October 2021

Anna is now nearly 3! Lots has happened in the past 6 months.

Daycare

Thankfully Daycare is now excluded from COVID lockdowns, so we can avoid having to try and work and look after a young child this year while trying to continue to work. There were a couple of tough weeks where Anna got sick and after being mostly better was still not allowed to go back to daycare because of strict new rules. We also had her at home over the recent school holidays as the spirit of the current rules are that if she is able to be looked after at home she shouldn't be going.

Anna seems mostly happy to play by herself but from what we can tell has participated in a wider range of play and group activities. She appears to be an enthusiastic participant in story time.

It has sometimes become hard to get her moving into the car of a morning. Mainly in getting her into her car seat once we have got out of the house. Sometimes this requires a bribe with some kind of snack. Otherwise she is usually happy to go and has no issues once she gets there, barely stopping to say goodbye.

Sleep

Anna still sleeps well from around 8.30-7.30, she essentially always sleeps through. Bedtime routine now requies us both to read her one or multiple books... good and bad. We are a little stuck on the favourite books Room On The Broom and Peter Rabbit. We are going to the Room on The Broom stage show if this lockdown ever ends.

Anna still requests milk to go to bed, this habbit will probably be a hard one to break. It has actually gotten harder in that now she requests a bottle of water after her bottle of milk.

Naps are no longer and everyday thing, but she still has them sometimes.

Language and Learning

Anna's language has been developing very quickly over the last few months, to the point where she is able to put together 4-5 word sentances. I find it impressive when I ask her what something is and she can usually come up with something using the language she knows even if she hasn't seen the thing before. For example I asked her what a picture of the northern lights was and she said it was a rainbow.

It is also interesting hearing phrases and concepts that we never taught her. Whether she picked them up from day care, media or just independantly.
She is able to repeat back large parts of the books that we frequently read so it is nice to be able to read them together like that.

Also impressive is that she can act out 2 characters having a conversation or interacting with each other. Performing the actions and speach of them both. Might just be standard behaviour for a kid her age, I have no idea.

At this stage she seems to be more interested in numbers than letters. Being able to easily count to 10 and sometimes to 20. She can use this as well in the context of pointing to objects on the page as she counts them or counting for a game like hide and seek. They do some alphabet at day care but she doesn't really do this much at home. She can recognise some letters though.

Will be good to see how she goes with the 3 year old kinder program next year.

Media

Between the TV, the iPad, phone and the computer Anna requests a wide range of media. Her favourite shows/ movies are: Hey Duggee, Paw Patrol and Frozen. At this point we have probably seen all 7 seasons of Paw Patrol a few times and recently she has sat through the new Paw Patrol movie and it maintained her attention for 90 minutes. Recently she has been using the computer more and has gotten into educational Youtube videos. I am encorgaing her to try and use the mouse and keyboard instead of having to ask every time she wants the video changed.

She is enjoying and can be creative in various phone/ ipad apps from her favourite shows. Certainly the touch interface is a lot easier for her at this point than a controler or keyboard/ mouse. She has learned that the spacebar pauses and restarts videos and somehow worked out F5 for herself to refresh (the fix button).

Play

Anna is enjoying playing outside and on the trampoline that we got her and she likes going to the park. She can be a bit a daredevil and generally doesn't shy away from heights and big slides.

She will engage in imaginative play where she will say go find the broomstick and act out riding it as happens in her book.

She has been enjoying building castles/ towers with blocks, both at home by herself, with me and at day care.

She has her tricycle that she has recently been able to peddle by herself after a long period of encoragement and a balance bike which she has been improving her balance on.

After lockdown we can hopefully take her to a wider variety of places again.

Behaviour

You could describe Anna as having big emotions. While generally being pretty well behaved if something doesn't go her way or someone didn't do something as soon as she asked for it there can be tantrums. Generally these are short lived though and all is forgotten.

She has become good at following some instructions, such as being asked to put something in the sink or the bin.

No real toilet training yet, we might start encouraging that more soon.

Food

Anna has become a bit less consistent with food and will often snack on various things rather than eating the meal that we have made. Some of this is probably our fault as well in giving her what she wants when she wants it too often which means she is less hungry at meal time. She isn't a fussy eater though and will eat at least some of most meals.