She is using her name (sounds like 'Ee-me') in sentences more often and getting plenty of use out of the word 'No.' We tell her OFTEN that she is a 'Bossy Cow, now go moo' when she is being difficult ordering us around then refusing to do as she is told etc. Some mornings she is sweet as sugar as soon as she wakes up - until the point comes that she needs to go potty and get her clothes changed etc etc.. then she throws an absolute fit. Yesterday morning she did the potty part for me just fine - but the clothes change she refused, even when it was the cow dress. Part of that is she is still being obstinate about putting anything over her head. She screams 'no' at the top of her lungs and is strong enough to make it impossible to dress her if she is not cooperating. After she gets changed and clothed she gets her breakfast and is usually sweet again.
New word/phrases are 'thank you SO MUCH', 'oh boy' and 'you throw a trash for me'. Every morning I am asked to 'get up - I want to play with you' and other things. She is using a lot closer to complete sentences in some places, and I can understand the difference between similar words a little better - but sometimes it is still very contextual. She prattles on while she plays and I can understand a lot of that at a distance. She has an excellent memory. She repeats entire bits of shows she knows - sings along with songs she doesn't know the meaning of the words etc -- almost as if she isn't even paying attention to the screen at all. She will be across the house and I'll hear 'an actor's life for me' sung along to or an entire Fozzie bear routine repeated word for word with the tv. That is eerie, but at least I know her hearing is excellent. ;) She probably has the visual half of it going on in her memory like I do - and my mom said I would talk along with her 8-tracks as a young child when she had them playing in the other room. So, yes, she comes by the eerieness naturally.
She likes to get the chance to make choices - but she hates to actually make them, and sometimes that will set her off - whether it is you or her or Daddy that made the choice she is upset because it was made?? Sometimes she invites us to play something still and then decides that no, that wasn't a good idea, and she becomes a sourpuss for a while. Normal toddler things, but it is trying at times.
Bedtime can be just as much of a trial and other nights she crawls into her bed all by herself, asks for a blanket and goes to sleep without a word of argument. Some nights she wants me to read the entire book collection to her and gets mad when I stop at two or three. I still have to offer her deals sometimes to get her to do what we need done (diaper change, hair put up etc) -- negative discipline will make her lay down and cry, not do the action. I have to 'use the carrot' and if it is the right carrot she will comply and cooperate. I worry (I'm always the worrier) that she will be 'spoiled' by this, but I'm certain sticking to what works and trying to direct her to better or self-rewards in the future is the right path. It works, don't break it etc.
PT is going about as well as can be expected - she has the idea down and knows she gets the reward and upset otherwise... but I don't have the time at home to be the enforcer. She will tell me NO one second while she is in her training shorts and then pee on the floor within the same minute, grab my leg and tell me that 'Big Red Dog' told her she needs to go potty for a lollipop, and then go put what she was able to hold in the potty. She can at least pull her shorts down now - but she still takes them ALL the way off. One of her problems is she sees it as a 'produce' idea instead of a 'capture'... she will pee on the floor then go to the chair and be mad because she has none left to 'produce' to get the treat. ?? *sigh* Mark keeps saying she'll get it when she is ready - and that is what the other moms on the forum are saying as well. Some of them had four-year-olds that just 'understood' finally and worked harder towards getting it right.
She shows a lot of empathy towards us and the animals when she thinks we are hurt - and she hardly ever tries to smack anyone etc..she plays caretaker with her toys often in the same way 'you fall down? you alright? you wake up and have bath kitty' etc. When Daddy was sick she tried to give him belly raspberries again because that seemed to make Mumum laugh when she was sick. And when I told her his nose hurt she wanted to check it out and see why it hurt. When Daddy said he was scared and needed a hug from Mumum because it was too cold outside she pointed at his jacket and said he needed to go put his shirt on NOW. I expected to hear 'and now Buster' or something like that from her to go with the scowling pouty-lipped expression and the pointing finger. We laughed.
She has a lot of imaginative play - making stories and games for her little figures. She likes playdough, still figuring out all that can be done with it. She pretends to be a doggy or kitty often and interchanges the role every few seconds at times. One of her favorite activities is still to throw a bunch of toys in a box, sit in it, and throw them back out. She repeats this over and over and over.... that gets tedious. But she will engage in story play and building with me sometimes and stop the 'accountant' repetition of tossing things back and forth between containers -- some days it takes more than others to get her into something else. There is not as much block building as there used to be - but more playdough and she has taken up drawing on her easel once in a while again. Still very creative - was using the metal handle of a flyswatter in a bucket to collect magnetic letters and then naming them off as she dropped them back in. Her 'reading' is about the same, she names off the sounds of each letter and then tries to guess at what the word is. I should be doing more with that with her again - she has said 'no' to watching WordWorld lately on the computer mostly because of the lag time. Counting is the same - she demands 'one two three' or five or twelve of whatever treat she wants.
Extra notes: (1/11) I've seen her do the 'splits' several times and demand me to do it as well. She is doing a lot more comparing things in pictures to things in real life - and asking about why things are called with certain words instead of others etc. I told her she had a 'potato head' toy and she insists I call him 'potato boy' instead. etc. She compared her 'daddy penguin' playdough creature to a sticker of a 'daddy penguin' (penguin with a hat) on the calendar. She has also surprised me a little this month with diving/digging in her mounds of toys and finding something that has some connection with something else we are playing with - another horse, a baby cow to the mumum cow, etc... I can see her understanding more complex ideas and trying to put them all together. She asked me to make a 'birthday cake' out of some brown playdough. I made a donut instead, and a baby penguin. So the cow flashlight ate the donut but sometimes ate the baby penguin and then the daddy got worried and went crying for the baby etc etc.. She put the donut in the oven of the dollhouse and told it 'cook cook' and had the baby penguin dance in front of the oven ( like she does when she is watching her fish sticks cook) and then the daddy and the baby penguin took it out of the oven and 'ate' the donut.
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