Our 3 year old loves Christmas, and her new brother!
Sweet darling girl, the theme of my last three weeks has been love, love, and more love. Sweet girl, I didn't even get a chance to write about how amazing Christmas with a three year old you was before we added a fourth to our family and my free time was swallowed up!
Sweet girl, you are our everything, and it has been a big adjustment for me to not call you "my favourite," but instead, to call you, "my favourite little girl." You made me a mommy, you taught me how to love in a way that I did not know existed, and you revealed a part of myself that I didn't even know was there. You occupied what felt like my whole heart for three whole years. Even longer, actually.
For the last couple of months of my pregnancy, my biggest source of anxiety was about how you would react to your brother. I was so worried that as excited as you had seemed to be about him, when reality sunk in about how much of a time-sucker he would be in the beginning, that you would not want to keep him. I worried that those horror stories about second children and siblings would come true, and that you wouldn't like him, or you would want us to return him, or that you would not be nice to him. That was my biggest fear. But none of that has happened, given, it has only been three weeks.
You have been THE biggest helper (well, aside from your Daddy) to us. You have mastered the art of knowing what we need before we have even asked you and will run to get a diaper, a spit cloth, a soother or stuffy without even being asked. You are not doing this for recognition or to see our pride in you; but you are doing it because it is just what is natural, and it is just who you are. You see what we need, and you just do it, because it needs to be done, and darling girl, we adore you for it. We love that that is who you are.
Sometimes you don't want Mommy to feed Riley; but its not because feeding Riley takes Mommy away from you, it's because you want to play with him. You want to hug him, to kiss him, to play with him all the time, and it is your biggest excitement when our sleepy newborn opens his eyes and sees you. It is our biggest enjoyment too, Ava- when your little brother locks his eyes on our first love.
Sweetheart, your brother does not yet love the car, and cries very loudly for the first 5 minutes of every car trip, and you so calmly sing "You are my Sunshine" to him, and you are so proud when he stops crying. We are so proud too, or everything that you are.
Miss Ava, what a thing Christmas has become, now that you are three years old. You LOVE everything that is Christmas. You love picking out the perfect Christmas tree from the tree farm, and you have become a master tree decorater. You decorated almost the whole tree by yourself this year, and you took so much pride in how your tree looked.
We went to Kelowna the first weekend of December, and we (well, Daddy) waited in line for quite awhile to see Santa Claus. You LOVE Santa Claus. You love the songs about him, stories about him, and learning about how he brings people gifts. But when you got to the front of the line, you very, very shyly hid behind Daddy and refused to talk to the infamous Santa Claus. You were not scared and you did it all with a smile, but this would not be the year that you would bravely sit on Santa's lap, and that's ok by us.
This year we had Christmas at Gramma and Grampa's tiny rental house at Cultus Lake. It was quite crowded, and we live pretty close to them, but we packed up all of our gear and moved in with them for a few days to get ready for Santa's arrival.Sweet girl, it is amazing to me that you are such a big girl that when we get together with your cousins you all just run off into other rooms and play together, and you don't even NEED us! Yes, we ocassionally need to break up fights and solve problems, but usually you all play so well together that we sometimes forget we are supposed to be supervising you!
Our funny little girl, Daddy was putting you to bed a couple of nights before Christmas and you were having a really hard time listening .Daddy told you that Santa Claus was coming soon, and that he was watching, so you needed to be a good listener. Sweet bean, you are so very literal, and you and you looked around cautiously and said to Daddy, "Daddy, can you hold a blanket up, I don't want Santa to see me changing." Haha!
Sweet bean, on Christmas morning your Mommy is certain that she was the first one awake. I laid in bed at about 6:30 wondering who would be the first to wake. At about 7:00 I could hear Gramma and Grampa out in the living room and getting food ready in the kitchen. When you woke up soon after 7 a.m., I could not WAIT to wish you a Merry Christmas! You were so instantly awake and excited, and ran out of our room and began knocking on Austen's bedroom door, yelling, "Austy! It's Christmas! It's Christmas!" When we could hear that they had awoken, we told you to go in, and that you did, waking up the entire Watts family, and alerting them of the news!
We went too overboard on you this Christmas, and didn't even realize that we had until you opened up all of your gifts on Christmas morning.
Miss Ava, all we wanted for Christmas was you, and we love you so, so much.
I will get to our Christmas with you in a minute, but first, what is on my mind is you, and how much I adore you.
Sweet girl, for three WHOLE years, you were our WHOLE world, and you still are, except now our world (and our love) is also shared by your little brother, Riley. But for those three years, you were the center of our everything. Our happiness, our joy, our pride, and most importantly, our LOVE was all centered around you. Perhaps that is unhealthy, that our lives were not not centered around ourselves or around eachtoher, even a little bit more - but it was what it was, and what it was is you, and we wouldn't have had it another way.
The problem with that though, is that as much as your brother has opened our hearts even wider, your Mommy has had a really hard time sharing "Ava and Mommy time" with your little brother. Sharing is what we have been doing, but not without A LOT of emotion, a lot of heartache, and a lot of tears on the part of your Mommy. Make no mistake, I adore your brother and am in complete awe of him and can not begin to imagine our lives without him.
Sweet girl, you are our everything, and it has been a big adjustment for me to not call you "my favourite," but instead, to call you, "my favourite little girl." You made me a mommy, you taught me how to love in a way that I did not know existed, and you revealed a part of myself that I didn't even know was there. You occupied what felt like my whole heart for three whole years. Even longer, actually.
For the last couple of months of my pregnancy, my biggest source of anxiety was about how you would react to your brother. I was so worried that as excited as you had seemed to be about him, when reality sunk in about how much of a time-sucker he would be in the beginning, that you would not want to keep him. I worried that those horror stories about second children and siblings would come true, and that you wouldn't like him, or you would want us to return him, or that you would not be nice to him. That was my biggest fear. But none of that has happened, given, it has only been three weeks.
You have been THE biggest helper (well, aside from your Daddy) to us. You have mastered the art of knowing what we need before we have even asked you and will run to get a diaper, a spit cloth, a soother or stuffy without even being asked. You are not doing this for recognition or to see our pride in you; but you are doing it because it is just what is natural, and it is just who you are. You see what we need, and you just do it, because it needs to be done, and darling girl, we adore you for it. We love that that is who you are.
Sometimes you don't want Mommy to feed Riley; but its not because feeding Riley takes Mommy away from you, it's because you want to play with him. You want to hug him, to kiss him, to play with him all the time, and it is your biggest excitement when our sleepy newborn opens his eyes and sees you. It is our biggest enjoyment too, Ava- when your little brother locks his eyes on our first love.
Sweetheart, your brother does not yet love the car, and cries very loudly for the first 5 minutes of every car trip, and you so calmly sing "You are my Sunshine" to him, and you are so proud when he stops crying. We are so proud too, or everything that you are.
We went to Kelowna the first weekend of December, and we (well, Daddy) waited in line for quite awhile to see Santa Claus. You LOVE Santa Claus. You love the songs about him, stories about him, and learning about how he brings people gifts. But when you got to the front of the line, you very, very shyly hid behind Daddy and refused to talk to the infamous Santa Claus. You were not scared and you did it all with a smile, but this would not be the year that you would bravely sit on Santa's lap, and that's ok by us.
This year we had Christmas at Gramma and Grampa's tiny rental house at Cultus Lake. It was quite crowded, and we live pretty close to them, but we packed up all of our gear and moved in with them for a few days to get ready for Santa's arrival.Sweet girl, it is amazing to me that you are such a big girl that when we get together with your cousins you all just run off into other rooms and play together, and you don't even NEED us! Yes, we ocassionally need to break up fights and solve problems, but usually you all play so well together that we sometimes forget we are supposed to be supervising you!
Our funny little girl, Daddy was putting you to bed a couple of nights before Christmas and you were having a really hard time listening .Daddy told you that Santa Claus was coming soon, and that he was watching, so you needed to be a good listener. Sweet bean, you are so very literal, and you and you looked around cautiously and said to Daddy, "Daddy, can you hold a blanket up, I don't want Santa to see me changing." Haha!
Sweet bean, on Christmas morning your Mommy is certain that she was the first one awake. I laid in bed at about 6:30 wondering who would be the first to wake. At about 7:00 I could hear Gramma and Grampa out in the living room and getting food ready in the kitchen. When you woke up soon after 7 a.m., I could not WAIT to wish you a Merry Christmas! You were so instantly awake and excited, and ran out of our room and began knocking on Austen's bedroom door, yelling, "Austy! It's Christmas! It's Christmas!" When we could hear that they had awoken, we told you to go in, and that you did, waking up the entire Watts family, and alerting them of the news!
We went too overboard on you this Christmas, and didn't even realize that we had until you opened up all of your gifts on Christmas morning.
Miss Ava, all we wanted for Christmas was you, and we love you so, so much.
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