Taylor is Three!

And she has been for over a month now.  Yep, behind on blogging again. 
There is a reason why they say "terrible twos" and "thunderous threes."  I hoped and prayed that on Taylor's third birthday she would wake up and it'd be like a light switch and all of her tantrums and defiant behavior would magically disappear.  Yeah, that didn't work.  Taylor is very spirited, incredibly active, and horribly stubborn.  I only have myself to blame for the last one; I'm quite stubborn myself!  I guess the good thing is, she will not grow up to be a wishy-washy person.  In fact, I'm sure she will be quite head strong and not afraid to speak her opinion.  So, she and I butt heads quite often but I'm trying my best to use calm and firm parenting.  I do not want to resort to spanking. It's not that I think people who spank are bad parents (I DON"T); more that I don't think it would be very effective for her.  Also, she already has problems with hitting us when she's angry so I don't think spanking her would send the right message.  What I have found to be effective is taking away toys; specifically "pink Ariel."  "Pink Ariel" is the Little People Ariel figurine and she's wearing a pink dress (as opposed to the mermaid version of Ariel which we also have).  Ariel gets placed on top of our bookcase every 2-3 days.  Every time Taylor asks for her, I remind her why Ariel is up there and that Ariel will come down tomorrow.  It works.  Kinda.
So growth-wise, Taylor is in the 2nd percentile for height and the 6th percentile for weight.  No, I did not flip-flop those!  For the first time in over 2 years, Taylor's weight percentile is higher than her height percentile!  If you're curious what this means in terms of sizes, well she still wears 2T.  She could probably get away with 24 mos. bottoms depending on the brand.  On top she definitely needs a 2T for the length and some 2T shirts are starting to get too short as well.  She's just so darn skinny!  I think she only weighs 25 pounds with clothes on.  I guess that means in the last year she's only gained about 5 pounds (hmph, we should all be so lucky).
So since Taylor turned 3, she has aged out of Early Intervention services.  We were definitely sad to stop our sessions with Miss Amanda.  Technically, she now has an IEP (Individualized Education Plan for all the non-educator types out there) from Champaign Unit 4 schools.  This means that she is eligible to get speech services from them for the rest of this school year.  But that entails her going to the Pre-K center once a week for a half hour during the school day.  Well that obviously isn't going to happen given where Walker and I work and where our daycare provider is.  Unit 4 did their own speech evaluation and based on that, she has qualified for a classroom spot for next school year.  This means she will go there for half a day, every day and she would receive her speech services while she is there.  Of course I had hoped she would have gained enough from her EI services to not need any more speech therapy.  This did not happen.  Don't get me wrong; Taylor definitely made a lot of gains, but at the end of the program she was still showing a 31% delay (compared to 35% delay when she was first evaluated).  That was definitely disappointing to hear.  What's interesting about Taylor is she is on target or even above target in so many areas but then so far below target in others.  For example, 36 mos. olds are supposed to be able to count to 3 to score in the "average" range.  Well, Taylor can count to 20 (and sometimes beyond that if I get her started with "21").  But at the same time 3 year olds are supposed to have an average sentence length of 4-5 words.  Taylor's is 2.5. Taylor has an amazing vocabulary (or so I'm told; I really don't know what kind of vocabulary average 3 year olds have) but she just won't put those words together to form longer sentences.  Taylor still relies a lot on carrier phrases; "I want" still being her favorite.  A new one for her is "it's really" like "it's really hot," "it's really high," etc. 
I don't feel as guilty about her speech development as I used to.  Now I just feel kind of a sadness and longing.  It can be so hard being around her friends (who are all advanced in their language skills to begin with) and watching her struggle to even get out a 4 word sentence.  I think a lot of Taylor's hesitation with longer phrases is her articulation.  She has such a hard time pronouncing words correctly when she's trying to put them together.  If you ask her to say one word, she'll say it near perfect, but when you ask her to say that same word in a sentence, everything gets jumbled up. 
But the great thing is, Taylor only needs the IEP for speech.  The therapist from Unit 4 said there was clearly no cognitive delays.  I was so relieved to hear that.  I guess I kinda already knew it, but it was nice to hear it from someone who interacts with 3 and 4 year olds all day.  Taylor knows all of her letters (uppercase and lowercase) and now knows all of her letter sounds too.  And just the other day she started sounding out words.  Well, okay, she was not putting the sounds together to read the words, but all on her own (seriously, I did not tell her to do this!), she started pointing at letters in words (in order, not just randomly) and saying the letter sounds.  So now I'm showing her how to sound out 3 letter words.  I don't know how quickly she'll catch onto putting the sounds together to make the word, but we'll work on it.  I'll probably start doing some phonemic awareness stuff with her so that she can build a strong foundation for when she's ready to put those sounds together.
Potty Training:  uugghhhhh.  That is how I feel about this subject.  We kinda tried to do it over the summer.  It didn't go so well.  Then we tried again back in the fall.  It went pretty well at daycare (as in Taylor would actually sit on the potty for more than a minute) but at home it was a big disaster.  It got to the point where Taylor was refusing (and throwing a tantrum) to sit on the potty.  We tried reading books, bringing in the iPad, bribing her...nothing worked.  Finally I consulted with my sister (why I didn't ask her sooner, I have no idea) and she said not to push it and that Taylor would use the potty when she wanted to, not when I wanted her to.  I checked with our pediatrician and she said the same thing.  I definitely don't want Taylor to have negative associations with using the bathroom so we're not pushing her.  I do a lot of modeling with lots of excitement (you have no idea how stupid I feel applauding myself for peeing) and we have her dolls and even "pink Ariel" go on the potty (eyedropper filled with water behind their back).  We also ask her if she wants to sit on the potty or go pee in the potty.  About half the time, she'll consent to sitting on the potty but it's only for about 10 seconds.  I know there are people out there who are judging me and maybe even secretly shunning me for having a 3 year old still in diapers...well if that makes you feel better, go right ahead.  Lots of kids aren't potty trained until 3 or even 4.  I figure as long as she knows how to do it by the time she enters kindergarten, we're good (for the record Champaign Pre-K does not require them to be potty trained).  I might break down and buy a really cool toy that she can't have until she's using the potty consistently but at this point, I don't think even that would be enough motivation for her.
I'm not sure there is really anything else to share.  Hopefully I'll be able to post again soon with an update on her behavior, potty training, speech or maybe all three!