Three

 Three years ago today I brought my amazing youngest daughter into the world, on my husbands birthday. Whew life sure has been busy since and I sincerely wouldn’t change a thing. Vanessa is an insane, silly, funny, sensitive, affectionate little girl who is crazy adorable. She’s super social and wants to be in the heart of whatever game is going on at the playground. She gets disheartened easily though if we can’t understand her, or someone doesn’t want to play. When she’s upset she has moderate breakdowns that can sometimes be hard to console. My best tactic is just riding it out and waiting until she’s distracted and forgets about it. If I try to talk things out and empathize she only gets more upset and will tell me to stop talking or she just cries even harder. Daily life can be tough and the biggest hurdle is communication. She’s definitely gotten good at sentences and saying things but I don’t think she’s on par exactly where her peers are. Medically she wouldn’t be categorized as behind or anything but all her friends her age are saying bigger sentences and I can have legit conversations with them. She doesn’t say a lot and her speech isn’t as clear. She still acts silly and speaks gibberish frequently, especially if you ask her a question. Her favorite is “goopey” whatever that means. She finds potty talk humorous and we have to tell her all the time that’s private stuff we don’t just say unless you’re saying you have to go or something along those lines. She is so sweet and cuddly and loveable. The other day she found a bouquet of artificial tulips in the basement and was like “I take these to the park?” I said she could and she goes “Margaret gonna love them.” Turns out she wanted to give the flowers to her best friend. We agreed on bringing one flower for the friend and one for her but her friend wasn’t at the playground and I think Vanessa got sad about that because she got pouty and asked to leave shortly after we arrived. She loves a hand me down stuffed cat from my childhood and one from my niece Bridget’s too. She plays with them every day and it makes me so happy to see her cherish something from when I was a little girl. I hope she always likes the toy but I’m sure she will outgrow it. I have a fear of it getting lost someday. She named the cat from my niece Minnie Meow and I think that’s very clever. Today we had a party for her at the playground where her best buds all showed up. My mother and father in law also came so she was quite happy. The party turned out well though it could have been better organized on my part. It was planned for 10 am but it started raining so I pushed it to noon. Everything was wet and it was a little cool but it worked out well anyway. I played music but the batteries in the speaker died shortly in. I had some sandwiches catered from the grocery deli and gave out pbjs to the kids. Later my twin nieces came over and we had pizza, cake and presents. It was a good day.