Makenzie at 3

I'd be lying if I said Makenzie has been an easy toddler. But the difficulties I have with her are only because she is so full of life, so smart, and so curious.

I had a rough time trying to keep up with her while I was pregnant with Tanner. She was all over the place. I had one particularly scary experience with her...

Just a few days before Tanner was born, I went to a little boutique shop that was on a busy road. The place was kind of small so I decided not to bring a stroller in. As I was browsing, she was running around like crazy. After I paid, she was yelling that she didn't want to leave and then took her shoes off and threw them across the store. I went to retrieve her shoes and noticed that she was bolting through the door. I was trying to chase after her, but I was just a few days from having a baby and I couldn't catch up. When I opened the door, she was headed straight for the busy street. The cars were not slamming on breaks or swerving because they could not see that she was coming. Just as her foot hit the road, on instinct, I let out a blood chilling scream for her to stop. Under normal circumstances, she would not have stopped. However, this time, through what I know was divine intervention, she stopped..... and I was able to call her back to me. And then I cried...for about three days straight.

I couldn't get the experience out of my mind...and how close I felt I had come to losing her. I still can't think about the experience without bringing back the feelings that I had the moment she stepped onto the road and I know I will never forget that feeling. However, I will also never forget the feeling I had when she came back to me, and she was safe. I don't know if I have ever felt stronger love than I did the moment I held her again.

This experience has helped me through her hard toddler times. Sometimes she makes me feel like I will seriously lose my mind, but my mind often wanders back to that moment when she was safe, and I remember how much I love her.

So even though she won't eat, or nap, even though she now can break through child safety locks, climbs over baby gates, and can open child proof medicine bottles, even though she has to change 500 times a day and dump everything out of her dresser every 5 minutes, and she finds so much joy in making messes and jumping in mud, and won't go stinky in the potty, I am still crazy about her.

She can be so sweet and charming. She loves Tanner...she loves to play with him and to help care for him. She loves to proudly show off all of her accomplishments..from pictures, to block towers, to her wet in the potty. She probably knows a hundred songs by now and asks us to sing to her all the time. She is such a Daddy's girl and waits all day long for him to get home and play with her. She loves to learn the gospel and is excited every night for us to teach her a church story. She copies everything that we do. I love her so much and I know I should enjoys these times while I can...