Aliyah Rose: 3 years old

Aliyah Rose, you are 3 years old!  I can't believe it!  What have you been up to lately?

• You are wearing size 4 . . . and sometimes size 5.  4T's are all of a sudden too small on you! You have grown so tall in the past month or two.  You are in size 5 diapers . . . but probably could go up to size 6.  You wear a size 8/9 shoe.
• You have no interest in potty-training.  None. At. All.
• You sleep from 8p-7a (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) pretty consistently.  It is rare that you take a nap.  Usually you just do a quiet time upstairs with Hope.  Out of all of our kids, right now, you are the one that gets up most frequently during the night.
• I love how you mix your pronouns up - "Her is crying" or instead of saying "nobody", you will say "anybody".  Along the same lines, instead of saying "nothing", you say "anything".
• You can consistently count up to 13
• You know the letter "A" and point it out whenever you see it, saying, "my name! my name!" and you can sing most of the alphabet.
• You LOVE LOVE LOVE purple and anything that is purple is immediately your favorite.  
• You have an opinion on what you wear and on how your hair looks.
• You love to swim and you are a big fish!  You have no fear at all of going under water - especially in our kiddie pool.  You will go under water and "swim" from one side of the pool to the other.  Your biggest smile when you opened your birthday gifts came when you opened your purple goggles from Grandpa and Grandma Stegink.  We've also been doing a lot of swimming in bigger pools - Olsons and Pryors - and you paddle all over their pools with your puddle jumper on.  You will sometimes jump into their pools but you are a little more hesitant to go under water when you can't touch.  We were up at the cottage over 4th of July and you loved swimming in the lake too.  You didn't get out of the water much at all!  You would swim out to the raft (although you didn't like to go on the raft) and float and play in the shallow area too.
• Your favorite foods are cheese, craisins/raisins, mac and cheese, apples, raspberries, bananas, frozen blueberries, pancakes, tacos, watermelon, and canteloupe.
• You say "overfloated" instead of "overflowed"

Mommy and Daddy love you so much!  You are sweet and sassy.  Stubborn and tender-hearted.  So very shy but absolutely hilarious when you are just around your family.  My precious precious girl.  My prayer is that you would grow up to love Jesus with your whole heart.  That is the most important thing in the world.  I would know no greater joy than to watch you and your sisters and brother grow up loving and serving the Lord!! :)