38 months old

Emily has sure grown up a lot over the last month! The biggest milestone, of course, has been potty-training. With the exception of a few bad days, she has been doing great--especially overnight. She was perfect the whole time we were traveling for Christmas and went at everybody's house. Her reward for staying clean & dry all day is bubble bath and/or an animal sponge capsule in the bathtub. She talks about not having an "axe-a-lent" (accident) so she can get bubbles and a sponge.

Another growing-up step is insisting that she always dress herself. If you try to help her she pushes your hand away and declares, "It's my turn!" This has lead to lessons in finding tags and putting them in the back. The only problem is that so many clothing items these days are "tagless" and just have barely detectable printed words or nothing at all. I still have to supervise underwear since it's so easy to get legs in the wrong holes. Self-dressing has also continued the streak of interesting outfit combinations. Emily's Christmas dresses did not make it in the suitcase to Hull, but she has made up for it by alternating between them every day we've been home since Christmas. Since she only has one pair of black leggings, and I really don't want her wearing out her tights running around the house all day, she has resorted to leaving on her pajama pants from the night before. Besides the big picture above, another example is on the right along with the stack of hats she attempted to wear with it.

A milestone I was starting to have concerns about was surpassed when Emily experienced a magnificent bloom socially this month. All of the sudden she moved from mainly parallel, independent play to interactive, imaginative play with other kids. She is doing quite well with taking turns and being polite.

Something that is still a little unnerving to me is the fact that Emily started calling us "Mom" and "Dad" instead of "Mommy" and "Daddy" abruptly one day. It makes her sound so much more grown up (and me feel so old)!

One not-so-grown-up, but very normal, development has been jealousy over toys involving Lincoln. If he starts playing with something she'll often stop playing with whatever she was playing with, declare, "That's mine! I fink Lincoln doesn't want it anymore. Here's a toy for Lincoln," and gets a different baby toy she doesn't care about at the moment and shoves it in his face. I foresee many lessons to be learned in this area in the near future with all the new Christmas toys and as Lincoln grows more mobile by the day.

Of course, there are always funny quotes when you have a 3-year-old around the house. Right now whenever I raise my voice in the slightest, Emily looks at me forlornly and observes, "You're bery angry." Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not, but it always makes me laugh inside. Sometimes when Emily starts crying/fussing about something she announces, "I'm sad." That also makes me laugh inside.

Lastly, a fun thing Emily likes to do lately to entertain Lincoln is run around or twirl in circles until she gets so dizzy she falls down. She then announces, "I think the house is tipping over!"

The December Winkflash pictures will be uploaded at the end of the month and the December video player is below. It will likely have some additions from the end of the year.