She was out all day today with Daddy working in the yard, playing in the dirt and getting all topsy-turvy in the hair department.
Esme is 3.5 today. She has changed SO much even over the last 6 months. First off, because I have so many pictures, I notice how much her face has lengthened out in the bridge of the nose, and how her arms and legs have lengthened out, as well. Her language has jumped to a much more understandable level and she is making 'grown up' sounding sentences sometimes - 'I like-a that hair, that hair's nice.', 'Come Daddy, we go in, we make-a dinner, eat food.' For her, those are a real step up. She can open some doors in the house now, which she could never do before. She also can get entirely out of the truck without having someone to catch her, which she was close to doing a few months ago when she learned to climb UP without help, but she would still often fall down on her face unless I had at least one hand there to help her slowly slide out. She can take off her own shoes without ANY help and put them away, get them and nearly put them on for herself. She can take down and get off her pants entirely for taking a bath or trying to use the potty.
She continues to be interested sporadically in letters and numbers, and in knowing her name, her parent's and grandparents' names, and where she lives. She asks me once in a while about the time on the tick-tock, still. She can count to five on her fingers and sometimes to ten in words, but not using her fingers. She still 'approximates' counting things instead of slowing down and counting one-by-one, unless I stress it to her. She can recognize some words when she concentrates but other times says that all words are whatever she wants them to be. She sings more songs with the accurate words. Her imagination is quite deep and varied, yet she will very firmly tell you (just after pretending to be a puppy) that she is NOT a doggie, but a little girl, and an Esme, and scowl as if we should have known and told her that when she was pretending. She 'gets' a lot of what goes on in movies and cartoons now and tries to make it relate to the world around her in a way deeper and more intense than ever. For example - she saw a Ren and Stimpy cartoon where the one character tells the other he STINKS and needs a bath before he goes to bed. 1.) Esme has tried to tell Mom and Dad that we need to go have a bath before we go to bed. and 2.) When she is in the bath she has tried to do the same soap-underarm and washcloth routine the character does, which she would never do on her own before and would make me do it while whining. Now she grabs the soap and hums and pretends it is all part of a game she wants to play. That, is kind of nice. And it shows she is trying to organize her world according to all of the examples she sees -- well, at least the ones she thinks are good ideas ;)
This past month we passed a milestone that I know other parents get sometime within the first year - Esme has started telling us that she LOVES us. It is not that she didn't mean it before, but she just wasn't interested in telling us with those words. She has always said 'give hug' or 'give kiss' as her way of saying she loves us. Now I may get as I come in the door - 'Mom, I am SO glad to see you, I love you Mom *hug*' or she will come to me with a flower or bubble wand and say 'I got a PRESENT for you Mom, I LOVE you, here, take it, PRESENT.' It makes me beam from ear to ear.
One thing she did the other day that surprised me was matching an old toy we had forgotten she had (a Duplo character buried in her toys) with a new Duplo truck Daddy had bought for her. We pulled out the character in the truck that had been tied down with twist-ties, and she looked at the shape of the bottom and ran off immediately -- coming back with the other character which then introduced itself to the new one and they have been 'fast friends', 'little girl and little buddy' (he is a knight figure) ever since. They go walkies, and they play and jump and share food. It is so VERY cute it is hard to keep a straight face.
Mark notes that today Esme was watching the Halloween episode of the Simpsons where Homer goes 3D, and at the end he pops out on to a Los Angeles street as a 3D cartoon against a live-action background. Mark said Esme sat up and pointed at the screen and said 'movie! Simpsons... but in a movie, that's neat!' She noticed that those two types of things aren't usually together and got really excited about it. She has seen that clip probably at least a dozen times in her life... and never been that interested.
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