Three Years Old

Kathleen is now three years old. This morning we were reminiscing, looking at photos from her second birthday. That feels like so long ago now, much more than a year ago. She has grown up so much since then...

• Physically her hair is much longer, and she has the physique of a child now, not a toddler any more.
• Her language skills are humungous (sp?) (one of her favourite words at the moment).
• She can count to 20 (but misses out 15 most of the time).
• She can read all the numbers.
• She knows her ABC's (the song that is).
• She can read a lot of the letters now, thanks mostly to the letter floor puzzle / mat that Victoria got for Christmas as we spend a lot of time jumping from letter to letter.
• She can run, jump (up and forward), dance, stand on one foot, hop, walk along a concrete wall.
• She is toilet trained and can go by herself (but chooses not to).
• She can undress herself and can dress herself but often gets stuck or frustrated and needs help. Or takes too long and Mummy does it for her.

Kathleen's favourite game at the moment is "Grandma Bunny", a game she made up herself. The game starts off with Kathleen being Grandma Bunny and I am the good little girl coming to visit Grandma. I come in and Grandma shows me the toys to play with. We then proceed to play with the toys. Sometimes Grandma and I go different places and play with the toys there. Sometimes Grandma will cook me dinner and we will eat then go to bed. That's my favourite part of the game ;-)

For her birthday this year, Kathleen got two presents - a dolls house and a castle. The figurines for the dolls house and the castle go visiting each other quite a lot. Kathleen has always loved dolls houses. At playgroup or creche or Playcentre, the dolls house has always been the first thing she goes for. So we really should have bought her one a long time ago. But we waited to get a really nice one and then gave it to her for her birthday. It is a large wooden house with four rooms. She loves it. Every day whenever she has downtime (i.e. whenever Mummy is busy) Kathleen can be found playing with the dolls. Victoria loves it too.

In the afternoon, the girls and I drove to Palmerston North and we had a birthday lunch at Lollipops with some friends. Kathleen had a lovely time. Afterwards we went to ToyWorld so she could choose some dolls to go with her dolls house. We had pancakes for breakfast and her favourite Moroccan "Ramoccan" Lamb for dinner. And a rainbow birthday cake.

So this year the goals are to continue learning to recognise letters, learning to write letters and to read simple words. Continuing learning to dress herself. This is more of a goal for Mummy - stop trying to help and let her do it herself. The same goes for things like cutting her food, buttering her bread, brushing her teeth, etc.

We will also have the challenge of finding a new preschool for Kathleen, and I would like to think that by this time next year she will have a friend or two in the area. It has been hard on her not having any friends. She had friends in Auckland but then we moved to Wellington and had trouble meeting anyone her age. Then when she started creche at the beginning of last year we made some tentative friendships. Only for us to then decide to move house again and so we held back from making more friends. But I would really like for my girls to start getting to know other kids now.

Three is an amazing age. So much a child now, no longer a baby. Someone famous said something like "show me the child at three and I'll show you the man". (Actually I just googled that and it's a Jesuit saying and about 7 year olds so not quite what I had in mind. What I meant was that at three your true personality becomes apparent). It's so true. Kathleen's personality is well and truely set in. She's a quiet, indoor girl. She likes to be entertained, in the form of TV, books or computer games. But at the same time she's a big show off and loves to be the centre of attention, whether it's dancing, telling stories or just being a goofball. Her whole focus of attention is toys. Whenever we go somewhere her only concern is whether or not they have toys there. I would like to hope that this means she will have a happy childhood, as so far she is pretty easily pleased ... as long as there are toys to play with!!!

First Birthday


Second Birthday


Third Birthday


-Megz