Out with the old

Sophia's growing and developing like crazy, but of course as she gets older the truly dramatic day-to-day changes of her baby years (e.g., sitting up, crawling, walking, talking) dwindles. She's growing but you don't notice it quite as much anymore.

Her most recent big development: the baby high chair and little girl sized potties have gone by the wayside, so up into the attic they went just a few days ago, along with all of the clothing she's outgrown in the past six months. Her dresses haven't been completely outgrown -- now most of them have been moved from the dress drawer to the shirt drawer. She still fits into them but they go to her waist. We call this recycling. Sophia still tries to wear them as dresses though. "But, Mom, I'll wear tights!" Every outfit has to be picked out or explicitly approved first. She most often asks, "Do princesses wear _______ (insert pants, or rain boots, or... here)?"

Sebastian now delights in pointing out that Sophia is over half my height already. . . Yes, at 3 years old. He says she's 60% of my height but that's balderdash. She's no more than 55%.

She finally has determined not too long ago or so that she does indeed like school. It took five months of complaining EVERY morning to get there, but I'm very relieved. I'd literally have to drag her out of bed some mornings as she cried "I don't wanna go!"

Sebastian and I finally went to meet with the school director to find out what we could do to fix the problem, with the idea that if it couldn't be fixed we might have to move to a new preschool. Not even a week later, Sophia stopped fighting me about going. According to the school child psychologist, our little angel was perceptive enough to know why we were meeting her teachers at her school and stopped her crusade to bust out. (We're on to you, sister!)

Now she focuses on trying to get out of taekwando. ;-) Just kidding. No, she only does that about half of the time. Actually, she doesn't complain about going to taekwando most of the time because I bribe her. Yes, I do. It's one of the many rules that I said I wouldn't do before I had a kid and have since abandoned. With each visit to taekwando, we go down the street for a little mommy & me time at La Boulange, a French bistro with the most delicious chocolate chocolate cookies. Twice the chocolate, twice the cooperation.

Taekwando is going well though. She's learning and doing better all the time. She can kick three times without putting her foot down as of this week. Two weeks ago, I was getting my nails done while she was in class with Papa watching. Sebastian and Sophia walked into the full salon (it's a Saturday at noon after all) and when I asked how she did in class, she said "I wasn't focusing." The women loved her!

She's got lots of zingers like this one, but of course I don't write them down. Recently she dropped an entire bowl of cereal and milk all over the dining room floor. I looked at the broken bowl and mess on the floor, looked at her, and asked "What happened?!" I mean, she's done it dozens of times without incident. She looked at me with sad eyes and said, "I'll tell you when you're happy."

She loves books, and is constantly pointing to the various characters and saying, "That's me." It can be anything -- a princess, a kitty, or in the Boy Who Cried Wolf she points to the three hungry wolves and says, "That's you, that's papa, and that's me." With Alice In Wonderland, she loves to point out the hookah-smoking caterpillar and say, "That's Alex. He's sooo crazy!"

Another new development: Sophia prefers to sleep on the floor. She just about refuses to sleep on her bed but won't tell me why. We're still working on her getting to sleep by herself so whatever I can do to push it along I will -- short of letting her sleep outside or something. I mean, there has to be some rules.

It's a work in progress so after going online I found an idea and started a sticker campaign. If she goes to sleep without crying, fighting, or walking into our room repeatedly with any variety of comments: "I'm hungry," "I'm thirsty," "Can you rock me for a little bit?" "I'm scared," "I don't like the bunny in my room," "I'm not tired," or my favorite: "Look! I'm going to sleep all by myself!" She's tried 'em all. If she goes to sleep on her own (mostly) she earns one sticker. Collect 10 stickers and you get a present. She earned 10 stickers once already and earned a pink watch with butterflies. Now she's working on a pink tiara to replace the one I stepped on. Just one sticker to go. . .