rivka

In a few days, Alex will be three. Oh my God. Is that even possible?

Verbal/Cognitive
Words I have recently heard Alex use correctly: Dubious. Essentially. Admiring. Disgusted. Clambering. Grit. Abdomen.

She likes to narrate everything that's happening. At the dinner table, she might ask me something and then report to Michael, who has been sitting right there, "Daddy, Mama says that..." "I jumped up and down," she'll inform us right after she's done it. Or, "I'm clambering up on the bed!" Sometimes she'll even narrate to us what she has just said; this reached its ludicrous pinnacle one day when she said "Oh! Oh!" and then explained, "'Oh, oh,' I cried out." I didn't have the heart to tell her that people only cry things out in books.

Because she's so incredibly verbal, I find it particularly interesting to note the things that she can't do. Yesterday she came into the kitchen chanting "all ball wall." I contributed a couple of other rhyming words and asked her if she could think of a rhyme for some other word. She couldn't. She offered a couple of complementary words (like "moon" with "stars"), a couple of alliterative words, and maybe one rhyming word - by chance, I think. She was very interested in the discussion, but couldn't quite get it. Similarly, we got to talking about synonyms once in the car and she was fascinated, but unable to produce any. (When we got home, she ran into the house demanding "Papa, do you know about synonyms?" She was so impressed that he did!)

She continues to be interested in the sounds that make up words. She can isolate the starting sound of any phonetically regular word and identify the letter it starts with, and is starting to isolate and identify internal sounds such as the /t/ sound in "mountain." She makes guesses about words she sees, mostly based on the initial letter - for example, at my parents' house she looked at my father's name ("Mike") on a label and said that it said "Mama.") She's purposefully drawn an A once or twice on her Magnadoodle, and regularly makes letter shapes like T, L, X, C, and J with sticks or noodles. She hasn't ever actually asked to learn how to read or write, but she does seem to be working on it on her own.

She continues to throw time words around with great abandon and apparently very little understanding. For some reason she doesn't use the word "yesterday," but instead talks about "last day" - which may mean "the last time we did this" as often as it does "the previous day." She likes to refer with great definiteness and little accuracy to times like "six o'clock." She doesn't understand the sequence of the days of our week (for example, that the day after a church day is a school day), and she doesn't seem to recognize that if we haven't gone to school after being up for several hours then it's probably not a school day. On the other hand, she's very much attuned to the dinner-bath-stories-bed sequence, and was vocally surprised when Daylight Savings came around and we had dinner when it wasn't dark yet.

She continues to argue. She needs to have shortbread for breakfast. Eggs are not enough. She's too hungry for eggs - she needs two things on her plate. No, not grapes. She's hungry for something flat and square. Shortbread is kind of a breakfast food. And so on.

My favorite recent example of her argument skills: "I don't need a bath. I took many, many baths in the old house."

We read: fairy tales, folk tales, Let's Read and Find Out Science books, Russell Hoban's stories about Frances the badger, Frog and Toad, her Children's Illustrated Dictionary.

Imaginative
Looking back, I notice that every developmental update in the last year has included something about "Wow, her pretend play is really taking off!" And yeah, by comparison, I guess it always was. But now she really pretends like a preschooler: rich games with plots, dramas, and assigned roles. "Mama, you are the veterinarian and I am the nurse. Veterinarian! Camel is sick. Hippopotamus bited him on the neck. He needs a bandage." Then she feeds camel medicine from a dropper and puts him down to rest in a makeshift bed, assigning a gorilla to be his helper. Meanwhile, hippopotamus goes on a two-continent biting spree, the veterinary hospital fills up with victims, and she calls me "veterinarian" instead of "Mama" all morning long.

Or she'll race into the kitchen and announce, "There's a dragon in the playroom! I think he's not friendly. I think he wants to eat me. We have to hide."

A story she told: "Little shark is afraid. He thinks a big shark is going to come and bite him. A mean shark came and bit him on the flipper. Then a sting ray came and stinged the mean shark. He went away. Then he came back and he was friendly!"

Do you notice a certain theme here? She's obsessed right now with attacks, injuries, and scary things. We are menaced by wolves, dragons, dinosaurs, and monsters on a daily basis. Sometimes she is so persuaded by her own imagination that she cries. This is vintage preschooler stuff - both the newfound ability to imagine herself into a genuinely uncomfortable situation, and the preoccupation with violence and power. It's so fascinating to me, the way it came out of nowhere - or instead, really, out of the process of maturation. She feels this way because she's three.

Social/Emotional
We're going through a very cuddly phase right now, which is mostly awesome. When she wakes up in the morning, she really likes to curl up in my lap in the rocking chair and have me sing to her. She gives a lot of hugs and kisses. She likes to be physically close, to sit on our laps, to press her cheek against ours, to hold our hands, to walk along holding on to the hem of my shirt.

She likes to keep close track of where we are. A common question: "Who will be with me?" She takes no advantage whatsoever of having extra space to roam and play in the new house - she wants to be side-by-side with a parent all the time. At bedtime, she negotiates to have someone stay in her bedroom "for five songs." When Dorian babysat: "I think Dorian is going to stay in my bedroom all night long. I think she'll stay for twenty songs." At every school dropoff, she checks: "Who will pick me up today?" This morning she asked me for more grapes, and then when I left the room to get them she called out, "Mom! Don't go too far away!"

And yet: she separates just fine at school and at church. On Saturday morning, when I'd been gone on my trip for two and a half days, Michael dropped her off at a friend's house and she played there happily until I came home and got her. That would never have flown, a year ago. And she's much more likely to talk to strangers (say, announcing to a police officer on the street, "We're going to the library!"), or to try to initiate play with kids on the playground or in the parish hall at church. It's not precisely like her old separation anxiety - it's something different.

Ever since

mactavish commented about Alex's ability to label and explain her feelings, I've been noticing when she does it. She's getting really good at saying "I feel so sad" instead of just bursting into tears. Or, entertainingly, "I'm so SAD that chocolate bear crackers are not a breakfast food." When I told her I was going to California, she said "But I will miss you." "Scared" and "excited" sometimes pop up; she's less likely to say that she is happy. She can sometimes reflect on and explain her feelings when I ask her to - one morning, when she said "Carry me because I got tired" the moment we got out of the car, I asked "Are you really tired, or do you just want extra snuggles in the morning?" "I just want extra snuggles," she said after a moment's thought.

Physical
Not a lot of changes in this arena, except that she did finally learn to jump. She's very proud of this. She likes to run and climb things, but doesn't much care for slides. She can sometimes go up stairs without holding on to the railing. She still doesn't alternate feet on the stairs.

She's started to have occasional potty accidents, after months and months of perfect use. Not sure where this came from - it started before my miscarriage and the move, so it doesn't seem to be connected to our recent stressors - but this appears to be a fairly common occurrence in potty-trained preschoolers so I'm trying not to freak out about it too much. That isn't easy.

She sleeps very well indeed. We went through a mercifully brief phase, a while back, where she was waking at two or three a.m. and wanting to come downstairs and play. Or complaining that she was hungry. Now she's back to sleeping all night through, and only very rarely needing nighttime parenting. Which is awesome. We're planning to buy her a big-girl bed this weekend.

She continues to eat like a freaking bird. I have given up trying to predict or influence her appetite.