This past Friday Josie turned 3! We celebrated with eating, playing and of course presents. We opened up a big slew of gifts here at home including a kids table and chairs, doll bed, umbrella, candy land (the game), a suitcase and puzzles. We played a quick round of candy land even before Jordi went to work! Then we played a bit more with the gifts before we grabbed some breakfast and some celebration munchkins to bring to our Friday morning playgroup. We played a short while before we headed off to Panera for lunch with grandma and grandpa. Home again for quiet time and to pick up the cake from Quebrada before everyone came over here again for more presents, dinner and cake. This morning we had an official celebratory breakfast at Flora!

At three, Josie has really become quite the little girl. No more baby hanging around at all, except when she wants to pretend to be the baby. Most everyone, strangers included, can understand most of what she says. Except when she makes up new words without defining them. She will do some funny action on the bars or on the floor and say ‘that is clonking’ or something like that. Her sense of humor has been clearly developing into little kid humor!

Our days have a pretty steady routine lately, she comes into the room at a minute or two before 7 by our clock, proclaims she ‘waited for the 7!’ and we start our day. She eats some yogurt and cheerios and plays with us as we get ready for the day, showering and dressing. She’ll dress herself when she feels like it, maybe a third of the time now. We get ready for the morning activity starting usually around 10 and we head out of the house. Back again for lunch around noon before quiet time where she does puzzles and listens to books on tape. I do some chores like laundry and cleaning before we hopefully head outside again around 4 for time to play before dinner and Jordi getting home. Then it’s dinner, reading or massage, and bed at 7:30.

She’s been exploring a lot about what things in life she has control over. She has given up the pottying battles with her body thankfully and pretty much now just goes to the bathroom when she needs to without incident. But she often tells us how she’d like things done and what she’d like to do. For instance, we went to the zoo and she wanted to listen to her songs and stories on the way there and home and had a hard time accepting that perhaps mommy and daddy should get to choose one way. Also at the zoo she decided that she wanted to ride the merry go round first, but we were with friends and did it in a different order, and so we heard about that the entire way through the zoo until we did in fact take her on the merry go round as promised. We do a lot of negotiating and helping her to express her wants and views politely and deal with the disappointment that other people have needs and desires as well. And then we also just let her wear her sandals when it’s cold outside too since she won’t believe us anyway.

A lot of her previous struggles we had been having have now thankfully passed on most days. She’s a lot more easy going and she’s also been eager to learn some new tasks. For instance, in the kitchen since she’s been doing a great job listening she’s gotten to learn how to crack an egg and cut fruit (with a butter knife). She’s eager to learn new skills and it’s such a pleasure to help her figure them out and watch her master them.

She’s still taking gymnastics class which she’s been enjoying. Those will end soon though for the summer.

Most days at quiet time she likes to wear her bathing suit and pretend she’s going swimming at the cape codder resort.

She likes to play with her friends but she is still wary of her sister getting so much attention, I hope it gets a little easier once Celia is able to walk and can move about herself and not need me quite so much for entertainment. We work hard to get some quality time in with just the two of us while Celia naps, but some days it just doesn’t work out because of the nap timing or errands.

Josie doesn’t nap anymore, although I wish she would some days, she’s clearly tired. We try on the weekends to get her to go to bed earlier at least to get a bit more sleep in. It’s hard to get her to sit still, even when she’s falling down tired. She just got some headphones which may help us get her to sit still to listen to stories and relax while tuning out the world around her.

She likes to play a lot of ridiculous games like. Hide and seek, when she tells me where she is. Simon says (without the part about not saying simon says), fishy fishy cross my ocean, and red light green light.

Physically one neat thing she’s learned to do very recently is step up the steps one foot at a time, one foot per step. I think that’s some kind of brain connection thing to do that.

• Size/weight: 4, 32lbs about, we’ll get the height next week.
• Favorite food: breastmilk, cheese, pasta, yogurt – this is just really consistent even though she eats a variety
• Favorite toy: puzzles and anything that Celia wants
• Favorite books: Frog and Toad
• Favorite activity: Acting out scenarios with herself, puzzles
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:30; gets up ~7am
• New skill: reciting books from memory
• Teeth: 20. 10 on the top and 10 on bottom. We’re done!
• Vocalizations: Voracious story teller, non-stop talker, likes to talk to random strangers but often uncomfortable when put on the spot in a  group

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 1st, 2011 at 2:20 pm by Jen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.