few nights in a row you would start your coughing fits and i tried this and that and finally realized that if i got you up and put you on the couch, gave you some cereal to eat out of a bag, got your cup of water and turned on mary poppins, you eventually stopped coughing. i don't know if it was the change in temperature from your room to the den, or the propping you up just a little bit more than usual, or if mary poppins truly is magical, but it worked. and it turned into one of the sweetest times for my girl and me. this is a BIG deal for me to say, because mommy sure does like her sleep. but we would snuggle and it didn't hurt that mary poppins happens to be one of my favorite movies=) and then another thing i have been dreaming of kind of evolved out of that: during the day you have started snuggling into my little wing (that's what daddy calls having your arm around somebody) and eating ice cream with me while we watch mary poppins. i can't even begin to describe how blissfully happy that makes me=) you very rarely will sit through an entire movie, and you also very rarely want more than a few bites of ice cream, but those two things make mommy's top 5 list of things to enjoy so i'm glad you're finally joining me there=) oh - and sometimes when you're pretending you're different babies you will say that i am mommy poppins and you are baby poppins and daddy is daddy poppins. another happy way to make mary poppins a daily part of our life=)

we went to the lake for labor day-lots of fun-here are some pictures:

nay-nay showing some sass with the little girls on the jet-ski

i think you were talking to somebody up on the porch-and i think your little face is precious=)

i have no idea what's going on here or what caused you to make this face, but i love it=)

you and addy talking with the people on the porch-again, i'm not sure why the binocular eyes...

nathan posing with the girls

your daddy, posing with the girls

silly faces=)

you and your new buddy addy

you two played baby and mama all weekend long=) (look at sweet lily-just along for the ride=))

and the most eventful thing that came from that trip is that you no longer have a g-tube!!!! we had decided along with your doctors that it was time to take the thing out. we haven't used it in a couple months and you're finally eating like any other child your age. you might actually eat more than any other child your age, but you're a skinny scrawny little thing and you might just always be that way. my theory is that the 8 inches they took out of your intestines when you were a baby really has made a difference, and you don't absorb as much from your food as you should-basically, it just goes right through you most of the time. pleasant to think about, right??? but we were eating dinner one night at the lake and when you were finished i was helping you hop down from your chair-your tummy rubbed up against my arm and i felt your g-tube but that has happened before and it was no big deal-so you took off across the room and as i was going to check on your tummy and make sure the tube looked ok, megan pointed to the floor and asked if that was a big deal...well "that" was your g-tube on the floor, no longer in your tummy. so i sat like a deer in headlights for a total of 5 seconds saying "ok. well. i think that's ok. um." and then i realized that i am fully capable of making the decision that we just leave it out. i knew that in the office all we would do would be take it out and wait a few weeks and see if it needed to be surgically closed...and we could certainly just do that at home. i thought it was kind of a sweet little gift that we were able to do that at the lake of all places without really knowing it was even happening...but to reassure daddy, and myself, i talked to dr carter (your new pediatrician and my boss) and sweet lindsay from uva talked to dr rodgers (your surgeon in virginia) the next day and we all decided that yes it was indeed ok to leave it out! it's been about a week and a half and it does seem to be leaking just the tiniest bit, so we'll go see GI one of these days soon and decide how to close it up. i wish so so much that you wouldn't have to be under general anesthesia for this but i'm guessing you'll have to be. we'll manage=)

a random fun moment the other day was when we were playing at home and you looked up at me and said: "mommy-how were you feeling at work today?"...i'm guessing this is because i ask you every day how you were at school, but i still thought it was so very intuitive and sweet for a 3 year old=)

remember how papa has cancer? things have kind of gone up and down but in a general downward pattern...we've gotten to see him a few times and on the day he decided would be his last sunday preaching, we along with a lot of cousins went to hear him. it was a sweet sweet day, and i think it meant a lot to him=) here are a few pictures of that:

he sat down the whole time, but he got through the sermon!!

uncle david and cousin keith helped him sing the songs during worship

a handful of papa's great-grandkids that were able to come see him that day

uncle nathan being silly...

so lady-like=)

ok sweet angel. that's all for now. i will try so hard to keep you updated more often than this one was...the transition to life in atlanta has been a little bit more difficult than i expected; mostly, i usually work slightly longer hours and it simply takes longer to get home from anywhere, so i have less time to play, or type. and when i'm home i want to be hanging out with my sweet girl, so the blog has taken a back seat. but i will try to do better=)

i love you baby girl-

mommy

ps-the other day you put your baby's stethoscope around your tummy backwards and started running around telling me you had a tail=) and then somehow you ended up with panties on your head with your hair sticking out the legs like pigtails. and here it is for your visual enjoyment...