Another Lainey update

Here's some more stuff I want to remember about Alaina, age 3:

She uses terms/phrases like "blah, blah, blah" and "thinger"--which greatly amuses her parents--as in, "you know that jumping thinger?" (trampoline).

Lainey needs naps, but she fights them so much that I gave up in the last few months.  Now she's so grumpy and naughty in the afternoon that we're trying to reinstate them.  We're hoping with more sleep, she'll tantrum less.

Speaking of tantrums and sleep, Laina fights bedtime like her older sister fights mealtime, hollering things like "It's wake up time! It's wake up time!" when she sees the sky darken or her jammies in mommy's hand.

Alaina loves to dance and sing, often performing both for us simultaneously.  She also leads her family in what I can only describe as cheers, instructing us to clap our hands or pump them in the air while we repeat chants with her.

She likes to color and to cut things with her scissors or my paper cutter.  Fortunately we haven't had any issues with her cutting clothes or hair (whew).

Lainey had her first hair cut a couple months ago on Lizzie's birthday (not counting the time I trimmed a bit of her hair with cooking shears while she was in the bath).  She was scared, but seeing Drew and Liz get trims seemed to help a little.  Sitting on her daddy's lap while the beautician worked helped the most.

She recognizes that certain words designate numbers and letters, but does not yet have the ability to recite them in proper order to to match the name with the actual number or letter. Laina also refers to the alphabet as the "l m n o p" (as opposed to the "a b c's").  Color-wise she's improved a lot and seems to know most of them.  Favorite color: pink, not too surprising.

She animates her food now. While we have to encourage Lizzie eat because she is so picky, we have to encourage Alaina to eat because she is so distracted by play.

Lainers is way into prince and princesses right now.  When we have dance time she only wants to dance to "princess music" (her definition of which is still a little vague to me) and she usually wants someone to be the prince for her.  Alaina doesn't have any boy dolls so she designated my old Cabbage Patch doll as the prince (and another one of my childhood dolls as the princess).

Laina loves nursery and Joy School (she fights going, but she also fights me when it's time to leave).  She answers back to the t.v. and jumps around when the cartoon characters tell her to (Liz didn't so this is new for me).  She loves t.v. and would watch it all day long if I let her.

Alternates between wanting to be a big kid and a little kid as it suite her needs.  She insists that sippy cups are for babies, yet she refuses to toilet train.  Argh.