Chloë is now three years old and I cannot think of a better way to kick off the family blog than with a three year update, because if the past couple of months have taught me anything, it’s that three is an interesting age! Not to mention, with the pandemic, it’s been a while since most people have gotten to see Chloë – who wouldn’t want an update?

At three years old, Chloë is still following the growth curve she was on at her three month baby wellness visit – she is in the 97th percentile for height and just over the 50th percentile for weight. She is currently in size 4T for tops, bathing suits, play suits, rompers, dresses, etc., and 3T for bottoms and wearing size 10 shoes! Clearly, she takes after Tom because I’m pretty sure I was Chloë’s current size when I started school at the age of five!

Perhaps one of the most exciting things to happen to Chloë as a three year old is that she became a big sister! Initially, it looked like there was a risk of jealousy but I think more than anything, she was just trying to figure out what was going on. For instance, as I recovered from my c-section, I had to tell her that I couldn’t pick her up because I was sore, yet I could carry Otis. If Chloë came up to you and told you that someone else wanted to hold Otis, it was a hint that she wanted attention from you. We still see that from time to time, but it’s definitely more isolated, like when she’s tired. Two months into being a big sister, Chloë still doesn’t want to hold her brother (all I want is one picture of her holding him!!), but she no longer ignores him. She likes to poke at him – sometimes it’s cute, other times you just want to yell, “Leave him alone, I just got him to sleep!!”, she recently tried playing with him for the first time – she took his temperature with her toy thermometer and then tried to get him to take hers, and she’ll give him kisses on the head, tell people that he needs his diaper changed or try to put his soother in his mouth.

Chloë is currently in a full time pre-school program. She also attends swimming lessons and gymnastics.

For those of you who hadn’t heard – due to the pandemic, when Chloë started swimming lessons, it had been thirteen months since she had been in a pool and she also had become a bit shy around strangers. The swimming lessons Chloë attends are pro-submersion, which meant about five minutes after her instructor took her kicking and screaming away from Tom and I, she dunked her under the water. I guess I can understand why Chloë spent the entire first lesson sobbing. Two months later, we’re seeing so much progress. Chloë counts down the days until she’s back in the pool and we’ve caught her with her stuffed animals lined up on the couch and she’ll take them one by one and pretend to give them a swimming lesson. Right now, the biggest thing she has to work on in the pool is keeping her head down when she gets submerged so that water doesn’t go up her nose.

As for gymnastics, I feel like Chloë is a bit of a natural. Or, she’s three and just has a lot of energy to burn. Like swimming lessons, after each gymnastics lesson, Chloë counts down the days until she’s back in the gym. When she watches gymnastics on YouTube (her favourites are Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin), she always asks to see the uneven bars and beam events first. Currently, Chloë is working as hard as any three year old can to improve her upper body strength so that she can master the uneven bars someday and she does extremely well on the beam. I think it has something to do with her being completely fearless.

You may know, Chloë has never liked having her hair done. Since starting swimming and gymnastics, she has started letting us do her hair! On daycare days, I don’t know how long the hairstyles last – she may rip them out minutes after I drop her off, but I know on days where she’s at swimming or gymnastics, she’ll leave her hair alone at least for the duration of the class.

For a while, it looked like Chloë was going to be one of those kids who would eat anything but that changed. At the moment, I consider Chloë to be a ‘picky eater’. In addition to not wanting to try new foods, she’ll turn her nose up at what seemed to be her favourite food just days earlier and she tends to want to graze all day versus sitting down to have family meals. According to the daily daycare reports, she eats well there. I think this has something to do with seeing the other kids in her class eating and if that’s the case, I hope this is the only time peer pressure works on her! We have discussed this with our family health team and their advice was to follow her lead while continuing to offer new foods to her because this should start to resolve between three and a half and four years of age. Fingers crossed.

On the topic of food, Chloë seems to have inherited my grandfather’s love for fries.

Shortly before turning three, Chloë started refusing to nap and now that she is three, nap time is pretty much a thing of the past.

Some of you may know that we had great intentions to potty train Chloë early in my pregnancy but between me suffering from morning (all day) sickness and Chloë simply not being interested, that got put on the back burner. Before I knew it, I was the size of a whale and simply had no energy to potty train her (and again, she still wasn’t showing any interest) and then Otis was born and we all had to adjust to the new normal. Recently, we’ve had some isolated success so in the coming weeks, we’re getting ready to turn our attention back to potty training. Wish us luck.

Chloë is incredibly smart and strong willed. She is left handed and while she enjoys arts and crafts, she clearly gets her artistic abilities (or lack of artistic abilities) from me. She enjoys going shopping – her favourite stores are Shoppers Drug Mart and Toys R Us. She is big into pretend play at the moment and loves dressing up in her princess dresses.

Chloë’s third birthday marked the official start of her Barbie collection and watching her play with them is one of the most adorable things. With this, she has also started watching some of the Barbie movies on Netflix, which is great because Mommy and Daddy couldn’t handle anymore Baby Shark. She’s also been watching ‘Shark Dog’ and ‘Morphle’ on Netflix – neither of those are a parent favourite, but again, it’s a break from Baby Shark. ‘Paw Patrol’ and ‘Sesame Street’ have been left behind, and after a bit of a break, ‘The Wiggles’ have returned to our television. She’s also been enjoying ‘Puppy Dog Pals’ on Disney+, and as Halloween approaches, has been watching ‘Vampirina’. And, just like me, Chloë is counting down the days until we can watch Christmas movies. I can’t wait to see which ones she enjoys this year.

And with that, I think it’s time to conclude Chloë’s three year update. Or rather, I’m being told to. Something about Otis’ fussing suggests I’ve spent enough time talking about his sister and not enough time playing with him. Little does he know, next week I’ll be sharing his two month update!