Vera @ 3 Years Old

Vera has changed so much from two years-old to three.  Her personality has really blossomed, we can reason and converse with her, and she is so much fun!  A few highlights and happenings...

* SLEEP.  Vera is not a morning person.  Each morning, I wake her around 6:30, and nearly everyday, it is not pleasant.  She usually cries and always resists.  After she's awake for about 30-45 minutes, she's more tolerable.  Never does she like to be waken either, even from a nap in the middle of the day.  It takes her a long time to wake up and be happy.  She also requires a lot of sleep.  During the week, she's in bed by 8, and for sure no later than 8:30.  She still takes a nap everyday...sometimes even 2-3 hours.

It was a day without a nap and when Vera got home from Patty's, she covered herself up, snuggled in, and fell asleep watching TV that afternoon.

*PLAY.  Vera could sit and play by herself for hours.  She is constantly talking and jabbering about something.  Today in church, she whispered while she played with a pony for nearly the entire mass.  Recently, she's started playing with an imaginary friend named Tesha.  Tesha babysits her kids while she goes to work.  Sometimes I hear her say that she's going to Tesha's house to play.  No idea where the name Tesha came from.  Vera also still loves to play doctor.  She's very good at giving check-ups and making a diagnosis.   We've been playing a lot of board games recently.  She has Candy Land, Super Readers, Memory, Uno Moo, Chutes and Ladders, and Go Fish.  We're working on not being a sore loser and learning to play games by the rules. Outside, one of her favorite things to do is fill buckets with rocks from our driveway.  She also really likes to swing and play on her swing set.

*SIZE.  Vera is very tiny and petite.  She weighs 27 lbs. (13%tile) and has gained only 3 lbs. in the last year.  She is 3' 0.5" tall, and has grown 2.5" since last April.  It is hard to find clothes that fit her.  Most all of her shirts are a size 3T and she can wear 3T leggings.  But any other type of pants is either 2T or 24 months.  Her jeans fit her in the waist, but they are too short in length.  She wears a size 7 shoe.  She reminds me a lot of my sister Mandy.  Mandy was always tiny and petite, and grew taller but never any wider.  Mandy wore a size slim for many years and wore lots of leggings because she was hard to fit in the waist. 

*EATING HABITS.  Sometimes Vera is a great eater, and other times she eats like a bird.  Very rarely does she eat a good breakfast.  The only thing she really likes to eat are pancakes.  We joke that she's going to turn into a pancake because that's all she will really eat well.  Recently, I've got her to eat drinkable yogurt in the mornings.  She still loves Mac & Cheese (or "macaroni and stinky cheese" as she calls it.)  She really likes hard boiled eggs, jello, rice, ham, dill pickles, and any kind of chip or cracker.  She usually asks for some kind of "dip" for her meat...normally ranch, but sometimes ketchup or barbeque sauce.  She loves snacks...Goldfish, marshmallows, cranberries, fresh fruit, pretzels, fruit snacks.  And, she will not go to bed at night without having a snack first, even if it's "just a yittle tiny snack" as she calls it. 

*PRESCHOOL.  Vera knows all of her letter sounds, beginning of word sounds, and upper and lowercase letter recognition.  For sure she can count to 30, and she can count beyond with a little help.  She can count to 100 by 10s.  She is able to identify 3D shapes, knows about 20 sight words, and can read simple books.  Recently she's been working on writing her name.  She needs help still, but knows how to make her letters.  She has to talk herself through writing her name.  For example, for the letter "r" she says "yine and hook."  For "a" she talks herself through "circle and yine."  She does a good job holding a pencil or crayon, but she still lacks control.  When she draws or writes, it's very quick and reckless. Just this week, we've discovered that she knows many opposites.  I happened to ask her one evening about the opposite of "day" and she immediately said "night" so I started asking her others.  I was shocked to realize that she knows up/down, in/out, clean/dirty, hot/cold, fast/slow, big/small, tall/short, wet/dry, and plenty of others.  One day after school as I was making supper I heard her recite my telephone number.  I asked her what she was doing, and very matter-of-factually she told me that she's practicing her telephone number.  I asked who taught it to her, and she told me her teacher Patty.  Yes, it's true that we have the best babysitter in the world!

*SPEECH.  Vera has trouble saying the "l" sound in any word, so she replaces it with a "y" sound.  So she says things like "yetter, yove, fyower, Ba-yee, Byake, Kar-yee, and yist."  A few weeks ago, she told Adam she had a "yucky penny."  Adam asked why it was yucky.  And she said, "No dad.  Not yucky.  Yucky."  Oh, a LUCKY penny...got it Vera.  She also cannot say the "th" sound at the beginning of words.  She replaces it with a "f" sound, which I think is fairly common.  She says things like "frow it away" and "fank you."  There are so many funny and innocent things she says on a daily basis.  I wish I could remember all of them.  She asked today when we went to church, "if she was going to be the smelly kid."  A few weeks ago while we were FaceTiming with Blake, she told him not to push the "end" button otherwise he'd "throw up on us."  (Instead of hang-up on us.)

It's been really fun to watch her learn, grow and change.  I know that she's going to be the best big sister in a few weeks.  Here's to a great year of being three years-old....