She never meets a stranger, is always 'on' and full of energy. Sometimes that can be trying on mama, (or anybody around) especially when we are NOT full of energy (like my chest cold). She knows what she wants and will repeat it over and over and over and over to try to get it. But, she isn't listening as well as she used to when the answer is no, or the task required first is something she does not want to do. She has learned how to throw her weight around and is testing how much we will take (action or inaction) before we will get firm with her. I feel I yelled at her a lot yesterday, both at the library (for crawling on other children and trying to butt in when they were using computer and not talking to her) and after a bath when I was starting to feel poorly again and just wanted to go to bed. But.. c'est la vie. We have another week or so of my vacation. There will be another library visit, and mama will try to not be so paranoid about her being overly friendly with other children who seem to have learned 'stranger danger' even when it compares to other three year olds and either go running to their mom at the first confrontation or steadily ignore anyone they don't know. Esme is like an irrepressible kitten against being ignored -- it is sadly hilarious to watch her trying to get their attention, bringing them blocks, puzzles, trying to comment on their computer screen and telling them they did a good job - all while they pretend she isn't there. Very sad, but she does not give up. I often wish there was a more open place for kids to play around here, one that wasn't a 'daycare' and was out of the heat but nice to interact with others in. She needs to be four for the preschool here.
Esme is talking a lot more and picking up terms of her own again that don't make much sense unless you know Esmespeak. 'all the way down', 'turn purple', 'come in' and a few others are entirely different in her world. She ran up to me at Grandma's yesterday and said 'they kill him in the tongue!' I think she meant somebody's tongue (a frog probably) got tied up around himself and he said it hurt. She tells us we 'make grow' in the garden, and 'make radishes' and yesterday after I made her get in the car from the library she told me she was 'mad at the mama'. Daddy asked her why and she said 'there, there the mama mad of the Esme.' If I ask her why she is crying she tells me 'here, I cry in the mouth right here', and points to her mouth. *roll eyes* She gets why mixed up with 'where'... and she actually rarely asks 'why' - she wants to find out but she doesn't use the word. She is more hands-on though, she will FIND OUT why, she doesn't really want to be told, she wants to be shown.
She is still stronger than anybody gives her credit for. A few weeks ago another mom said I should stop her trying to pull a child her size in a wagon because 'that's over 25 lbs!'... I rolled my eyes. She can do that. She did. I said we had stopped being as impressed at her strength a while back, until moments like that came up I didn't even think it was impressive.... but apparently it still is. She still seems taller than other children her age - nobody believes she isn't four yet. She is taller than both the five year old boys she has encountered lately. And yet she seems as graceful as a hippopotamus in a leotard at times... falling off chairs, falling on her face on an unobstructed floor... she can go for whole hours sometimes without finding something to bump herself on, and then she just unleashes it on us. The odd thing is that she gets BACK up there and sometimes gets hurt a second time because she is trying to figure out what she did the first time! These are what we call the 'science' moments. She has to try everything out and find out what it does, why, and if it will do it again a little differently. And her mud experiments are complicated. There is a pink plastic lego flower out in the yard right now buried in mud around a rubber duck. I'm sure there are more rock stonehenges out there, as well.
Other things: She has put on her car seat straps for a while now, we buckle them, and she can unbuckle them. She sits in the back seat with an old newspaper and claims she is 'busy - reading' on trips to town. She can turn on our water hydrant to fill the dog dish and turn it back off. She can get our upstairs porch door open if she tries really hard (which she does not always) and has no trouble at all getting into the garage and outside through that door. She can almost open the downstairs patio door to feed the dogs down there - but she gets confused by the lock AND handle - and focuses on the lock only. She can turn on Grandpa's robot and turns him off immediately if he growls and scares her.
Her 'process' behavior is still high - have to do this thing before that thing and sometimes she gets 'stuck' and can't get to the next thing before something is completed. It is especially bad when the thing we need to do next is not part of her usual routine - like putting something away before she puts on her shoes to leave, or changing to a different shirt because she has stained the one she is wearing and she is already focused on putting her straps on in the truck outside.... I have to try HARD to get her to slow down, rewind, and come do this first. These are the things she gets really mad at mama about - mama has these 'expectations' that aren't in order according to Esmeworld... and mama insists about them! *sigh* I try to get her around those, but there are often tears as she proclaims 'I CAN'T - need (other thing)' and I try to get her to calm down and realize not everything in the world has to be in HER exact order all of the time, and to see why I am asking etc etc.... It is working slowly. When she does get her mind set on something, though - she has all the elements of it worked out and has the array of items needed for it ready... she is a deep thinker and her thoughts seem to have the force of a freight train!
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