Julianna is 3 years old !! Very Belated

Happy 3rd Birthday to my Julianna Belle! 
I feel like we totally missed Julianna's birthday this year. It was bad enough that Tyler was scheduled to be born a week before Julianna's 3rd birthday (in May), but then he had to go into the hospital for open heart surgery and we were forced to (obviously) cancel her birthday party. Poor girl. In case you missed Tyler's story of heart surgery- Click HERE.  (More on his surgery in a later post)

We came home from the hospital early one night and opened presents with her and had birthday cake. Luckily at 3 years old, she won't remember her canceled birthday party. Her birthday was going to be an "Ocotnauts" theme - which is one of her favorite shows on Disney Channel. For her birthday, we got her all the Octonaut characters and other things that go with them. She loved everything!

Preschool 
We enrolled Julianna in Preschool for the fall, at a small Preschool in a church close to home. I can't believe my baby girl is going to be in Preschool. I'm so excited for her, but also sad she is growing up so fast! Total mixed emotions. She is going to love preschool - I just know it! She loves to learn & I'm looking forward to her making friends her age.

Potty Training
We were making some progress with Potty Training before Tyler was born. She sat on the potty and even peed a couple times. We bought pretty pink underwear for her and talked about starting to wear them too! But we knew it would revert back a little bit once Tyler was born. But with Tyler's surgery & hospital stay (and us being gone for 6 days essentially), forget it. Julianna is totally set back weeks now. Not much we can do except wait it out and keep asking (begging) her and taking to her about the potty. We can't force her to use the potty ... I guess she will just be trained later than some kids. Whatever. It's not the worst thing in the world. We have bigger fish to fry right now anyway.

Big Sister
She just loves being a big sister, and so far, is handling it better than we could have expected. We try very hard to include her always. That's not to say she hasn't had her fair share of meltdowns or told us a few times to "Put Tyler somewhere else" when she needs our attention, but overall, she's been a great big sister! She likes to help with his binky (or "pinky" as she calls it) and I give her small jobs to do like bringing diapers into the other room for me. She also likes to watch us change him or feed him.

Julianna's Favorite things
Julianna is really becoming very crafty lately and loves making things with play dough, clay, paper cutouts, and anything with a glue stick! She loves construction equipment and can name most of the construction equipment we see on the roads now! She also loves tractors and any machine Daddy brings home from work (he works for John Deere). She'll make some man very happy one day!
Julianna loves (LOVES!) her flip flops because she can be just like Mommy now. Who knew she wanted to be like me?! She also wants to get her toe-nails painted like Mommy too... so I'm going to take her to get her first pedicure when I go one time this summer. I think she'll like it!
She has discovered the Ipad at our babysitter's house! She loves playing the educational games on there ... we might just have to get one soon.
I should mention Henry Hugglemonster. She LOVES this show on the Disney Channel. She even calls herself "Covey", one of the monsters on there. (Hmmm... monster? You think she knows she is a monster sometimes for real?!)

Here are some birthday pictures ... I didn't get to take too many unfortunately.

(p.s. let me add I will be catching up on my blog reading soon enough ... I've been far behind with that to say the least!)