My sweet Lucy Goose,

Tomorrow, you turn 3 years old.

I know, I’m surprised we survived the past year too.

This past year has been pretty rough. You still don’t sleep through the night – you come into my room every two to three hours all night long, every night. When Chris is here, you’ll run around to his side of the bed to get him, because he’s a lot nicer about being woken up than I am.

Every night, you come in, one of us puts you back in bed, turns on your Baby Einstein lullaby CD, and lather-rinse-repeat, all night long.

So, when you’re a teenager and want to sleep until noon and I come into your room with an air horn and wake you up at 5 a.m.? Read that above paragraph to understand why. Three years of this, baby girl. Your mama is TIRED.

But oh, you are so funny. You never stop talking. Your internal monologue is not internal at all, you narrate everything as it happens around you. And you ask a million questions about the world. Little things that don’t cross my mind – the other night, we were reading a little board book called Quiet Loud, and for whatever reason, the baby who’s the main character in the book only wears a diaper. You kept asking, “Why is the baby nekkid? He don’t have any clothes??” I tried to say that maybe the baby felt like only wearing a diaper, but you kept asking about it over and over until I got the giggles and couldn’t stop laughing.

And you’ll randomly say things that are completely innocent and unintentionally hilarious, like a couple of weeks ago when out of the blue, you said, “This is how you make a baby!”

I froze, and said, “Wait, what?”

You curled yourself up into the fetal position and said, “See? I a baby!”

Ohhh, right. Whew.

You waffle back and forth between being my baby and being a big girl. A lot of times, you’ll shoo me away from trying to help you with something, because you want to do it yourself. Other times, you tell me, “I can’t do that, I only little.”

You adore your big sister (and man, does she ever love you), but you two are the opposite in so many ways. You constantly tell me how your favorite color is pink, and you only like princesses. Even in last week’s newsletter from daycare, when they asked all of the kids in your class to name their favorite farm animal, your answer was, “Pigs. Because they pink.” You are my Super Girly Girl. I don’t know where it comes from, because your sister hates pink, loves video games, and doesn’t give a hoot about princesses, and I wouldn’t consider myself a “girly-girl” type either, but I love that you found your own thing.

It’s funny, because I have to fight with Catie to get her to wear dresses, and you pretty much only want to wear dresses or skirts. (Although at the moment, all skirts are called “tutus” to you, which is pretty awesome.) And you have very strong ideas about your clothes. This morning, you wanted to wear a “tutu” (skirt) with a dress. Together. Because one skirt just wasn’t girly enough, I guess. You grabbed them both and took off down the hall to go dress yourself in the bathroom (one of your “I do it all by myself” moments), and I said that you couldn’t wear the dress with the skirt, so I was going to grab you some leggings to put under your dress. As you ran down the hall, you called back over your shoulder, “No leggings! Just my tutu!” and kept running. We had a little fight about it, and the leggings won out. (Sorry, baby, but the skirt really did look kind of ridiculous with the dress. You’ll thank me someday.)

You really love the dudes in your life. You love your dad, and Chris (you call him Boy Chris, to differentiate him from your Uncle Chris, who you also adore – there’s a whole backstory there about 2 kids of different genders with the same name at your daycare, so there’s Boy X and Girl X, and that’s how Chris ended up as “Boy Chris”). But most of all, you love your Pop-Pop. And oh, does he ever love you, little girl.

I don’t know if you know this, but my dad has always been kind of a grumpy guy. But once when we said something to you about, “Hey Lucy, is Pop-Pop grumpy?” You said, “Noooo! He not grumpy!” And laughed like it was the biggest joke ever. And it occurred to me that you’ve never seen him grumpy, because he lights up whenever you’re around.

You have that effect on a lot of people, actually. It’s a trait I hope you never outgrow, that ability to make people smile as soon as you walk into a room.

People regularly tell me that you look like me, and on a day-to-day basis, I don’t really see it, but then I’ll see an old photo of myself at your age, like this one from my third birthday:

And… oh. Huh. Yeah, I guess we do look a lot alike. Sorry about that, baby. I promise I’ll do my very best not to project my own body image issues and hang-ups onto you.

With your sister, three was the hardest age for us. It was when I had the most problems with her behavior and didn’t know what to do with her. I always thought “terrible twos” was a misnomer and that it was actually three that was the hardest age. That might be true, I guess it depends on the kid. I’m hoping you’ve already gone through the worst of your toddler behavior issues, because lately, you’ve been pretty hilariously fun. And I really hope it stays that way.

Because you are just awesome.

Happy birthday, Lucy girl. We love you to the moon and back.

Love,
Mama