3 Years Old!

Our little girls are three years old today. Happy birthday Mae! Happy Birthday Adi!

Adi at 2.9 years

On one of the first warm days this spring, wearing short sleeves was a novelty. Adi looked at the road we were driving down and said "When we're big enough, we can have naked arms and we can run down the road all by ourselves without holding on to your hand!". She will hold up her naked arms and admire them and has told me she doesn't need a long sleeved shirt because she can "do this [fold her arms across her chest]like a big girl" . Almost every day she wants to wear shorts or a skirt; as soon as those clothes are on she runs to the kitchen, hits the button on a musical toy on the fridge and starts twirling, kicking out one of her legs in some strange motion that is essential to her dancing. I've resurrected the rule my parents had when I was a child: you can't wear shorts unless it's over 60 degrees. So (this written in the chilly spring) she wears lots of tights or pants underneath. Today it was warm so she wore a little green skirt, a light-blue tee shirt (backwards) and then took off her purple socks in favor of some black ones, set off beautifully by a pair of too-small, bright-pink Mary Jane-style crocs. Sometimes I think I should walk on the other side of the street to preserve my fashion reputation.

(If you can't tell, I started to write this in April. Now (September) she has grown to love dresses, the longer the better. We have three long dresses and she often gets upset at bedtime that we are going to put her dress in the wash, because she wants to wear it day after day.)


Adi loves to sing and now knows the words to several complete songs: ABC(D), Twinkle twinkle, Do you know the muffin man, baa baa black sheep. She also comes home from child care signing songs that I don't (or didn't) know: an 'I love you' Barney song, Little Peter Cottontail. I've found it fun to learn them from her. She'll also make up songs; one day in the bike trailer she was singing some combination of "Grandpa, Grandpa, Marilyn, Ray" for about 10 minutes.

She's taken to talking like a baby-- saying one word like "tree", "rock", "milk" in a baby voice. At first I was worried she was regressing but, at other times, she speaks in whole paragraphs. We've decided that it is just an affected voice, similar (but much more annoying) than a deep one she uses to be funny.

And she can be very funny. I wish I could capture an example but she just seems to be able to say the right (or wrong) thing at the exact right moment to be genuinely funny. I'm sure sometimes it's an accident, but when we're all being silly by saying things like "I'll put some banana on my pancake... I like broccoli on my pancake..." she'll substitute something that is just one step beyond the game but not too far. And she has a scrunched up smile for those moments which makes me think she was trying to be funny.

Reading continues to be one of her favorite activities. When she is acting needy or fighting with Mae, I can ask her to go sit on her couch and read a book and she will often calm down. It seems she uses books to escape from the world around her: when we are with a playgroup she often wants me to read books to her instead of playing with the other kids. She now has the attention span for longer childrens stories, with perhaps one picture per page or anthologies which (effectively) never end. And they don't have to be kids books- she likes paging through magazines and has even made up stories out loud while "reading" a paperback novel or listened while I read a page or two from an adult novel. When we are reading shorter stories, she seems to know most of the words-- Dave will start the sentence and she can almost always finish it. Sometimes I think she would sit all day and listen to us read, if we didn't try to get her to do anything else.

That said, she is still active. For a while her running position was silly, with her fists pumping across her chest, but now she's connected the arm and leg motion and really looks like a runner. One day when Dave was going running she wanted to go with him (not in the stroller) and surprised us by running non-stop about half a mile. In July, we took the jogging stroller on an easy run to breakfast about a mile away and she ran the whole way. She's been in a few of the kids races (40-yard dash or so) that precede adult races we've done but the crowds there have dampened her enthusiasm.

She's not a big fan of crowds. After a few hours in a crowded place-- whether someone's house with several rambunctious children or a stadium of 50,000 people who've run the Bolder Boulder, she invariably melts down. We're starting to learn to give her a break somehow- by taking her into a quiet room and reading a book, or going on a walk (which was more crowded in the stadium at the Bolder Boulder!) but sometimes it's just unavoidable. It's like she just can't take that many people for that long. My mom has stories of me wanting to escape to the bathroom when we were in crowded places to be alone, so I guess she comes by it genetically.

Conversation between Grandma Coleman and Adi:
G: What did you dream about during your nap?
A: My dad.
G: Was he being good?
A: No, he was bad.
G: What did he do that was bad?
A: He didn't do what Mommy said.

At some point this summer we read a book where someone 'gulped'. After asking me what gulping was, she started to do it. At first she would try to show it off to people without explaining what she was doing. Now she seems to do it when she's upset, as some sort of soothing device. When she's upset she'll moan or whimper, which drives us crazy.

And she does seem to be upset a lot these days. When I started writing this post, I had mostly learned how to avoid her tantrums-- usually by giving her a choice or providing warning about a change in activities. But she's become more easily upset as the months progress and I've come to realize now that she just is going to cry sometimes. Usually we have 1 or 2 spells during the day of her in her room or crib, crying "I want my mommy"... but when I go into the room she screams "Nooooo!" or "Go away" at me. Right now, I just tell her she can come out when she's done crying ... and go in every five minutes or so to see if she wants a hug or can think of something that will help her feel better. It's particularly bad when she wakes up from nap right now. (September: she's been doing this a lot less; I'm not sure if she's growing out of it or it's just a good phase).

When she is in a good mood, Adi seems to constantly be talking. Dave's parents have stories about him asking "why" about everything and I feel like we are getting payback for that. I thought that kids' "why" questions wouldn't be that hard to answer, but the ones she comes up with can really stump me. "Why is that a Ford? Why is that blue? Why is that a giraffe?" Often I have to ask her to clarify (e.g. "do you mean 'why is that car blue or what makes that color blue?") and I've definitely answered "I don't know" just to stop the inquisition. I've also been surprised how much brain activity it takes to answer all these questions-- if I'm concentrating on driving or something I just can't do it. And sometimes we've realized she doesn't really care about the answers, just wants interaction. So my technique is to ask her the same question back, especially if it's something she's already asked several times. And quite often she'll just say the answer. Dave's technique is just to say "because it's not a carrot" (always a carrot) which is effective as well.


Blue is still her favorite color; it almost seemed like she chose it in opposition to Mae's favorite (purple) but now it's a pretty strong preference. Some days she is dressed entirely in shades of blue; although all of the blue dresses are short so they aren't so popular-- apparently length trumps color. She tries to be demanding about the color... well, about everything. She can be bossy about a lot of things and often Mae gives in to her demands. One example is when they are running down the sidewalk-- Adi says "I want to be the leader" but doesn't necessarily hold the lead, then she cries that she still wants to be the leader. It's very sweet and heart-breaking, too. We will often hear her telling Mae what to do, how to play, etc., but she gets quite upset when she doesn't get her way.

On the other side of the coin, she likes to pretend to be Mae's baby. Occasionally it's the other way around, but Adi really likes to do her fake baby voice and playing pretend gives her an excuse. She'll let Mae lead her around by the hand, pretending to cry or drink from a bottle, or play with a rattle.

*Her* favorite babies are small stuffed animals. She hasn't ever bonded with one for a long period of time, it's more like she has a lot that rotate in and out of favor. Right now, though, she has collected about 6 of the smallest animals to be her "babies". They occasionally have names, currently Carolie, Adi or Julie, but more often are just "my baby frog." (Frog is the current favorite.)

In her favorite dress (the longest) from Lapsaky

Family gathering

We got together with the Bundy side of the family (those who are in town) and Uncle Don got some good pictures.

Pie pans

I have no idea what was going on.




But I can only hope that Great Grandma Richards would have appreciated how much fun the girls have with her pie pans. And Dave, too.

Singing videos

Courtesy of Grandma C's iphone, we have a few videos of the girls singing their favorite songs. Password for both is sweetpea



ABCD


Hush little baby

More on Mae

As soon as I post something, I think of more things I wanted to say:

- There's not much terrible about Mae's twos. For the most part she is easy-going, happy and willing to give up her way or things to keep other people happy. She has started asking me if I'm happy (usually when I'm angry or frustrated) and, after Adi has had a meltdown, she'll ask her "are you happy now, Adi?"

- She continues to be very outgoing. In fact, she has invited several people from daycare and playgroup to dinner at our house, or to sleep at our house (including offering up the master bedroom, saying that we could sleep downstairs so our guests would have a place to stay). Her adoration of other people's strollers has also led to the proposal that she should go home with another mom and I can take their kid home. I'm not taking it personally ;)

Mae at 2.7 years

Mae seems to enjoy relaying stories. Often, she will give a recap of what just happened, for instance:

You were saying 'come to the table' and I was saying 'no, no! I need to get my Annie.'
and you were saying 'lunch is ready' and I was getting my Annie and I got my Annie and we came to the table for lunch!, finishing with a proud smile-- not sure if she's proud of telling the story or of getting to the table as requested.

Dave noticed that she uses her hands to talk a lot, usually swirling her right hand in the air as if propelling the story along or holding up both hands to the side and shaking them for emphasis. Neither of us seem to talk with our hands so we're not sure where this comes from. It must be the Italian ancestory... except we don't have any.

She seems to be spontaneously polite, adding 'please' and 'thank you' without being asked and continuing to thank us, unprompted, for things like making breakfast, or to thank Adi for giving her a toy back. She is equally generous in her actions; although she purposely grabs toys from Adi just to make her mad, she also spontaneously shares and will get Adi's favorite toy if she's crying. One day at the playground, I commented to another mom that I wished I had brought a hair rubberband because the wind was blowing my hair in my face and Mae promptly pulled out her ponytail holder and gave it to me.

Also, she likes to show off her favorite toys by giving them to other kids. However, she is very possessive of her doll, perhaps showing a good mothering instinct (although given how often the baby gets dropped on her head, I'm glad there are a good many years before she can be a mother!)

It really does seem to delight her to get a rise out of Adi, though. One of the behavior issues we've been dealing with is that she'll roar at Adi when she's mad, or just wants to have fun. This doesn't seem like it is a big deal but, given the reaction it receives, we've made the rule that "you can't roar at people." (Never saw that one in the parenting books!). Mae does really like to roar, in general and has since it was the first animal sound she could make (see the bottom of this post, so we don't want to limit her self-expression but it seems to have crossed the line into rudeness. I've also seen her push Adi to the ground or hit her, and seem to enjoy the effect (Adi screaming). It seems she is also doing little, hidden things to make Adi mad so we've been talking about being nice to people. It is astonishing to have her tell me that she wanted to make Adi feel bad, but I guess that's not unusual for a two-year old.

She is definitely experimenting with whining, especially when she is tired, but she is capable of turning it into a sweet sing-song even mid-sentence when we say we don't understand whining. When we are getting ready for bed, she'll suddenly loll around on the floor, saying "I'm very tired;" too tired, in fact, to get her pajamas on by herself. When motivated, she can entirely dress herself (maybe needing help with a few buttons) and put her shoes on- now even on the right feet!

One of her most advanced skills is that of comparison, in order to explain what she's talking about to me. The first instance I noticed was when she was eating a lollipop with a ridge and asked me if that was a 'skin'. I didn't understand what she meant so she said, 'you know, a skin, like on an apple.' And now she is frequently saying that something is like something else-- often the similarities are lost on me. She's also noticing rhyming: a 'hotel' is like 'show and tell'. She'll ask if something rhymes; I'm not sure she understands what it means.

And smells- for the first time she's commenting on smells-- she really doesn't like bathroom deodorizers!

And another first-- when drawing on plain paper last month, she drew a "bear": a closed circle with dots for eyes & nose, and two stick legs! We were very impressed.
Now she's drawing the same thing for people-- with tightly circled balls for feet and sometimes hair.



A favorite way to go down our backyard slide.


After receiving a page of stickers at a birthday party, Mae decorated herself.




Rockstar


Annie the lion


Fashionista


Throwing a ball


Silly Mae