Dear Delaney at 3 Years Old

Dear Delaney,

This is your annual Birthday letter to you on your 3rd birthday except today, you are 3 years and 5 months old!

During your actual birthday, we were at our craziest busy point with getting our Buroak home ready to go on the market in a couple of weeks and at a high point of being right smack in the middle of building our new Wilderness Ridge home. 

But it is so important to me that I pause in our busy lives to remember you exactly now. It’s 9:44 PM and I just carried you in from our bedroom to your new big girl bed you just got 2 months ago when we moved into the new house. You feel asleep there around 8:45 while waiting for me to finish tucking Carter and Addison into bed after they had stayed up late watching the summer Olympics. In typical 3rd child mode, you were so patient waiting for me to read Biscuit and a Princess Belle book, that you fell asleep by the time I came back into the room.

If I was writing this back on your actual birthday, I probably would have said that you are sleeping with us full time since the New Year. Something I NEVER allowed with your two older siblings. Call me exhausted and worn out but there are several things when it comes to you that your daddy and I have changed our ways.

At 3 years and 5 months, you are still incredibly clingy to both mommy and daddy. Like tonight, you could have been hanging out in game room with Carter and Addison watching TV and you were right beside me as I was organizing file folders of paperwork. You  LOVE to be connected to mommy and daddy day or night.

Today was your first official day of real school at Pinnacle Montessori and Asher Perkins had his first day there. You had been going there for the last 2 months since we moved and I was beginning to regret our decision to move you from the JCC 6 weeks into the move, when you were still crying every single day and even during the day constantly. Something we never experiences with Carter and Addison. You have a harder time with change and new things.

Your blond hair and blue eyes just light up the room. You are absolutely gorgeous and look just like YaYa to everyone. It’s appropriate that your name is Delaney Cheryl. 

You are completely obsessed with sweets and candy and everything with sugar… way more than the other 2. Many family members that you are still shy with, know that the way to your heart is through the promise of Orange Leaf, a donut or a milkshake. It’s amazing you don’t have cavities by now. You are not a good eater and it’s a constant struggle to get to you eat good food. This is another area that I have completely become too lax on over the last several years.

You are smart and over the last year, many people comment on the level of your vocabulary and how well you talk. There are many times, we “play the quiet game” on long car rides.

You are a child of the 21st century and obsessed with all things electronics, iPads, iPhones, and YouTube related. Your favorite thing to watch are these ridiculous shows where adults are talking in high pitch voices playing with kids toys… apparently you aren't the only ones as they have become the marketing and advertising rage in the last 5 years since Addison was your age.

You are a sweet and kind hearted young girl and I know you were put on Earth to teach me true patience. I thought I had learned patience after having your brother and sister, but God wanted to make I really understood. You were put in my life to get to witness a young nieve child learn the little and big things in life. I love how you have struggled, not that you know you are struggling, over the last year to learn prepositions like “last night” vs “last weekend” or “tomorrow” vs. “next week.” It’s so cute seeing your amazing brain soak it all up!

You LOVE TIGER, and I mean love Tiger. Anytime we can’t find you, we know to look to see where Tiger is and you are probably snuggled up next to her, in her bed or in between her paws.

Delaney - you are the sweetest 3 year old ever and you talk ALL the time about turning 4 “and you are going to go to Disney World and get holes in your ear.” I hope that you enjoy being 3 and being our baby.

We LOVE YOU SO VERY MUCH!

Mommy