Can you hear me now?

I adore my daughter.
She's such a little character and packed full of personality.  She speaks amazingly well for a three year old.  She's brilliant, and I'm not just being "that mom" her doctors say so too.

I suppose that's why it's so frustrating when she does something typical of a toddler....like shredding a box of tissues or peeling the paper off an entire box of crayons just to see what's underneath.  Some of the crayons broke and she demanded that I fix them.  I love that she thinks I have the super power to fix anything she hands me.  I love it less when she has a level three meltdown because I can't put her cereal bar back together and it doesn't matter that she's just going to take another bite because "MAMA IT'S BROKEN!"

She's started to take after her mother and randomly quotes books and movies.  Sometimes the timing is hilarious, sometimes it's perplexing but I did nearly spit my coffee and tried not to choke laughing when she looked at her little hands, covered in fingerpaint and gasped "OH NO! My hands are RUINED!"  This after she was offered her choice, paint with a brush, a qtip or her fingers and she chose her fingers....

She darn near broke me in half wandering around the house telling me "I'm looking for my sister" until it clicked a few days later that she was quoting Frozen.

I do wonder how much she understands...we don't talk much about the baby we lost with her but sometimes I think she remembers.

There's this thing we do...I pick Bean up and put her on my lap and ask if she wants to "Check in."
She grins and places her little hands on my cheeks, and I take her little face in my hands and generally its just a quick how are you doing let's focus on each other for a minute.  Sometimes she improvises.

Me: Hi Baby.
Bean: Hi Mom.
Me: How are you doing?
Bean: I'm good. How ya doin'?
Me: I'm good.  I love you, peanut.
Bean: I love you. I'm squishing your face. You're a fish now. You need to swim away.

I adore her imagination.  I love that she's figuring out her own names for each and everyone of her stuffed animals and dolls.  I love that she thinks of things like making sure her doll, Maggie, can see when they watch Veggie Tales together.

We planted a few things this week...basil, cilantro, strawberries, tomatoes and sunflowers.  We started them in little pots and put them in a sunny window - we learned lessons while we planted.

We put the hard growing material discs in each pot and added water, turning them into soft usable dirt.  I told her this is like when we are ready for Jesus to put lessons in us.  I gave her the seeds, one at a time and told her each seed was like a lesson we needed to learn - to be kind, to be respectful, to be obedient, to be loving...she repeated each lesson as she placed the seeds.  I told her it's very important that we push the lessons all the way down into our hearts as we covered the seeds with dirt and watered them.  We put them in their place in front of the window and Bean asked if she could pray for her plants. I told her absolutely and dutifully bowed my head while she asked Jesus to make her plants grow.

The next day she came running out to her plants...and was rather disappointed that the red pot did not have strawberries in it, but was still just a pot of dirt...I think our next lesson is going to be on patience....she checks the pots several times a day to see if anything has changed. (I may cry if they don't actually sprout anything).

I think this is an excellent time to print off the life cycle of a plant coloring page.