In the Throes of the Threes

Emily is at that age. She passed through the terrible twos, which really wasn’t too terrible most of the time, into one of my most dreaded ages, THE THREES. I was trying to think of a good word that would encompass the three’s. Some days the most fitting would be the “The Thankless Threes,” which could easily be followed by the “Thickheaded Threes,” but I’ve settled on the “Theatrical Threes.” That would cover the sweet-as-can be moments as well as the sudden change in character to a mouthy monster.

That being said, she has been pretty funny lately, because she can now communicate well enough for us to hear the innocent idiosyncrasies that children have as they figure out this world. So here’s the latest on Emily:

She is enthralled with her shadow, she has been calling it her “big.” For example if we are outside she would say “look at my big,” and then get a kick out of having her “big” step on my “big.” However, as most cute language stages go, she realized that the “big” has another name and now calls it her shadow. However, she is still impressed with the size of it, as she noticed the other morning, “Look, look at my shadow. I bigger. I can get Taylor out of the crib.” I quickly discouraged the idea that she was that big – only because she has in fact tried to get Taylor out of the crib. She climbed in and tried to help boost her over the side. Talk about an adrenaline rush for the mom!

An irreverent funny that she did lately was, in attempt to mimic her big sister Rylee who always says “Holy Cow” when something is exciting to her, Emily would shout out “Holy Ghost” instead. The first time I was sure I heard wrong, the second time I was laughing too hard to correct her with any real conviction, and the third time we gave her some alternative words to exclaim – something that is not a member of the Godhead.

And to top it off, she can be downright embarrassing. We have our wonderful adopted-Grandma T. here in our SD ward, who was sitting with us during Sacrament meeting. I look over in time to see Emily pushing on her tummy and then her chest. I had to apologize after the meeting because it was really my fault. Earlier that week she kept squishing my chest when I held her. I had recently quit nursing so I am sure it felt different than it had for the past year. When I asked her what she was doing she said, “I like to feel your feeders.” Again – laughing too hard to correct her and paying for it later!