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Three year and three months Baby Update
2024-Aug-14, Wednesday 09:07
Where does the time go?
When last we left our valiant hero Laila had just turned three and I wrote about how she loved gymnastics and drawing. Her gymnastics class is currently on hiatus and she still likes drawing, but her latest obsession is also writing.![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
sashagee bought Laila a series of copybooks and pens with ink that fades over fifteen minutes or so, and Laila absolutely loves it. Basically every day she'll spend hours with either sashagee or me, wanting us to draw in her picture copybook or write in her numbers copybook. Originally she didn't really want to do much writing herself--maybe she's frustrated because her fine muscle control still isn't good enough to replicate our grown-up precision?--but as time has gone on she's gotten much more interested in writing numbers. She'll write 1 and 7 and 4 for minutes at a time before asking help. That's not true of letters yet, but give it time.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same for her interest in talking, but it seems mostly to be due to stubbornness. Both sets of grandparents say that she's talkative when she's at their houses, but when she's at home she'll often not say things because she knows we understand her, so she doesn't understand why we want her to use all these words. For example, lately I've been much more strict about wanting her to say "Can I have some [X] please" when asking for food, but because in the past I had focused on her saying please, she'll say "Pickle please!" and absolutely refuse to try to say the longer sentence. It's not because she can't or doesn't understand, because we've heard her say things like "May I have some bread please" totally unprompted when she was hungry. It's because she doesn't see the need to use so many words when she's never needed that many in the past. I can see we're in for some very exciting pre-teen and teenage years.
Her princess phase has also begun. A very important part of her day is wearing a "pretty dress" and she's constantly fishing old dresses out of her clothes hamper because she wants to wear them again. Her grandparents bought her a puffy red tutu and she's been wearing that every chance she gets. Just yesterday she wore it under once of her dresses like petticoats and had a very puffy dress. She was very happy with that one. Occasionally she also wants "cute hair" and "pretty nails," but much less often than dresses, and she'll often pull her hair out of the hairties after an hour or so, or pick off the nail polish. The pretty dresses never come off.
A couple weeks ago we went to the Argyle Night Market with Laila and they had free face painting there. We didn't think that Laila would take to having her face painted very well, but maybe we were wrong. She had a bee painted on her arm and she sat completely still for the entire thing:
You can see her in one of her pretty dresses there. She didn't mess with the bee at all until we had to wash it off later before she went to bed.
She throws tantrums occasionally, but they don't last for long. And she has a conscience, or at least a sense of when she's done something we don't like, because she'll (for example) throw something after we've told her not to and then immediately run off down the hall or to her room. I know why she's doing it--it's the classic "I do what I want, you can't tell me what to do!"--but considering our punishments so far are all stern talkings-to and time outs, I appreciate they're still effective enough that she doesn't want to experience them.
She's on a new medicine for her seizures, since the old medicine wasn't working as well, but the new medicine is working like a charm. She's even started taking naps again--she was skipping them for days at a time and I wondered if her napping days were over, but now she goes to sleep within 10 minutes of being put into her room and sleeps for a couple hours, and her latest EEG was much better than the one taken in January. Now we just need to convince her to talk!
What other ways will she grow and change?
When last we left our valiant hero Laila had just turned three and I wrote about how she loved gymnastics and drawing. Her gymnastics class is currently on hiatus and she still likes drawing, but her latest obsession is also writing.
sashagee bought Laila a series of copybooks and pens with ink that fades over fifteen minutes or so, and Laila absolutely loves it. Basically every day she'll spend hours with either sashagee or me, wanting us to draw in her picture copybook or write in her numbers copybook. Originally she didn't really want to do much writing herself--maybe she's frustrated because her fine muscle control still isn't good enough to replicate our grown-up precision?--but as time has gone on she's gotten much more interested in writing numbers. She'll write 1 and 7 and 4 for minutes at a time before asking help. That's not true of letters yet, but give it time. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for her interest in talking, but it seems mostly to be due to stubbornness. Both sets of grandparents say that she's talkative when she's at their houses, but when she's at home she'll often not say things because she knows we understand her, so she doesn't understand why we want her to use all these words. For example, lately I've been much more strict about wanting her to say "Can I have some [X] please" when asking for food, but because in the past I had focused on her saying please, she'll say "Pickle please!" and absolutely refuse to try to say the longer sentence. It's not because she can't or doesn't understand, because we've heard her say things like "May I have some bread please" totally unprompted when she was hungry. It's because she doesn't see the need to use so many words when she's never needed that many in the past. I can see we're in for some very exciting pre-teen and teenage years.
Her princess phase has also begun. A very important part of her day is wearing a "pretty dress" and she's constantly fishing old dresses out of her clothes hamper because she wants to wear them again. Her grandparents bought her a puffy red tutu and she's been wearing that every chance she gets. Just yesterday she wore it under once of her dresses like petticoats and had a very puffy dress. She was very happy with that one. Occasionally she also wants "cute hair" and "pretty nails," but much less often than dresses, and she'll often pull her hair out of the hairties after an hour or so, or pick off the nail polish. The pretty dresses never come off.
A couple weeks ago we went to the Argyle Night Market with Laila and they had free face painting there. We didn't think that Laila would take to having her face painted very well, but maybe we were wrong. She had a bee painted on her arm and she sat completely still for the entire thing:
You can see her in one of her pretty dresses there. She didn't mess with the bee at all until we had to wash it off later before she went to bed.
She throws tantrums occasionally, but they don't last for long. And she has a conscience, or at least a sense of when she's done something we don't like, because she'll (for example) throw something after we've told her not to and then immediately run off down the hall or to her room. I know why she's doing it--it's the classic "I do what I want, you can't tell me what to do!"--but considering our punishments so far are all stern talkings-to and time outs, I appreciate they're still effective enough that she doesn't want to experience them.
She's on a new medicine for her seizures, since the old medicine wasn't working as well, but the new medicine is working like a charm. She's even started taking naps again--she was skipping them for days at a time and I wondered if her napping days were over, but now she goes to sleep within 10 minutes of being put into her room and sleeps for a couple hours, and her latest EEG was much better than the one taken in January. Now we just need to convince her to talk!
What other ways will she grow and change?
