Tayls of Life, Love, & Babies: 3.5 Years

30lbs - 24th percentile
Wears 3t dresses, 3t-4t shirts and leggings, and still mostly 2t shorts and skirts. Size 8 shoe.
Goes to bed at 8pm and wakes between 7-8am. She'll stay in her room until she hears us get up - awesome child! If we're home, then I'll try and have her do some quiet time in her room, though she doesn't need it.
Gabrielle is ALL girl. Purple, pink, flowers, singing, dancing, princesses, fashion. All her favorite things. But also likes bugs, worms, animals, and dirt. We were in Wendy's and group of female golfers came in; a lot of them wearing baseball caps. Gabi yells across the restaurant at them "Girls don't wear hats!"
Loves other girls either her age or a few years older and initiates friendships quite well (with those types of girls - she is kind of picky about her friends right now). At her play group she ran up to me all excited that she made a new friend. Great. She walked me over to meet her and it was another kid's nanny who looked to be in her early 20's. Gabi thought she was awesome. Haha....
She plays at our neighbor's house quite a bit - Faith, who is almost 7. Her best friend is Kaylyn, friend at dance is Lissy, and at preschool is Braya. Still pretty consistent with those.
She is very picky about her clothes now. I tried to put her in a jean dress all winter - in March I finally got her to put it on - she stands there will her arms clenched at her sides crying "It's.....too....blue!!!" until I take it off her. I have a hard time getting her to wear her one green shirt, even though it has sparkles and rainbows on it. She says "It's too green...not pretty light green....it's ugly dark green."
Her blanket Yellow B is now officially a person...she has a coat, Gabs changes her clothes, she has me watch her while Gabi's at preschool, she eats dinner with us.....and so on. Gabi calls her her "sister" some days and her "daughter" other days.
Loves watching Curious George TV shows and is into movies.
Takes her princess flashlight to bed every night and reads books before falling asleep.
Has her own CD player and CDs in her room that she plays by herself. Her favorites are the Tinkerbelle soundtrack and a teen pop band....not even sure what they're called.
Gabi is still a great eater and thankfully has pretty healthy taste. She doesn't like potatoes, pizza, bread, or processed foods much (canned pasta, granola bars, chicken nuggets, etc). Her favorite junk foods are jelly beans, apple juice, cotton candy, Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, and jello. She eats a pretty healthy diet - staples are skim milk, cheese sticks, prunes, cashews, cooked or baby carrots, fish, black beans, sloppy joes, yogurt pouches, fruit/veggie pouches, apples and berries, spaghetti, and lots of other stuff.
Gabi is very into fashion. She drapes her Yellow B around herself to create different dresses, loves to change her clothes 20 times a day, reads her Barbie Fashion book, and watches Wheel of Fortune to see what dress Vana is wearing each day (and everyday thinks they're "just beautiful!"). She likes to learn and use the terminology - clash, coordinate, match, symmetrical, asymmetrical, etc.
Loves to play house and school.
Likes to paint and is very into mixing and creating colors.
Recognizes all the letters (most of the time) and knows what sound each makes.
She can be quite bossy - but not in a mean way (yet). Mostly she just knows how things work likes to make sure we're staying in line with what we have to do :)
Loves her brother takes good care of him. Any time she sees anything with a picture of a boy and girl - wear it be related to a wedding or kids - she gets excited and says "Look! It's me and Oliver!"
She is a pretty good listener and rarely gets in trouble (mostly it's these days it's for a snotty/bad attitude). BUT....a couple of months ago Nick and Gabi were in the living room and I was in the kitchen, and I heard Gabi start crying. She had squirted dots of blueberry applesauce pouch in a giant rainbow arc all across our white living room wall under the TV. Nick didn't even notice until Gabi walked up to his chair (he's reading a book) and says "What happened to the wall?". He's like, umm....what DID happen to the wall?? Haha.....Gabi was just crying and crying. Nick asked if she thought that that was a good idea. She mumbled no between sobs. She's usually harder on herself than we could ever be.
She likes to pleasantly argue and make her case. And this is how my little lawyer talks to me every day.....

G: Can we go to the movie theater today?
Me: No
G: Well, you could text Laney and she could come and stay with Oliver. You could just leave him a bottle and have Laney change his diaper. We could go to the movies in Lansing....there's a movie theater by Target. Then we could just eat dinner there....they have popcorn and candy and juice. That'd be fine.

A couple months back I was changing Oliver on the floor (I usually change him on the changing table) and Gabi was watching and noticed that Oliver looked "different" than her. Yeah. She got a horrified look on her face and said "What's that thing coming out of his butt?!" FYI, a "butt" to her is anything between her belly button and her legs. I quickly explained to her in minor detail that boys and girls and different. Proud of her new knowledge, she informed me that "daddy had a penis when he was a baby too!" Then I had to go into moderate detail and let her know that daddy still has one....they don't fall off :) She was quite intrigued, and proceeded to name every male she knows and asked if they had a penis too. Yes, yes....a great conversation indeed.
Later I texted Nick and told him Gabs made the discovery and asked "what's that thing coming out of Oliver's butt?" Nick texted back and asked "well, what was coming out of his butt?" I loved that I had to explain it again...to Nick. Haha.