THREE! Can it really be? It is hard to imagine our life before this little monkey entered our world. I am so thankful
to be experiencing this love a mother has fo
r her child, it is beautiful. I love this turkey from head to toe, inside and out. She is at a very challenging age right now, trying to push limits over and over again every day, but it doesn't even matter because she will turn around and be the sweetest thing in the world and melt my heart all over again.
Piper Vida has really blossomed this past year. I thought she spoke well at two, but now she is light years beyond that, her capabilities with conversation and understanding blows me away. She is charming and endearing, confident and silly, sensitive and thoughtful. It is so fun to see the world through her eyes and be in the midst of this life's adventure together. I wanted to think through a handful of little pieces of Piper to share, to just give a glimpse of what an incredible little girl we are lucky enough to spend our days with...
Piper LOVES candy, she has her daddy's sweet tooth, and we have used this to our advantage as motivation many times. Two skittles go a long way to encourage good behavior or to get at least a few bites of good nutrition in for dinner.
Piper's generosity melts my heart. Knowing how much she loves candy, the fact that she will share her prized morsels is so sweet. The other day she was given one piece of candy corn that she had earned. Before she popped it in her mouth, she looked at David and said, “Daddy do you want a bite?”
Piper is still very passionate about deciding who gets what between the twins. Whether it is shoes, diapers, the color of bottle, bibs, highchair, and the list goes on. She especially loves to pick out what they will wear for the day. I hate to admit, but she d
oes seem to have a favorite brother (Calvin for now, but we will see how the tides will turn in time) Calvin tends to get the better of the two options in her mind. If something is Pink (Pipers favorite color) Calvin gets it!
Speaking of Calvin, he went through a short phase where he loved the binky. Piper became the “holder of the binky” and she took her role very seriously. She was always putting clean binky's in Ziploc bags to bring where ever we went, “Just in case Calvin needs it!”
Like most kids Pipers age, she is really into asking questions. Dave and I have prided ourselves on really trying to answer her questions as best as we can instead of saying “Just because!” Especially recently she has put our abilities to explain to the test. The other day she was on a roll with this series of questions: What is behind my forehead? What is in my eyes? What is in my ankle? What is the door made of? What is the window made of? What is plastic? What is glass? What is the toilet made of? What is Mango made of? She makes us laugh every day.
While we were in Hawaii, Piper invented Baby Mae, a pretend baby that traveled everywhere with us. (Baby Mae, is a real friend back home). She would cross her arms across her chest and pretend to carry Baby Mae everywhere we went and loved to introduce her pretend baby to random people. Mae would go swimming with us, ride in the stroller, even got buckled in to a pretend car seat. Pretend Mae is still going strong now that we are home. The other day Piper got super upset at Dave for standing on the stairs of the playground structure. Almost panicky she said, “Daddy step off the stairs...MAE IS STANDING THERE!”
Piper still really loves the color pink! Yellow and purple are tied for her second favorite color.
We are starting actual swimming lessons this month; Piper loves swimming and especially diving underwater for her sinking toys. She can hold her breath almost as long as I can underwater, which was a handy skill for checking out the fish and turtles in Hawaii.
Piper loves baths and playing in the water. But she hates having her hair brushed and the only time I seem to put her though this torture is after she has had a bath and
her hair is conditioned. I am as gentile as possible, but it usually always leads to tears. She seems to sit a little more still when I tell her that her hair is a rat’s nest and I have to get the tangles out so no bugs try to live in there. Of course I now understand why my mom gave me a bowl cut as a kid, but I love Pipers long blond locks, so if she will keep suffering through these comb outs, so will I.
I think Piper is beyond her years in her awareness of how other people are doing. Quite often she will come up to us when we walk in the door and so sincerely ask, “Daddy how was your run?” Or “Mommy, did you have a nice swim?” Asking these kinds of questions are one example, but she also seems to get vibes from other people. One time we were in a sub shop waiting for our sandwiches to be made. She looked at a woman sitting at another table, and said “That woman seems sad.”
Piper LOVES being told stories. She will get on a kick of one story and want it told over and over and over again. Some stories we tell are our best recollection of old fairy tales like, “The 3 pigs and the Big Bad Wolf”, “Cinderella”, “The boy who cried Wolf”, and she also likes to hear about our travel adventures from the past and recent fun trips we have done as a family.
Piper is becoming quite a hiker, which is super fun for us because that is a favorite family activity. Telling the stories I mentioned above go a long way in stretching out how far Piper will really walk before Daddy has to carry her on his shoulders. But she has been working on walking more. So the other day Piper and I walked to the farmers market which is not quite a mile away. She pushed pretend Baby Mae in her baby stroller and walked the whole way there. There was lots of stopping and adjusting and stalling, and I surely should have received “Most Patient Mommy Award”. But it was so cute because when we got home she told Dave, “I walked all the way to the farmers market, I am proud of myself!”
A few of Piper’s other skills:
-Totally potty trained and has been since she was almost two years old. We even made the transition to all the way through the night since about 6 months ago.
-Helping to unload the dishwasher.
-Feeding Mango.
-Learning the Months of the year.
-Can spell R E S P E C T and M A N G O.
-Super good at finding and hiding hidden lizards or Easter eggs.
-Communicating.
-Cracking eggs into a bowl by he
rself.
Happy Birthday Piper Vida, we love you so much. Thanks for being an AMAZING little girl and making us laugh everyday.
We have much to be thankful for this year. Just yesterday we had a beautiful sunny day to enjoy perfect snow conditions for x country skiing. We got all five of us out to enjoy a favorite wintertime activity. The kiddos all enjoyed the crisp fresh air and we loved the good family time fun. We ran into a few friends up at the snow park and even squeezed in a few sled runs before heading home for lunch.
This year we decided to have a non traditional Thanksgiving...instead of turkey, we had an all out sushi feast. It was a fun event to spread out the day and eat all day long. We added in a few traditional Thanksgiving must haves like canned cranberry sauce, whole olives to put on our fingers and our famous spinach dip...Super gourmet! =-)Uncle Topher continued the tradition of joining us for the 4th year in a row. It was fun to watch him enjoy playing with our kids and they of course loved all the attention. 
