notes and notables at 3

I’ve been meaning to post the good, the bad and the ugly of Emilia at 3 for ages now…

meeting marcus at work for his birthday. please don’t mind marcus’ hair – in fact – don’t even look at it. :)

The Stats

At her 3 year check up Emi measured 37 3/4 inches tall – she’s still on track to be about my height at adulthood (in other words, statuesque:)) – about 40th percentile.  Her weight was 32 pounds (again, about 40th percentile).  BP was 94/50 and her vision was 20/15 (thank goodness since both her parents are blind as bats).  They did some blood work and her cholesterol came back below 150 (excellent) and she had excellent hemoglobin results (the level of iron in her blood).  She only had to get 1 shot – a chicken pox vaccine – at this visit.  They didn’t have the flu shot for her (just the spray which she can’t use as it’s contraindicated for children with asthma) so we’ll get it next week at the allergist/pulmonologist office.

playing ‘airplane’ in the front yard on school picture day.

The Funny

• She refers to people as “sweetheart” – what?!  Stems from her playing mama and baby (she’ll say ‘I’m the mama and you’re the sweetheart or baby, okay).  Only girls can be sweethearts – boys are ‘sons’ according to her.
• Loves to pretend that she’s a baby – am predicting we’ll see much more of this in the coming months when the hermanitos arrive.  It’s kinda funny and kinda annoying.  (Marcus just thinks it’s annoying).
• She’s got a great imagination and will play for ages by herself – either tea party, mama with her babies, paper dolls or sometimes teacher. 
• Imaginary friends – she’s got ‘em – their names are Kenna and Yeewah (sp?)  She talks to them all the time and sometimes refers to her dolls by those names (though not Baby Jesus – she’s just Baby Jesus and that’s it!)
• Is getting in to the groove of ballet class again after a bumpy start (she refers to it as ‘balleck’.
• Insists on taking her nap on the floor of her bedroom.  I don’t know why but as I tell her, as long as she’s napping, I don’t care where she does it.  Unfortunately she doesn’t usually go down until after 2 these days, so naps are shorter for sure.  Sometimes she doesn’t nap at all which makes for an AWFUL afternoon/evening – she’s definitely not ready to give up the afternoon nap (nor am I ready for her to give it up either).
• Loves her swing set – plays on it most days – prefers throwing herself stomach first onto the swings (then complains that her stomach hurts).
• Has started telling “knock knock” jokes.  A typical one: Knock knock. Who’s there? Emi.  Emi who?  Emi Puchis Poo! and then she cracks up laughing. 
• Still uses a diaper at night but I’d say 5 out of 7 nights she wakes up dry.  Dr. Walker says there’s no rush it taking away the nighttime diaper – most kids wait until 4-5 to do so.
• We are FINALLY off the bottle!  The bottles for milk were just looking so disgusting that I had to get rid of them so I went out and bought the same brand of sippy cups (in colors no less!) and explained that these were our new milk ‘bottles’ (she calls them ‘maderas’ instead of mamaderas – hilarious).  She loves them (thank goodness) and the transition has been smooth as silk – bye bye bottles! (at least for a couple of weeks!)
• Recognizes her name (Emi) but not Emilia. Knows that A, Tio Equis and she all have names that start with the same letter.  Recognizes “M” for Papa’s name.  Can almost write the letter ‘E’ by herself.
• Still refers to the bros as “puchis” and “poo” even though she knows their names.
• Likes to give ‘humpty dumpty hugs and kisses’ – slightly aggressive hugs/kisses – sweet but occasionally a little painful!

The Not-So-Good

• We went through a very rough patch with her bedtime routine.  Right at the start of school I realized that bathing her in the mornings just wasn’t going to work out so we switched to evening baths like every other child in the world.  I think that coupled with everything else going on around her (hermanitos/start of school) really threw her for a loop and it would be 9-9:30 before she would fall asleep at night.  She’d ask for a million books, complain she was hot/cold/thirsty/needed to go potty/etc.  It was a nightmare and it ended up in her going to sleep crying after one of us had yelled at her.  Now we’re in a much better place where she knows she gets a certain number of books in her bed after we read our story and that if we have to get up to put her back in bed the closet light gets switched off (she prefers that light to her nightlight because she can ‘read’ by it better). 
• She’s very particular about what she will/won’t wear and what she likes/doesn’t like in terms of clothes.  Case in point – she didn’t wear the dress I knitted for her birthday until this past weekend.  I’m learning to let it go because this is a battle I’m not interested in (for the most part).  We try to avoid issues by laying out clothes for school the night before but that means there are days like today when she goes in wearing blue and white polka-dotted leggings, a green and white striped shirt, a pink sweater, orange and blue striped socks and her sparkle shoes.  It was a bit of an eye-sore, but it’s how she’s expressing her independence I guess and everything was clean.  (It is very trendy right now to mix patterns – maybe that’s what she’s doing?)
• You can usually reason with her, but sometimes not.
• Has gotten very clingy in recent days – am sure it’s because she senses que se le acaba el reinado.  :( (the end of her reign is near).
• STUBBORN – O.M.G. is she stubborn – comes by this honestly but man is it annoying sometimes!

perfect example of stubborn-ness with being particular about her outfit.  i had a beautiful new dress picked out for her the night before.  on this morning she insisted that the dress gave her ‘susto’ (made her scared) and refused to wear it.  i finally got her in this one but when we went outside to take her picture i got a whole lot of back turned/arms crossed action.  lovely.

The Just-Plain-Bad

• Shrieks – often for no good reason.
• Temper tantrums – she’s gotten better at this, but they do still occur – very dramatic – lots of fake tears and flinging oneself on the ground.  If we’re out she knows that a temper tantrum results in immediately going home.  Just the other day we had to do this when we were outside playing with our ‘hood friends.
• Loves to try to ‘butt in’ to adult conversations – esp. between Marcus and I – will say “You have to hear me now!” Trying to break this habit as well.
• Loves to scream when you’re on the phone (or try to talk to you all of a sudden even though she’s ignored you for the past 10 minutes and you figure you can squeeze a quick call in) – holy annoying.  It’s especially bad when you’re on the phone in the car (insert lecture about driving and being on the phone here). 
• If you ask her to do something she doesn’t want to do (ie: clean up books) she’ll say “I can’t because my tummy is hurting me.” – it’s her favorite excuse to use.

la perla.