my baby is 3. happy birthday, baby girl!

in about 20 minutes, at 1:16am, little miss eleanor turns three years old. when i asked her if there was anything she would like to get for her birthday,  she said, “well, a happy cake! a dark blue happy cake! with sprinkles!”  it sounds so simple and ordinary, but if you could have heard the excitement behind that request, you’d know that this one little thing meant the world to her. i just want to bottle up her tiny voice and keep it forever.

it’s hard to describe a typical day with eleanor. it is full of such vivid imagination and play. she’ll wake up and announce she is some character from a book we’ve read or an animal from the zoo.  lately she has been “little red riding hood” and she won’t break character for hours. not even once. not until she announces she is eleanor again.  she’ll kindly remind you too, if you call her by her real name eleanor and not her pretend name, that she is little red. or a panda. or a shark. or whatever she might be.  eleanor especially loves to play pretend with anything that has a “big bad wolf” in the story… so she is also often a little pig (and unfortunately i am always typecast as the wolf. ugh! she tells me to huff and puff.  a lot. and chase her.

eleanor loves to teach samson new things and new words. just tonight she was holding his hand in the nursery trying to show him how to jump on only one foot! it was kind of the most adorable thing ever. they jumped together. they fell down a lot. and then they laughed so loud.

eleanor is caring and loves to offer to sing a song to anyone who might be sad.  she always remembers to bless her food, and thank her heavenly father for “mama, papa, samson and me.” she also lists out every member of the harrison family, because she likes them a lot, and a bunch of her other favorite people.

it is sometimes hard for eleanor to try new foods these days. she likes to say, “maybe later” whenever there is something she needs to eat that she doesn’t want to eat. we often find though that once she does finally try a new food, she likes it. it’s interesting how that works.

sometimes eleanor doesn’t want samson to touch her toys, especially her doctor kit (unless he is being her assistant which is a case by case privilege), her scooter or her panda bears.  there have been days i find her trying to take all these things with her to the potty or to her bed because she doesn’t want samson to get them. occasionally she will go into the nursery and close the door and want to be alone. “i just need a little space” she says, and i get it. i like my alone time, too.

my favorite thing about eleanor at this stage are our conversations together. she loves to ask me questions and somehow will remember details and events of things we did so long ago, i am always surprised when she reminds me of them. i really enjoy our chats. she can carry a conversation so well. it blows me away.

i want to always remember these things and hope writing this will help me with that. i love and adore this baby girl of mine. these three years have flown by. she is getting so tall and so smart. i am so very proud of the beautiful and confident and brave little girl she is growing into and am grateful for the chance to be her mama. she teaches and pushes me so much each day. the last three years have been the very best years and can’t wait (actually i can – you know how it goes) to see what this next year brings for her.

happy birthday, beautiful baby girl. i love you. i love you so much.