One day as we were driving to preschool she says, more or less out of the blue, “I’m Clare and I like purple and pink, elephants and Peter Pan.”  Yup, that pretty much sums up our girl these days.  She’ll turn 3.5 tomorrow and is developing quite the personality and sense of self.  She’s so verbal and chatty that she can pretty much tell us what she’s thinking about things.  That can be trying at times, since we don’t always agree with her, but for the most part it’s fun to hear her take on the world. 

Clare is a girl who knows what she wants, and what she doesn’t want.  We’ve always known she’s a strong-willed person, and growing up hasn’t tempered that.  It can be everything from “I want to be a fly for Halloween” to “I want to wear long sleeves all the time.”  Once she gets an idea in her head there is no stopping her.  She’s also really good about identifying and verbalizing her emotions.  She’s often nervous in new situations and with new people.  We talk about it a lot, letting her know when she’s going to meet someone new, who they are, etc.  We talk about how it’s OK to feel shy, but that it’s important to be brave and say hi or wave to people when we are introduced to them.  Last week she told me “I was sad when I was at school.  I missed you.  But I was brave and didn’t cry.”  My brave little girl is enough to split my heart wide open when she says things like that, but I’m proud of her to be able to get through it and then to tell me about it.

She’s also pretty funny these days.  The other day, when J told her it was to cold to go and do something, she looked at him and said “We just have to tough it out Daddy.”  Today she came back from a day of fun with Grandma and Grandpa and came running in the door proclaiming “we’re back from New Jersey!”