Celia at three years old
Celia’s just finished up her third trip around the sun the middle of this month! She continues to be a big ball of stubborn enthusiasm. If she wants to do something she’s all fired up about it, and if she’s not, well… then she’s ‘tired’ and ‘can’t do it’ with the drama of a broadway actress. She will throw the full laying on the floor fits over not wanting to wash her hands. But she’s coming out of it more as she’s getting past her 2’s and getting easier to reason with and explain things to. She’s very interested in logic, that because of A, then B happens. Well she’s big on explaining that B happened because she wanted C D and E. It’s the world according to Celia and it’s a funny stage!
One recent development we’ve figured out is that she likes to play board games! We’ve been enjoying ‘hi ho cherry-oh’, memory games, sorry and uno. She’s still working on learning to count out spaces on a board, but now she is quick to identify the numbers up to six.
These last few months since Ewan have been born have thrown her for a bit of a loop, she switches between wanting to be big like Josie to small like Ewan. She wants to be babied yet she wants to do it herself. As Josie’s been in school now most of the day most days she’s getting more used to playing the role of big sister. She loves Ewan but she always wants to be a bit too close and rough with him. Good thing he’s getting bigger fast so he’ll be more of a playmate before too much longer.
Some of Celia’s favorite games are school, ballet and gymnastics. She loves to play pretend and say goodbye to me that she’s going to a class or school. Almost impossible to keep clothes on her. Plus she can undo the child-lock on the dress up, so I can’t keep her out of it like I used to be able to. We also enjoy cooking together, measuring, pouring and stirring. She loves time in the bath and generally getting messy.
Her art has changed a bit, while she’s always been one to focus on the process so far (not the result), she doesn’t mix everything completely together all the time. She does strive to make a picture look like something at times. She’s even proposed her first painting project to me too, using fingers and hand prints with red, green and yellow. We’ve been doing a lot of fall art with those colors lately.
Celia is taking one gymnastics class this fall and for her birthday she asked for a second one, so she’s got another class starting up soon. She pays very close attention in class and works hard to complete the steps, which is nice to see her listening to someone, even though it’s not me.
Academically I’ve been working with Celia on her letters, one at a time each week. She can identify them up to G and we work on her hand control with scissor practice and tracing and mazes. Celia’s excited to be doing the workbooks like Josie and learning the letter rhymes.
Lately her favorite books and stories are ones of kids behaving badly. Like “David gets in trouble” and “Little daughter and the wolf”. Her favorite part of gymnastics is jumping off the high beam. Yikes.
She’s developing some better self control and listening skills, but we still struggle with that every day. She loves to read with me and we both relish a chance to have a good snuggle. We’ve settled into a good routine with her as the big kid half the time these days. Here’s hoping this forth year will let us all settle in to ourselves with fewer changes and more fun!
- Size/weight: 4T, ~32 lbs, 39.5″
- Favorite foods: tomatoes, cheese, most fruit in general
- Favorite toy: dress up
- Favorite book: lots of variety now, Bernstein bears are popular
- Favorite activity: riding her bike, playing with Josie
- Sleeping: bedtime ~7:30; nap mostly gone but is sometimes needing some extras oddly, gets up by 6:30
- New skill: recognizing letters, excellent scissors and beginning writing
- Teeth: all 20
- Vocalizations: lots of explaining and logic in how the world works in her mind.