I often describe Esme as 'stubborn, then sweet'. She has made a lot of progress in the months up to this third birthday, and has been living up to that description to a T.
Her language has changed so much over the past few months - much more complete, complex and willing to repeat different things. Last night before she went to sleep she was telling bits of things to her stuffed animals, about going places and finding birdies in eggs cracked etc .. I didn't get all of it. After Mark tucked her in like a blanket burrito she called out 'feet where are you! feet? There you are feet! Good job!' That was really cute. She has sung bits of songs, said 'my name is Esme' to lots of people, and even tried to call her uncle Bill and aunt Lois by their names on the phone ('lois' sounds very odd because she still stumbles on 'l' words, but she is trying hard).
Her counting and reading skills are improving as well - she knows a lot of sight words and can pick out letters for a word when she hears the word, often before they ask for the letters by sound one-by-one. We were playing a 'rhyming' game on WordWorld the other day and she was able to pick out the similar looking word in the multiple-choice most of the time without having to have it explained what they wanted. Mostly though, she is 'not a performer' - she won't often do something just because she is asked - she has to be in the mood for it or truly interested in the idea. Example: if I asked her to count something and she wasn't interested she might at the most say 'one two three' and leave it there. And, at the beginning of games sometimes she makes a few mistakes on purpose to see if the rules are in effect or something...
I think we're just in a spurt of defiance at the moment - she has been thinking she can say 'no' to a lot lately and demand special treats (lollipops) and to go to Grandma's/town/talk on phone and throws fits about those things. I try to be reasonable with her on some of it - we're talking about 'eat food before you get candy, candy is different than food' and I'm stressing 'pick up put away' again and 'cooperate' playing instead of being mean. But she did lose the phone privilege last night by screaming and crying at her aunt on the phone instead of talking nicely. She wanted the auntie to be nana (my mom) - who wasn't home and wasn't at aunties.. so Esme was very upset.
And now today we also have the sweet - she wanted to read a Clifford book with me, and had a different perspective on several of the pages. She loved that all the doggies gave hugs at the end page. She wanted me to 'come in' with her to see the bubble cup in the kitchen, and block horsies, and windup dinosaurs and a balloon with crayons through the balloon weight. She said please and thank you and you're welcome to her cow flashlight she was 'sharing' her breakfast with. And now we are going to refill cups because both of our cups are empty. We played blocks and she said the smallest cylinder in the box was 'tiny' and 'baby' - There was a LOT of pretend there. She did a whole pretend day with the baby needing a bath, butt change, pants and a shirt, drink cup and then go play.
One more bit of sweet - she had the kitten in her arms and was spinning around singing 'ring around the rosie - pocketful of posies - all fall down'... and then she fell down carefully holding the cat and they both actually did seem to have fun with it.
I have no idea what must go through these cats' minds.. but they put up with so much from her.
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