Ella at 3

I really need to record what Ella is doing developmentally and what she's like at this age since I'm bound to forget. So, at 3 and 3months...here's the deal...

Physical:
*Ella is now in the 75th percentile for height and weight (first time she's been over 50!) at 34 lbs and 38 inches
*She is jumping and running with no problem but hasn't quite mastered walking up/down stairs alternating feet (possibly because we have no stairs in our house!)
*She has started to hold pens and crayons correctly rather than "fisting" them but still does both
*Ella has been completely day potty trained since about September but still wears a pull-up at night. I'm not really concerned about it. When her pull ups are dry in the morning she can switch to underwear. Or when she's too big for pull ups :-)
*Ella's "schedule" is much less stringent than when she was younger but basically she wakes up at 7:45 am (she almost always woke up about an hour later than that until she went into a big girl bed-weird) and has rest time (in her room with books and toys for an hour) mid afternoon and goes to sleep between 7pm and 8pm depending on the day/other commitments.

Social/Emotional
*Ella does get in skirmishes with kids when playing but it's never constant or serious. She doesn't always stop the first time I tell her to but she's much more likely to disobey me than hit/grab from another kid at this point in life. She tends to be motherly with other kids-hugging them, guiding them on the back as they walk, wanting to hold their hand, especially if they're younger than her.
*Ella easily identifies her emotions when we ask her-sad, mad, happy, or frustrated. When she's angry she tends to growl to herself-it's kind of funny and kind of disturbing.
*She's easily scared by "scary" looking or mean characters in books or on TV so we're very careful about what she sees.
*We can take her to a restaurant with about a 65% chance of it being without incident (this is MUCH better than 6 months or a year ago). She still really struggles to stay in her seat at meal times (because she doesn't care about food) so we're working on that a lot at home so hopefully it'll translate to when we're out.


Food
*Ella is still uber-picky. She will ALWAYS eat any kind of cracker or chip or bread or popcorn. And will ALWAY drink pretty much anything you offer her (especially milk). She usually eats pb&j sandwiches, pb & honey sandwiches, chicken (often in nugget form), green beans, olives, cheese, mandarin oranges, peaches, and peas pretty reliably. She will sometimes eat hot dogs, ground beef (like taco meat), broccoli, tomatoes, bananas. She is resistant to try anything new but we're trying to get her to at least try a bite of new things. She generally eats very small amounts but surprises us every now and then. Usually what she eats probably amounts to about 1 cup of food per meal or less. It's not unusual for her to eat a few bites of a sandwich and 3 green beans and be done. My latest plan has been to not let her snack so she'll eat more at her meals and it seems to help but she just has a very small stomach I guess!

Likes/Dislikes
*Ella is obsessed with pink (clothes, hair accessories, backpacks, shoes, everything) but recently said light blue is also her favorite color and has stuck with it for a couple weeks
*Ella is REALLY into Cinderella (it's the only appropriate Disney movie we own) and all princesses
*Ella loves to paint with watercolors but rarely is interested in drawing or coloring
*She still enjoys playdough and it usually turns into pretend play
*As much as I got excited about her interest in dress up clothes, she rarely plays with them lately :-(
*Ella's favorite possessions are 1)her enormous disney storybooks
2)her pink sparkly shoes
3)her light green "blankey"
4)videos
5)board games

Ella's favorite things

These days Ella's favorite things are:

Painting
Dress up
Milk
Being read to or "reading" by herself
Ni-Hao Kai-Lan (She LOVES this show, and has learned some Chinese from it!)
The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Soundtrack
Jumping off of everything
Peanut butter and honey sandwiches
Play-doh
The Color Pink (she's been able to articulate for a few months now that it is her favorite and
requests everything possible in pink)
Here are some recent pictures of some such activities :-)

Phases...

If there's anything I've learned as a mom, it's that kids go through phases. In everything: what they like to eat, when/if they like to sleep, and what they like to play with/do. Ella is in some STRONG phases right now.

1.Puzzles
She is SO stinkin' good at puzzles. She does 25 piece jigsaw puzzles by herself in about ten minutes. And she'll take them apart and do them over and over again. Phases where she'll sit and do anything for more than 15 minutes are rare and exciting around here.


2.Leap Frog's Letter Factory Video
We borrowed this a couple weeks ago from a friend. 2 mom friends swear their kids learned all the letters and the sounds they make from this video. Ella doesn't know all the letters yet but she's learned some and she's OBSESSSSSSSED with the video. She's just coming off of being really into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse which at least has many different episodes. This is just one 40 minutes video that she's seen SO many times and begs for daily. At least it's educational and she's enjoying it!

3. Stickers
Ella loved stickers about a year ago but hasn't been too interested for a while. A couple weeks ago Chris sat with Ella at the bar in the kitchen and they played with stickers for over an hour! As I said, Ella (like most 2 yr olds) usually loses interst in most things after about 10-15 minutes but this started something new. It's lasted a couple weeks not and she'll still sit there with stickers and paper for a good 30 minutes. I've fallen in love with her "style." She ALWAYS overlaps the stickers and makes these awesome collage/mosaic looking creations. Someone told her to spread them out on the page but I tell her to go with her style. Way to be unique Ella Bella!




A couple of her creations