Riley Nicole: 3 Years Old

Today Riley turned 3 years old.  She's officially old enough for preschool and organized sports.  She is no longer free everywhere we go.  She is getting sooo big.  Being home with her this summer has been a blast and she truly is such a sweet, kind hearted little big girl.  Here is what she's up to:

• She is the best big sister to HER baby.  She is always comforting her and trying to make her smile.
• She is tall and lean.  I'm not sure what her stats are.  She had a physical a couple weeks ago, but refused to be measured and made it really difficult to get her weight.
• She is very independent and often sneaks off to the basement where she puts in her own DVDs to watch.
• She is not afraid of the dark or being in the basement by herself.
• She says her favorite color is yellow, but we notice that she prefers blue and purple.
• She is in love with the Disney princesses.  Belle is number one and Snow White comes in second.  She also loves the beast as much, if not more, than Belle.  She calls Sleeping Beauty "the beast" because she thinks she looks like the beast after he turns into the prince.
• She has a wild imagination and loves to pretend that there are monsters chasing her.
• She loves to catch fireflies after her bath.  Usually we end up catching moths, crickets, and even dead locusts.  She will always let them go before bed or the next day so they can go back to their mommy.
• She has very sensitive and fare skin and almost always breaks out after being in the sun with sunscreen. 
• She loves books.
• She loves to paint, color, and do anything involving artsy stuff. She will usually choose to draw snowmen.
• She is like her mommy and LOVES the fair.  She even loved riding the rides...by herself.
• She will always say that something hurts or she doesn't know how to do it if she doesn't want to do something.
• She still loves to taker her baths.  She always requests "just one pony" when I do her hair.  I attempted to do french braid piggy tails the other day.  She cried almost the whole way through and I had to quit.  They were so cute too!
• She loves to pose for pictures.
• She has a memory like a steal trap.  She seems to remember things for months that Daddy I have long forgotten.
• She loves her cousins and all of her friends.  She still loves to go to Hedy's every day.
• Piggy and Bunny are still must-haves.  But she now knows that they must stay in the car when we go into stores.
• She thinks that she is going to be buying a baby pig here soon.  She says that she wants to buy everything.
• She hides things...important things...like my glasses, bottles of breast milk, our wallets...and doesn't tell us.  If we can't find something we just ask her where she hid it.  Thankfully she can usually lead us to the hidden items...except poor Suzy the Fox who was hidden under a bunch of pillows for over a month.
• She still wants Mommy and Daddy to "lay down by me" at bedtime.  She loves to read books before bedtime.
• She has memorized most movies and books that she's seen.  So much so that she repeats either whole lines or the last word of each sentence of every book.  She has Snow White, Beauty and The Beast, and Little Mermaid on CD and she will mimic the narrator's tone and laughs.  It's pretty funny.
• She loves to sing and likes to make up her own songs.  They usually go like this: "la, la, la, la, here I am, here I am. la, la, la, la, la."
• She talks LOUD, and ALL.THE.TIME!
• She just started actually hugging us back.  Instead of just putting her arms around us she will actually squeeze.  So cute. 
• If you ask her is she's a stinker or call her "silly girl" or anything she will always protest and say "no, I'm Riley Murphy!"