wishing

Rachel sat at her little table today eating a cupcake. After she had finished licking all the icing off the top of the cupcake she sat there pretending it was her birthday. She closed her eyes and said,"I wish I can have my very own puppy someday." Then blew on the cupcake like she was blowing out a candle. Very cute. She is so in to pretending everything these days. She calls me grandma half the time and tells me she's visiting with her 3 or 4 or 5 kids.
The other day she got out her paints and a coloring book and spent a good 15 minutes painting a "surprise." She kept telling me to close my eyes and that I couldn't peek because she was making a surprise for me. And she would run in to check that my eyes were, indeed, closed. I was cooking dinner at the time. She finally asked, "Are your eyes closed? Even when you're cooking?" So she caught on, I guess, that I wasn't completely following directions. After she finished painting my surprise, she came and showed it to me, and then proceeded to tell me that I had to paint her a surprise. When I sat down to paint she came and checked on her "surprise" every minute or two, and instructed me on which colors to use or not to use. Glad I could make her a surprise. :)
These times of her being cute help balance out the exasperating part of having a 3-year-old. Now that she's got language down pat, she pretends that she can't speak, or she talks in a little baby voice that is so annoying. She pretends to be a baby and wants to be carried all over, or wants to be wherever Annie is, whether it's on her play mat, in her Bumbo seat or her high chair and gets mad when I tell her I won't move Annie so she can be there because Annie only has a few toys she knows how to play with and Rachel has tons. Her stubbornness and having fits when she doesn't get her way and her ability to make huge messes while disobeying every rule in the house sometimes gets to me. But I try to remind myself she's learning and she won't be this age forever (thank goodness) and I should enjoy it. And I'm trying. :)