Sprout is three and a half!
She can be reluctant in new situations, but more often hangs back and watches for a few minutes and then jumps right into the action. She likes the reassurance of having one of her "grown ups" around, but has done really well with her drop off music class (if not ballet), and will interact with other kids at the park, so I'm not too concerned about how she'll fare in kindergarten this fall.
Thankfully her attitude towards kindergarten has changed in the past few months. She used to say that she wanted to stay with me, but now is says she's excited about kindergarten. We know some siblings of friends who will also be going into JK at our school next year and have also met another little girl (with two moms!) in the neighbourhood. We got an "unofficial" confirmation that she'll be in The Bean's class in the fall (they combine JK and SK here) and that they will both have the same teacher he has this year. We're not very familiar with the other kindergarten teacher, but we like The Bean's teacher and are very happy with this news.
She's a chatterbox. She can still be a bit hard to understand, but I feel like her speech is getting slightly clearer. She's definitely forming longer and more complex sentences with a degree of thoughtfulness behind them that sometimes surprises me. She asks fantastic questions.
She's also really funny. A few recent things that made me laugh:
-A stranger on the subway told her she was cute, to which she replied, "Did you know that I am cute AND I am funny?"
-We explained to her that we couldn't keep any of the feral kittens because Jen is very allergic. Sprout relayed this to a neighbour saying, "Mommy can't eat cats. She's allergic."
-She was making mud pies and told me they were gluten and dairy free, so she could share them with Mommy and The Bean.
She's super into princesses and much of the stereotypical "girly" stuff. More than princesses though, her free play tends to gravitate towards pretending to be a doctor or a veterinarian, which is very in-keeping with her character. She is such a nurturer. She is amazingly sweet with animals. (Though she's quite scared of bugs and crawly things.) She has taken to nursing us when we've hurt ourselves, running to get a wet wipe (a cure-all in her mind) and Band-Aids (of course).
She's also quite affectionate, particularly with me. She loves sitting on laps and snuggling. I have a feeling that when she does stop nursing (which is still happening before bed most nights) that it will be replaced by snuggling time. The other night she asked me to lie down with her and I said I couldn't, so she said, "It's okay, Mama. Later when you are sleeping I will just come quietly into your room and snuggle into bed with you." It made me laugh, because it is exactly what she does. I'm a light sleeper and usually wake up during the night, often to find her snuggled up against me. Unfortunately she's a bit of a bed hog, which means I often go to sleep in her bed, but if she wakes up she'll come back over and crawl into bed with me again. It's ridiculous. But it's also kind of sweet.
She can be quite stubborn, but fortunately has stopped with the hitting, which was happening a little bit back towards her birthday. Getting her to eat her dinner has become a bit of a battle, and the other night she asserted, "I am only going to say this one more time: I am not eating my broccoli!" (Or whatever the vegetable was.) Jen and I were fighting back the laughter. Overall she's usually good-natured, but when she's tired she can be a bit of a beast. She's given up naps in the past few months, so late afternoons and evenings can be trying. Thankfully, getting her down at bedtime has become much easier. For a little while she was falling asleep nursing, now she doesn't, and she often fights sleep, but it's no where near as bad as it was before when she was up until 10 and 11 at night.
Overall she's a good eater. She definitely likes her sweets, but they're pretty limited. Her breakfast of choice these days is an English muffin and a yogurt drink, her favourite lunch is probably quiche or baked beans with some pears on the side, and dinner would be chicken fingers, rice and some sort of veggie. She looooves milk, but we make her drink water 95% of the time. Juice is reserved for special occasions.
Her gross motor skills are slowly, but surely improving. She's started taking more risks on playground equipment, such as going across the tires without someone there spotting her. She's getting quite good on her scooter and has recently figured out pedaling on her tricycle... a bicycle may be in her future (foruth birthday present, perhaps). She ended up quitting ballet as it wasn't quite what she wanted from the class ("It's not REAL ballet.") but did really well with swimming. She loves being in the water. I hope we're able to get to the pool often over the summer and that they get back into swimming classes in the fall.
Her fine motor skills are decent. She still hasn't figured out writing, and I'll have to work on her writing her name over the summer, but she still enjoys drawing, painting, beading, etc. She likes to help pour and stir when I bake. She doesn't seem to have a strong hand preference, which may be making things a little more difficult for her in terms of developing better control. I think she'll end up being a righty who uses her left hand for certain things.
Jumping back to activities --she did a program at a local farm this winter and really liked the animal portions, in particular. Now when we go visit the farm she doesn't understand why she can't pet the animals like she was able to during her classes. Over the spring we went back to our outdoor ed. program, this time as volunteers. I didn't think it was run quite as well as it was in the fall, but we still both enjoyed it. She just finished up her music classes which she's been doing since January and was fantastic with. She went with my cousin's son, which I think was nice for both of them. She often sings the songs she's learned in it, along with many other little songs she knows or makes up. She sings about everything.
She still has the same group of friends and favourite people. She also has become quite attached to a little girl from the nature program. We're going to try to continue to meet up over the summer. Hopefully it works out.
She's continuing to grow and is now solidly in 3T clothing, but moving into 4t, which just boggles my mind as I'm so used to having a small-for-their-age child. I recently found out I've been putting both kids in shoes that are WAY too small for them, so she's now wearing size 10. As I posted about before, she cut off all her long hair and how has a cute bob. I was surprised that she kept asking for a haircut, but she doesn't seem to have any regrets whatsoever, so I guess she was pretty sure of herself.
She's in diapers at night still and wakes up dry maybe 30-50% of the time. Still not enough for us to chance it. Bedtime is usually between 7 and 8pm (usually on the later side, rather than the earlier) and she wakes up between 6 and 7am most days, though lately it's been closer to 8am, so maybe she's going through a growth spurt or something.
It doesn't seem like she's going to slow down. This girl, she keeps us on our toes! We love her though.
---
Edited to add these two post-haircut photos.
