Creeping up on 3

I feel so badly that I'm not keeping track of K's development on here as closely any more. So much is changing, but it's hard to put your finger on exactly what the changes are. Her languages are flourishing, and she's coming out with very complicated sentences in both English and German. Some of them are absolutely perfect, both in grammar, verb tenses, words, and pronunciation - it blows me away. She started being able to do up buttons I think while we were on our pre-Christmas vacation in Girona mid-November, and is a total pro now (when she wants to be). She's mastered even the five-petal flower buttons on her PJs that I find awkward to manage.
K's headstrong at times, but for the most part tries to please. We still haven't kicked the getting-up-at-night habit, but the going to bed bit is getting better now that she takes a blankie and a couple teddies to bed with her and has her stars/moon projecting turtle on at bedtime. Every night we tell her that if she gets out after we put her to bed, we'll take away the turtle, then the blanket, and then her teddy. It's now rare for her to get out more than once because she really doesn't want to lose any of the good stuff. Some nights (especially those where she's skipped her nap), she does well at staying in bed all night but for one trip to the washroom, but that's certainly not always the case. If she naps or has good quiet time in the afternoon and behaves well, she gets some orange chewy vitamin C as a "reward" at bedtime, and if she goes down well at night and doesn't get up except to pee, she gets a chewy multivitamin as her morning "reward". My mother thinks it's ridiculous that she thinks of vitamins as a treat, but heck, I'd rather have her wanting those than candy or other unhealthy stuff. (She wants chocolate and chips and candies plenty, and I think gets a fair bit of chips and cookies from her nanny, but she's actually good at letting us stop her from eating sweets after just a little taste.)
K tried to break my heart a little yesterday. She came home grumpy (no nap) from being out with our nanny. Shockingly she said she didn't want to go out for dinner when we said we were going to go to a restaurant. Normally she's asking to go out (presumably because we don't cook all that well). She fell asleep in the car just as we arrived at the restaurant, so I'm sure part of the grumpiness was just being tired, but after we dropped off DH at a concert and headed home, she told me "Ich mag dich nicht Mama. Ich will Tita." (I don't like you Mama. I want Tita). When I told her that was a mean thing to say and asked why, she said "Weil Du hast mich verlassen" (= because you me left). Then she said I left her to go to work. Once I told her we'd have all weekend together, she said "Ich bin jetzt gluecklich" (I'm happy now). I guess the guilt trips start young these days...
She's really enjoying sportball these days, and goes with Papa on Sat mornings for a 45min fun class with a whole bunch of other kids to start learning how to throw a ball, kick a ball etc. She also likes gymnastics which she does once a week with her nanny at the community centre around the corner. They don't do much more than a little tumbling, dangling from uneven bars etc, but she has fun.
K has spent the night with Granddad and his wife twice so far, and all went well when he came here to pick her up and take her to his place via subway. At the beginning of Jan, my stepsister asked if K could go stay with Granddad since she was heading back to England shortly. They asked if I thought she'd do ok if we all came for dinner and then left her for the night. I said yes, since there'd been no issues before. Unfortunately, I was very wrong. Dinner got a bit delayed, and it was nearly bedtime by the time dessert was served. Then she was tired and a little cranky when we stood up and said it was time for us to go home. She'd been excited about sleeping over with S, but at that point, all she wanted was Mama. Tears streamed down her face and we ended up bringing her back home with us. I think Granddad will have to pick her up for future sleepovers for a while, because then the adventure of going over there takes precedence over missing Mama.
Her hair is getting longer and she's already had her first French braids, pigtails, and little Pippi Longstocking style braids. Hopefully it will thicken up sometime soon. I'm debating whether to take her to the doctor to get her bottom looked at, as the skin is at times super red and raw looking, and other times normal. I treated her for 2.5 weeks with canesten cream and hydrocortisone cream, which seemed to help for a while. She keeps complaining that her bum hurts and wants me to occasionally put zinc oxide cream on it, so I think maybe there still is something going on. I hope I can get it fixed up soon because it seems so uncomfortable.
She's much more into reading now. She loves these little German Lena books I got years ago (for my future kids). And she's now asking to read The Wizard of Oz. She has an old record of the story that I had when I was little, but when we started watching the movie, she got scared by the witch and asked me to shut it off. The book itself doesn't seem to scare her, and it's amazing how long she can sit and listen to the story with only the very occasional drawing to look at. I asked her twice tonight if we should stop, and she asked to continue. She did make it through Mary Poppins with me while Papa was out of town last week, and now can be heard trying to sing some of the songs. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious caught her fancy. At first she'd keep asking me "Sag Supercaliocious Mama" (= say supercaliocious Mama), and then a couple days later I came home and she was actually basically saying the entire word almost right. Crazy. I'd only repeated it for her a few more times.
I love this stage. She is getting more challenging at times, but she's still a very sweet and loving girl who's absolutely a Mama's girl. She says she'll be Papa's girl next year. We're starting to wrap our heads around the fact that she'll be starting kindergarten in 2014, and are trying to figure out if we'll send her to the local public school, or to the linked French immersion one, or if we'd try to get her into the Francophone one. I think I'm against private because I don't want her learning only with children of well-to-do parents. We live in decent school zones and I want her to be in with a whole mix of kids. I'd rather have her in a diverse public school. We've got some time yet, but even our nanny is already asking if we'll keep her on when K goes to kindergarten or not. We're pretty sure yes, even though it's a huge expense, because we want to keep that stability in her life. Hopefully we can talk her into taking on more of the housekeeping and the cooking, because we really love her. Not sure how we'd find someone to do early mornings and late afternoon/evenings plus be on call for sickness and able to work holidays etc. I'm sure we'll work it out somehow.
Only 6 weeks to go till she's 3.