You have no idea how scary 3 year old is to type! I’m not really sure developmentally where she is supposed to be. I know the only things she wasn’t doing at her last doctor’s appointment in November (lucky us, she has only been in for well baby visits so far and she’s almost 3!) that they asked about was drawing circles and lines (to eventually draw a person) and putting on her own clothes. So guess what we’ve worked on slowly over the last year? Yeah.
Her vocabulary has really spiked a lot lately. She repeats a LOT of things. Some things I’d rather she not. Oh well. Keeps us on our toes. She definitely speaks a lot more grown-up ease than other kids her age. Probably comes from being around me all day long. Also, she has a southern accent a LOT! No idea where she gets it!
Some cute ones:
Ti-ward (tired)
ve-fa-buws (vegetables)
acht-acht-achtuwe (actually — terrible stutter over this word, but so cute!)
oh, that’s right!
siwwy (mommy daddy puppy random object) — silly (insert)
we-sigh-cull (recycle)
in ho wide wode (in the whole wide world) — usually said to mean I love you
it’s my favwite (indicating preference, of course!)
(gives a kiss)– does that feew bettuh? (obviously, kisses heal everything!)
Some things she’s outgrown:
da-do (yellow)
bop (for brown, black and red)
un-wear pants (un-ner-wear–underwear)
ma (grandma)
She’s definitely into tantrums and has her own opinion, which she’ll stick to unless there are pretty serious consequences. I know she’s repeating a lot of stuff back to me that I say to her. Like, ‘I don’t care’ – but seriously, the fifteenth time she tries to tell me something, I really do NOT care. She is NOT that discriminating about use of the term!
She’s still napping, some days is an hour, others longer. I wish they were all longer, because a lot of times, by the time I get to sleep sometimes, she’s already awake. She’s sleeping pretty much 8-6 or 7 am so around 10 hours. A lot of times she seems refreshed from her nap, so that’s good. I’ve taken to leaving her door open at nap time, and telling her that if she needs to pee, that she can. For whatever reason, she’s seemed to be a lot more dry at nap time (even though technically, she doesn’t get up to pee at nap time, it seems to work for the most part. Her overnight diapers are about 2/3 wet, 1/3 dry. Probably developmentally on track there as well. I figure either in the next week or after baby is born, I won’t be doing stairs anyway, so basically I have been trying to prep her to come downstairs at nap time so that I wont’ have to go get her. It wont’ help in the morning, but I’m hoping that for nap time at least, she can be on her own.
We’ve tried to modify her punishments a little bit, too. Usually, I’d tell her not to do something, and if it was repeated, she’d get a swat on the hind end to reinforce the point. It wasn’t usually repeated a 3rd time. I’ve done a bit more ‘go to your room and sit on your bed’ lately and less yelling. This lessens wear and tear on me, and it seems to upset her quite a bit to be sent to her room. We set a timer or wait for a couple of minutes, and then call her back down. I’ve also told her flat out that she could go to her room if she was ‘that upset’ and then come down when she felt better. This has been effective, too. I hate to ‘isolate’ her, to me a swat is probably a bit less ‘mentally’ straining on her, but at this point, I can’t chase her down or force her to do anything, but she does seem to respond to the newer punishment, so we’ll see how it goes. (At this point, I should probably tell you that I don’t want advice and don’t care what you think about the topic).
In general, I think she’s doing okay. I love her to little bitty pieces, and I think she knows that. She certainly still loves daddy a lot, and knows the names of my side of the family really well (we have a family photo up, so we’ve played ‘who is this’ a lot). This goes along with her expanding vocabulary as well. She’s trying to wheedle more time out of us at night, asking for a ‘last hug’ and so on. Swimming seems to be going well, and she’s active, running around in circles a lot, pretending to be baby kangaroo and jumping and so on and so on. She’s part princess and part tomboy… and I love her!
I won’t give any advice except for this advice. You have to find your own path with your own children, and whatever someone tells you to do usually has nothing to do with what you actually SHOULD do.
Parenting is not meant to be done one way, and the only parenting that will work for your children is your parenting.
Although I think that most people mean well when they start telling you that ‘you should’ or ‘I always’ it’s still annoying.
She sounds like a handful. Try to remember that you’ll look back and miss even the tantrums, they have their cute factor, but it’s usually later on that you really ‘see’ how cute it was.
🙂