Jastef

Our Rachel-Kate is 3 today. THREE! I keep saying it to myself and still cannot believe it. Her birth day feels like it was maybe a year ago. I remember her pregnancy very vividly and even her baby days. I asked her last night if she'd just stay 2 years old forever and she replied with "No... I'm supposed to turn 3 so I can turn 4."
Her party was Saturday (total blast) and so today we're just having a low key day. Starting the morning off with donuts with Daddy and then a treasure hunt to find her gifts from us.

I can't say enough about Rachel and how much we love her. She's a girlie girl for sure (SO not like her Mommy was!) and enjoys all things pink, babies, dress-ups, and even legos and cars with Ethan. She has become very dramatic these past few months and we're working through it each day. I'm very thankful for her tender conscience and her desire to make things right when she's done wrong. She responds so well to discipline and loves to know people are pleased with her. At the same time, she is her own person and we're learning to help our kids be able to express themselves as individuals and to only care about their standing before God and not before others. I hope to help them avoid those hang-ups we had, as much as possible. :-)

Rachel is very smart. She amazes Jason and I with her quick learning abilities. She's 17 months younger than Ethan and yet has sat next to him and learned everything he has, at the speed he's learned it. When he learned his alphabet, she learned it too, when he learned his numbers, she learned them too, when he learned what sounds the letters make, so did Rachel! And now, as Ethan learns how to put letters together to make sounds and then words... she has too! She sat next to him during his AWANA memorization last year and had the verses memorized before he did.
She's a sponge! I love her little voice and her sweet disposition. I love that she says she's gonna marry her brother and her Daddy, I love that she tells us "I need to go to bed now" when we've kept her up too late and I love that she's girlie. I really do! I thought I'd hate it (and really thought that parents had to force that on their kids) but its fun to see her get into all that stuff on her own.
I cannot believe she's 3. Thank You, Lord for our beautiful little girl!

Happy 3rd birthday, Rachel!