Terrible Threes

Jenna was a pretty good two year old; easy even (except for potty training)! She was very obedient, even when she didn't want to do something. And on the rare occasion we had to discipline her, she would go to her room or sit in the Time Out chair, crying of course, but without argument.
Lately, though, along with her extreme independence we have also gotten little miss bossy and little miss defiant! She is definitely testing her limits:

-If we ask her to do something, she says "You do it" or "I'm busy" or "I'll do it next time!"
-She'll sometimes flat out pretend not to hear us.
-When I'm busy and can't come to her right away, she points at the floor "Come here right NOW!"
-The other day, she was being disobedient so I told her to go to her room, and she said No! I was shocked! This was completely unprecedented! I had to actually put her in Time Out.
-If she's doing something she knows she's not supposed to do, she'll claim it is her stuffed animal or doll who is doing it. Just today she told me her giraffe was working on the computer, while she used his legs to pound away at the keyboard!
-Whenever I have to physically remove her from something, or more often someone, she grips on with her monkey legs and doesn't let go!
-She'll try to turn our own discipline techniques around on us: She gets right in our face "Look in my eyes. Are you listening?"
-When she wants something really bad, and I've already told her no, she begs "Pleeeeeease, Mommy!" and then tells me "Say okay, mommy!"

 I know she's being naughty, but I often have to suppress a laugh or smile when she does these things to Paul. Somehow, it's not so funny when she does it to me...
Although I do have to say I am impressed with my own patience and ability to stay calm! The Lord is truly blessing us!

miss kali

Jenna has started calling me Kali again. :(
She did it in Utah when we were hanging out with Andrea and Kaden a lot, and now she has picked it up since Kyle calls me Miss Kali. She thinks it's funny...

I just asked Kyle what his mom's name is, and he said "Mommy!". I said yes, she's his mommy, but what do other people call her? He thought for a minute and said, "Hun?"
Haha! Kids are listening to us!

a new friend

I am watching a 4-year old boy, Kyle, for a couple months so his mom can work while his dad goes back to school. So far, it's been fun! Jenna thinks he is just the best thing ever, and they get along much better than I anticipated!
And he says the funniest things! The first day he came over, he was looking at all our pictures, confused. Then he asked "Why do you have pictures of your family on the wall? You're only supposed to put up pictures of dead people!". I did not know that...
One day we were playing light-sabers (his is obsessed with Star Wars!) and he pretended to be dead. Then he jumped up and said he was only pretending, and he wouldn't really die until he was very old. I asked him how old he would be, and he said "...like... 16!" with his eyes so wide like it was the oldest anyone could possibly be! I asked him how old he thinks his mom is, and he said 14. Wow, she's almost dead!

 Sometimes I feel like I'm running a preschool, because we've gotten so much more organized around here! We have play time, lunch, reading time, naptime for Jenna, quiet time for Kyle, snack time, music time, and art time. Wow, I'm lame... Anyway, here's some pictures.

We play teacher:

They help me clean:

Go fishing in the bathroom:

We learn our letters:

And the weather just got nice enough to go to the park! We are loving having a friend to play with every day! Well, mostly...

one crazy nut

Here are some fun-facts about my wonderful three year-old girl:

• She is extremely independent. I'm not exaggerating: if there is anything she is possibly capable of doing herself, she does it! And she will get upset if you are in a rush and try to help her. This girl is teaching me so much patience (in a good way)!
• Jenna likes to be helpful, which I appreciate. But, again, she wants to do things herself. Anything I do around the house takes about 5 times longer now! Her favorite chores are dusting, putting clothes in the washer, and emptying the dishwasher!
• She still eats her sandwiches the same way: take it apart, lick out the yummy insides, then eat the bread. At least she's eating it, right?!
• She doesn't prefer just her daddy all the time now (I love when she asks for family hugs), but still only jumps on Paul to wake him up in the mornings. I'm totally okay with that!  ;)
• Jenna is a very picky eater, and does not easily try new things. She just looks at it and says "I don't like that". She eats a good breakfast and lunch, but I feel bad that it's practically the same thing everyday. I always give her a plate with a little of everything we're having for dinner, knowing full well she won't touch it. Imagine my surprise when we were having orange chicken one night, and Jenna ate all of hers and most of mine! Now her acceptable dinners are: mac'n'cheese, pancakes (that's a dinner food!), and orange chicken! We're on a roll!
• She is getting in to the Disney Princess movies. I love that she is absolutely convinced that the princes are actually the girls' daddys. Jenna: "Cinderella is dancing with her daddy!". Kali: "She sure is!". So cute!
• Whenever we tell Jenna she is a nut, or a princess, she puts her hands on her hips and says "No I not! I Jenna Nay Schertz!"
• She has never seen nor heard of Barney the dinosaur, but she sings the I Love You song everyday!
• According to Jenna, everyday is either a Sunday, or a Wednesday. A church day, or not. Simple.
• She loves to watch older kids play. She'll just stand and watch them with a big smile on her face! And when she sees them rough-housing, she tells me they need to be nice and they need to take turns. Good idea, Jenna! Remember that later!
• She still loves to color and is starting to draw more than just scribbles. Lately she's been drawing circles all over the page and calling them spaceships. She always prefers pens and colored pencils to crayons. I wonder if that's because they're thinner, or maybe it makes her feel grown-up?
• She loves to play teacher (because she gets to be the boss)! Mostly she teaches me the letter sounds, has me trace them, and says "Good job!". She knows all of her upper-case letters, 3/4 of her lower-case letters, and most of her numbers.
• During the day we play with her dollhouse, have pretend picnics, play teacher, dance, read, and other calm and organized play. As soon as Daddy gets home, her aggressive side immediately comes out! She likes to fight, climb on him, get thrown around, and she always has on her 'crazy face'! A little scary, but always fun!
• Jenna loves to sing. We always sing The Wheels On The Bus when she is going #2 on the potty (TMI?), and the other day she made up two new verses: "MY daddy on the bus says Go Cougars!" and "MY mommy on the bus says I Love You!" all through the town! She's a song writer!
• Unfortunately, she has inherited my very sensitive head and hates to get her hair done. My solution is to use clips and do a lot of braids. That way I don't have to pull the hair right next to her head to put in a hair-tie. Trust me, it works.

This is just a snapshot of what Jenna is like right now. She is learning and changing so fast, and I can't wait to see what's coming next!

Jenna's 3rd

Jenna turned 3 yesterday!!! Our little girl is getting so big!

When she woke up, the living room was filled with balloons and she went crazy! She played with them all morning and kept saying "Thank you for my balloons! Thank you my birthday!".  Paul made us J-shaped pancakes with strawberries for breakfast. When we asked Jenna what she wanted to do on her birthday, she said eat a Toy Story cake and watch a family movie with her daddy (which basically means she wants to cuddle with her dad and eat popcorn). So, we took her to her first movie in the theaters, Gnomeo and Juliet. Then to the bookstore for a birthday book. I think she could have stayed there all day!
Since Paul, his brother, and brother-in-law all have a PS3, we were able to use it to video chat with Jenna's Grandma & Grandpa King and aunts and uncle for opening presents and singing "Happy Birthday!".

Jenna talked all week about her Toy Story cake!

Once again, we stayed up way too late finishing it, but it was a lot of fun and Jenna loved it!

  I apparently didn't give the gum paste enough time to set, so the headboard and footboard wouldn't stay up. We were so tired by then, we didn't really care. This was my poor little table when we finally finished:

 How can you not have fun making that mess! Especially when your husband cleans it up for you! I couldn't do it without you, Paul!
Jenna, true to her weird eating habits, peeled off and ate all the marshmallow fondant before gobbling up the cake!

We had fun playing with new toys the rest of the day. Jenna even got to bring them out to dinner!

Happy Birthday to my sweet little girl! Words cannot begin describe how much I LOVE YOU!

Articles of Faith #1-9

Last June we started teaching Jenna the Articles of Faith, one for each month (I'm thinking we might spend two months on #13). And our first FHE lesson of each month is dedicated to that month's Article of Faith. We feel like this information is going to be invaluable to her later in life, and it would be good to start learning them now. She doesn't know what all those big words mean yet, but she'll already have them memorized by the time she does!
For the next go-around, I think some sort of visual aids would make it more fun. But I'm super impressed with her memorization skills. She learns them in just days, and we use the rest of the month to review.
We are now working on #10 . If you would like to see, here are Jenna's Articles of Faith 1-9:

 She is being quite silly in most of them, because the camera is out. But she's still oh so cute!

#1:

#2:

Please ignore the mess. We had just moved.

#3:

#4:

...extreme silliness... and she combined the 3rd and 4th principles together! Hey, it's a long one! She does it better with a bit of help, but I wanted these to be just her.

#5:

Sorry you can't really understand this one! She didn't feel like doing for the camera.

 

#6:

I have no idea why, but she just would not say "teachers"!

 

#7:

I LOVE that when she says "healing" it sounds like "killing"! We laughed every night!

 

#8:

#9:

Can you tell these are her favorite PJs?

It's neat to see how much better she talks since the first one! We're so proud of our little girl!

Internet Schminternet !

Yep! We lived without the internet in our home for 7 months! People always asked "how do you do it?" and "why?". Well, I was able to get my e-mails on my phone, and anytime I posted to the blog or payed a bill I went to either the library or used the WIFI at Panera (both less than a mile away). As for why? I don't really know. I just didn't feel like paying for it and thought we got along fine without it!
But it was finally time for two main reasons:

1. We want to be able to watch General Conference in our home.
2. It was getting difficult to do anything on the internet with Jenna, and I don't like going by myself at night.

And now that we have internet, it is oh so convenient!
That being said, here is a great hodge-podge of pictures and videos I wasn't able to post in the last 7 months:


I wanted to get a video of Jenna doing her puzzle, just for myself. Then she started being silly and singing Follow The Prophet. It's pretty funny:

Jenna loves to help me cook, and one day burned her little finger. She insisted on keeping it in cold water for the rest of the day! And check out her coloring in the lines:

We bought Jenna this great warm coat, and it only ended up snowing like three times afterward! Oh well, I'm so glad she loves the snow now:

When its cold out, we gotta try to be active indoors. Popular activities are dancing, running, and jumping on my bed. One day she found a ball and an umbrella and got creative. I love how she tells me to "try again" when she misses:

Paul got up early to make us Valentine's Day pancakes:

We made a Potty Chart for Jenna. It worked beautifully! She was so excited to put the stickers on, and when she filled it up we got an "ice cream party" (we took her out to Cold Stone):

Although her shoes are all simple slip-ons, Jenna is very interested in tying shoes! She likes to play with Paul's slippers and twist them into crazy knots:

Coming Soon: Jenna's Articles of Faith!