Three Reasons I Love Age Three, Part 3

 . . . in which I repost my favorite all-time blog posts while my daughter is on summer vacation since I don't want to spend all my time at the computer - and I add a craft activity just to spice things up.  Today: embroidering with a preschooler. More pix and tips at the end!

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In  Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott states “one of the gifts of being a writer. . . is that it motivates you to look closely at life as it lurches by and tramps around.” If you substitute the word mother for writer it describes how I feel about the gift I have in front of me everyday, watching my three year old careen and romp through the house, investigating, imagining and creating. If I weren’t writing this stuff down, I don’t know that I’d be observing so closely – and learning so much about motherhood and about myself in the doing. 

Part 3 of What I Loved About Age 3: Mildstones

Yes, you read that right: mildstones, not milestones. We’re all familiar with the milestones in a child’s life such as first roll, stroll, word, and tooth, as well as the first sit-up, spit up, haircut and potty-poop. These types of firsts are celebrated with calls to grandparents, Facebook updates and endless photos.

Mildstones are changes that can’t be photographed. You can’t pinpoint exactly when the slight change occurred, you just wake up one day and there it is (or isn’t) – such as when you hand your child an uncut grape and you wonder when you stopped worrying about the whole-grape choking hazard.  That’s a mildstone. And now that Cricket is three, life around here has quieted down a bit, and I’m noticing her (and my) mildstones everyday, such as…

All of a sudden she is:

Sleeping under sheets and using a pillow

Eating without a bib

Drinking without a lid

Swimming without swimmies

Eating what we’re eating

Dressing herself

Repeating traffic-utterances at inopportune times

Reading a book to me

Saying I Love You, Thank you and Please spontaneously

All of a sudden I am no longer:

Recording volume of fluid intake

Using a rectal thermometer (I promise this stopped a long time before age 3)

Taking pictures in every new outfit

Toting around a diaper bag

Turning on the baby monitor

Peeling apple skins

Taking an hour to pack to leave the house

Concerned about chocolate ice cream dripping all over her shirt

When did all of this happen?

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How To Introduce Embroidery to a Preschooler:

Use burlap and a 6 or 8" hoop.

Use a tapestry needle - it's blunt and easy to grasp.

Give just a few rules and let them experiment!              

I've never met a child who didn't love to embroider!