3 year olds, am I right?

Girlie is trying to give up her nap, but she still gets sleepy. She also still needs a diaper to poo.

I don't want to talk about it.

She is 3 years, 4 months old, which is around the time when the boys started to taper out their nap (and finally click with potty-training). Lately the strategy is to try to put her down for a nap but then give up and let her watch a Princess movie and see if she falls asleep. I can't take her in the stroller or car for a ride past 4pm if she hasn't napped, because then she's up late sitting on the couch next to JB watching sports.

We are working on not screaming. Her little voice though is so sweet as she jabbers away. She just adores princesses, and thanks to thrift stores and neighbors, she has a dress-up dress to match Aurora, Cinderella, Snow White, Ariel, Tinkerbell, and soon to be Belle (at Christmas).

She has very opinionated tastes on her clothing. Preferably pink. Often she doesn't want to wear any clothes, and rips off her outfits when she gets home from anything. On Sundays she really wants to wear her Nona dress.

She also is very opinionated on her books. I read the same ones every night, and when I try to mix in a new one, it just gets added to the pile. Pinkalicious, Disney princesses, and Mo Willems are the favorites right now.

I bought that pink BYU jacket in a size 3T back when I was pregnant with her. When she put it on, she said, "Wook! Go UTES!" So we have to work on that.

Girly girl

I had to hide some of these stuffies one day. Millie was running out of room to sleep. She takes them from the boys' rooms. She picks a new favorite animal or doll every few days and carries it everywhere. I would complain, but I am the one who gave most of them to her, anyway.

Her hair is still wispy, but here's my first attempt at a braid!

And here is her attempt at putting on makeup like mom. More specifically, she's pretending to put on eyebrows. I was in college when I started.

I have to read several princess stories every night. When she finally watched Beauty and the Beast, she was pretty scared. The Beast is intense. She repeated the lines from the story book as she watched, for example hollering, "Gaston is jealous!" when he was going after the Beast.

Recommendations again

Books

The War That Saved My Life. This made me cry
 -- and then the sequel The War I Finally Won made me cry harder. (Favorite line: "What if my fear keeps me safe?" I had an ah-ha moment.)
-- very much like Goodnight, Mr. Tom, which I recommended last time

The Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson. Max and Ben loved it and I loved it. Start with Steelheart.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. We read it for book group and wow. It dealt with two themes that each could have been their own book - blue people/discrimination, and pack horse librarians.

Beyond the Bright Sea. I loved the imagery, and her finding herself. It is suitable for teens/tweens.

A Gentleman in Moscow. This is such a sweet book. Don't read it thinking something major is going to happen and you need to read fast; just savor it.

The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek.  It's brand new, and it's like Stranger Things in North Carolina. It's by my favorites, Rhett and Link, whom I wrote about here.

Throne of Glass. Intriguing and page turning. But NOT the sequels. Bleh.

I was lukewarm on The Library Book (too many facts, felt like a textbook) and I quit halfway during America's First Daughter.

JB has been reading The Case for the Book of Mormon by Tad R Callister. If I can get it back from the library I want to read it, too. There are a lot of holds.

Movies

I have been watching TV Christmas movies for a month now and I am not ashamed.

Christmas Around the Corner - struggling family bookshop revived. It's on Lifetime, directed by Anne Shirley herself, Megan Follows. This is one TV Christmas movie I saw last year and recorded it to watch again this year. Blatant dog food ad in the middle though.

The Christmas Contract - woman takes her best friend's brother back home to Louisiana as a date. Reviewers pointed out being distracted by the cicadas but I didn't even notice. It's what my childhood in Missouri sounded like.

A Very Merry Mix-up - she's going home to meet her fiance's family without him, but goes to the wrong house.

Cute, but one and done: Nine Lives of Christmas, Trading Christmas, A Christmas Detour, and The Mistletoe Promise.

Before Christmas movies started playing, I liked Hallmark's My Favorite Wedding, The Last Bridesmaid (Paul Campbell is v funny), and Love Fall & Order because it was filmed in Utah. Falling Inn Love on Netflix was cute, too.

Shows

Provo's Most Eligible, season 2. It's on YouTube, and I want other people to Binge the Cringe and talk about it all with me. JB is a great sport and laughs about it with me. (We like Scott and Caleb)

We have a lot of episodes of Modern Family and This is Us and Big Bang Theory on the DVR to watch together if we ever can again. It's college football and NBA season so that's what we watch as a family.

Halloween 2019

Sunday before Halloween, the grandkids wore costumes to Sunday dinner. Except Andrew who was sick, so he and I stayed home and watched movies. Millie had told people for a week that she was going to be a unicorn. So I made her that unicorn headband. And she chose her Tinkerbell costume to wear to dinner. 

I made a spare in case one broke, and she made JB try it on.

Max dressed up as JB (which looked familiar to his own wardrobe anyway), and Ben dressed up as Papa and he says they got a kick out of it.

Then I came home from work that week, and JB and Ben had been making a DOTS costume out of a diaper box. It's amazing!

James and Andrew thankfully loved the costumes that my friend gave us - a ninja and a good guy from Halo (even though kids shouldn't play Halo)

On Halloween, Millie chose Snow White to be like her doll. She has loved all the dress up clothes another friend gave us.

We dressed up warm for trick-or-treating but it wasn't as bad as I feared.

I wanted a picture of me with the kids, so I asked a neighbor to do it, and she had me stand in front of their candy stand, so that's why this is the picture I have of Halloween with my children.

Max hung out with his friends, because we felt he was too old for trick-or-treating. But I saved him some candy. Millie did NOT need that huge bag.

By the way, here's the stroller I took around the neighborhood. Water bottle (because a thirsty Richards is a grumpy Richards), extra bags to drop in Millie's candy so her bucket wasn't too heavy, her Snow White doll, and an extra coat and blanket.