Cold Eggs

The egg hunt crew.

I keep waiting for spring to show up, but instead we keep putting on our jackets. Oh well, while Mother Nature gets it together, we went ahead and had a little neighborly egg hunt one brisk evening this past week. Needless to say, Violet was totally into it. There is no confusion here about what is to be found inside an egg - my girl loves some candy!

At least she can also tell you the real meaning of Easter. As she puts it, "God is alive!" And that, my friends, is something worth celebrating.

Who cares if it's cold - we got candy!

With the loot.

We Had a Good Run

It finally happened.

The other morning I got a phone call from Matt as I was preparing for the school day. On this particular morning, everyone else in the house had slept late; I made my coffee and snuck out without anyone noticing.

The phone call went something like this:

Me: Hey, what's up?
Matt: Did you get Violet up this morning?
Me: (thinking... what do you mean? Is she not there with you? Where the heck is my child?!) No...
Matt: Because she was already downstairs when I got up this morning.
Me: What?!

Violet, for the first time ever, got out of bed herself. She was downstairs in the kitchen playing when Matt started up the stairs to wake her.

It's been a good run. She never tried to climb out of her crib. Even when we converted to a toddler bed, she never climbed out in the middle of the night. Come morning, we'd just hear her up there, hollering for us to come invite her out of bed.

Three years is a pretty good streak, if you ask me. And it's actually kind of convenient to think she can make her way downstairs and play quietly until it's time for us to get up. Of course, she hasn't done it since - she's back to yelling at us, although now we just yell back and tell her to come down.
And it will be even more convenient when she can get herself up, find some breakfast, put the tv on and let us sleep in. It's a nice dream, anyway!

Sleeping Beauty

TV Time-Out

We were slaves to the television. It was the first thing Violet asked when she woke up. "Mommy, can I watch something?" And unfortunately, that voice was waking us up before 6 a.m. Not. Cool. And woe be it if we were running short on time. Violet would refuse to leave the house before the entire episode of Backyardigans was over. And she noticed if I tried to slyly fast-forward while she wasn't looking.

And it wasn't just mornings when the tv held us captive. Part of Violet's established, set-in-stone bedtime routine involved bringing the iPad upstairs so she could watch Minnie Mouse youtube videos. Three, to be exact. Although she always asked for more. There were many a tear involved.

Unrelated picture to jazz things up.

Well, finally Matt got sick of it. (I was also sick of it, but much more likely to oblige in the name of my sanity.) My brave husband, however, had no qualms. Just like ditching the pacifier, he decided we needed to go cold turkey. No more videos at bedtime. No more tv in the mornings before school. Enough was enough. The tv doesn't decide when we leave the house for school, the grown-ups do! Yeah! Take that, tv!

So I spent a day prepping Violet. "No more tv before school," I reminded her at least a dozen times. She seemed okay with it. I figured she really had no clue. The morning would be painful. Because, let's face it, tv is awfully convenient. That episode of Backyardigans allows me to make coffee, eat breakfast, pack up for the day, all in relative peace. Now, it's also made for plenty of tears and late arrivals at work, but I've always considered it a compromise.

And as painful as I thought the change would be, surprisingly it was not. Every morning she checks the tv, and every morning there is a big "time out" sign right there, front and center. And she doesn't question it. (Ha! Sucka!) She plays in the morning before we leave. We're back to reading books (lots... and lots of books) at night before bed. I feel very triumphant.

Although that Violet can be a sneaky thing. Yesterday she asked if we could watch basketball together. I'm pretty sure she was just craving some screen time and was willing to watch pretty much anything, even a lame March Madness match-up. Tonight Matt and Violet are watching old episodes of Good Eats. Again, I'm pretty sure she asked for Alton just to get the tv out of time-out.

But overall, it's definitely an improvement.

Spring break is going to kill me.

Building a Bear

Violet finally had her rescheduled birthday party. Noodlehead thought she was turning 4 this time (can't say I blame her...)

Violet with her BFF. Matt had his hands full of silly little girls.

Everyone picked an animal, then gave it a special heart. Violet picked a bunny and named it... Violet Bunny.

After filling it with fluff, she got to give Violet Bunny a bath and brushing.

Then it was time for Bunny and Puppy to get dressed. Fancy!

Turning three... again... for the last time.

My sweet birthday girl.

Randoms

Violet has learned how to take pictures with my phone.

Princess time!

Violet helps me grade some papers.

That's right, it's report card time again! This round comes with the extra pressure of preparing for parent-teacher conferences on the same day grades are due. Awesome. But amazingly enough, the end of third quarter means there are only nine weeks left of school!

Doctors and Dentists

Now that Violet is three, there were some check-ups to be made. First we headed to the pediatrician. Luckily there were no shots this time, although Violet did experience the novelty of peeing in a cup. She's 39 1/4 inches tall (90-97 percentile) and 34.8 pounds (90 percentile). No surprises there, based on how she towers over some of her school friends. Now that Violet is old enough, the pediatrician conducted a little interview with her, asking her to point out various colors, tell her age, and perform a few tricks (jumping on one foot, for example). She passed with flying colors, although the doctor did note her speech and suggest we get her screened for early intervention. Again, no surprise there. Already on my summer to-do list!

Next on the list was Violet's first official dentist appointment. We did a lot of talking leading up to the appointment about what to expect and how to behave. I'm happy to say that Violet did great! No meltdowns, no refusals, and she only asked to go home once. So glad we've gotten this one out of the way.

Violet has become quite the little story teller lately. On the way home from school she'll say, "Mom," (oh yeah, she's started calling me 'mom' instead of 'mommy'. I do not approve.) "Mom, do you want to hear a scary story?" she'll ask. "Yesterday," (because all her stories start with 'yesterday'. This signifies merely that the story is happening some time in the past.) "Yesterday, when Daddy was a little baby, he burned himself." End of story. Then, "Mom, do you want to hear a funny story? Yesterday when I was a baby, I fell down and hurt my collarbone." (I promise not all the stories about are injuries, those are just the two I can remember. We hear the "Daddy burned himself" story a lot for some reason.)

Birthday Do-Over

Remember when Violet turned three? We had our special birthday breakfast before school... she was all grins and silliness...? Yeah, well, what I never mentioned is that I got a call from daycare that afternoon telling me to come get the birthday girl because the poor thing was throwing up.

I got her home, assuring myself it was just a fluke, probably too many treats at school, she'd be fine in the morning, just in time for her big Build-a-Bear birthday bash. Except then she threw up all over the couch.

Still I was feeling relatively confident the show could go on. It was probably just a bit of a stomach bug, nothing a good night's rest couldn't cure. But then she threw up at 2 a.m., all over herself and her bed. Twice. And I knew at that point that her party was toast.

And thus began a miserable birthday weekend. I scrambled the next morning to contact all the party guests, telling them we would NOT be at the mall for cupcakes and teddy bears that morning. Violet continued to be sick all day, on the couch, once on me... She refused to eat anything, and wasn't able to keep down anything I did manage to bribe her with. (When this kid refuses cookies and ice cream, you know something is legitimately wrong.) Her only Saturday activities were watching movies, sleeping, and throwing up. We skipped church on Sunday and Grandma came up later that day so Matt and I could go to a funeral (I'm telling you, the weekend just kept getting worse!) and stayed through Monday so Violet could have one more day to recover.

All that to say... both her Build-a-Bear party and our family party were cancelled. And while I'm still working on rescheduling the bears, we finally had our family up for a birthday re-do. Three started pretty rough, but this has now turned into the never-ending birthday celebration. It was so nice to celebrate with our parents and my brother and sis-in-law. Violet got some cute new things to go in her newly-organized playroom (Matt went on a cleaning/organizing/sorting rampage this morning, determined to get rid of some unused toys to make way for the upcoming loot.)

The Big 3, Finally!

So I think I can safely say that Violet had a pretty good third birthday. And hey, being three can only improve from here!