A Day in the Life of Annie: Age 3

If you wake up early to a quiet house, you'll find Annie waiting in her crib with her brown and green blanket she named 'bobby': she'll have 'bobby' draped over her head, waiting for me to come laugh at her joke. She's pretending to be a bobby ghost, a gag she invented.  No one has ever seen her setting up this joke- she's always ready ahead of time, so it's anybody's guess how long she waits patiently underneath her disguise for someone to come see her. 

After feigning terror and tickling her with my nose, I'll whisk her off to the kitchen for some breakfast, following the trail of discarded pajamas her two bleary eyed sisters have left behind as they dressed en route to the table.

As I set her down in her chair (it has to be the same one every time), Annie will gasp.  "Oh, no!  My t-t-r ring, Moth-ow. I lost it!"  As an aside, she always calls me Mother, like we're having tea with the Queen, but more to the point, on her first glorious day of primary, her teacher gave her a CTR ring, which she has barely taken off since, except for every other minute when she loses it.

"It's right here, sweety," I'll tell her, having put it by the phone the night before.
She'll swoon and say, "Oh, isn't it a-MAZ-ing?"  We'll all agree that it certainly is, and no one will tell her it's not a t-t-r ring because it just sounds so cute when she says it.

After her sisters leave for school with Dad, Annie and I will settle down for a nice quiet morning together.  I'll put on a cartoon for her while I give her the sleuth getting dressed treatment.  While she's not paying attention or moving around, I'll change her diaper, brush her teeth, put on some clean clothes that match since I picked them out, and put up her hair: all in under five minutes, and Annie's none the wiser because she's busy singing "bubble bubble bubble, guppy guppy guppies!" with the TV.

Later Annie will hand me pillows while I make my bed, make some play dough cupcakes, and maybe play with her dollhouse family for a bit.

At mid-mornning she'll stop to look at her potty training sticker chart.  She'll turn to me wistfully and say, "It's so wonderful."  It won't be the last time she'll describe something as 'wonderful' today, but since she's talking about the potty, I'll pay extra attention.

After I extend an enthusiastic invitation to sit on the potty itself, Annie will politely decline.  "No, I don't do that.  I wear diapers," she'll explain.  Oh, right, I'll think.  That's why my Costco bill is still  so high!

Then Maddie will come home from school at 11, and we'll eat lunch.  Annie will dance ghangham style and tell us more about all the wonderful and a-MAZ-ing things that come to mind.  She might even go pick out some clothes to change into that are more Annie-style and put them on all by herself.  They'll involve some combo of polka dots and pink, and she'll end up looking just like Little Miss Matched.   

She'll do so much laughing and playing that by the end of the day she'll be pretty tuckered out.  She'll lay down in her crib with Bobby and rub the brown side with her finger tips while her eyelids slowly close and she drifts off to sleep.