i kinda missed the boat on that whole "my kid is two years old!" post. this is the next best thing, right?
maybe someday i'll go back in time and write that post but honestly probably not... hence, this.
here's a couple of randoms about baby girl right now.
she loves to sing her abc's and can do almost the entire thing by herself. she starts going in circles when she gets to t, u, v, and i have to help her, but other than that it's great. as cute as she is singing the song though, my favorite thing about it is that she call it "abc def g" instead of abc's. i don't really know how to write that so i'll try to get a video but it's normally in a pretty loud, I WANT ABC DEAF G, I WANT ABC DEAF G! and i puposely misspelled that because she doesn't pronounce the D - E - F separately. it sounds like "deaf." seriously it cracks me up every time.
she's still obsessed with shoes and loves to wear shoes around the house constantly. she knows she's not allowed the wear shoes on the sofa or the bed but doesn't even care if she's taking them off and putting them on every two seconds.
she also wants me to wear shoes around the house constantly. sometimes i fight her on this like when she brings me three inch heels from my closet to wear while cooking, but i try to entertain her every once in a while when it's something not too hard like flip flops around the kitchen or something.
it's been several weeks and she's still going strong on it but she calls flip flops "lops" and it's to the point that honey and i frequently accidentally do the same. "i want daddy's lops on" "i want pink lops today" and "i want mommy's other lop." the time we lose from saying abc def g is made up with the time we save by saying lops.
baby girl requests bows in her hair. sometimes she's fine with what i pick out but frequently she wants the pink bow or the blue bow or sometimes i just need to hold her up high enough so she can point to the one she wants.
she has also started requesting to wear "baby pants" every morning. i've come to realize that baby pants is only referring to leggings with polka dots. they can not be stripped leggings or solid leggings. and they can not be polka dot shorts. baby girl is very firm about those things not qualifying as "baby pants."
also, anything with polka dots is actually "baby ______" i have a few bright colored polka dot serving bowls that i almost never use. i was washing them one day while she was eating and the couldn't stop telling me that those were baby bowls. a black shirt i wore the other day (it's the one in the pictures for
baby's birthday party) was a baby shirt and anything we see with polka dots is a baby ______.
it seems like she never stops talking but she's still quiet around people she doesn't know (and has a whisper of a baby voice) that any of my friends that we don't playdate with still say they've never heard her talk.
she likes to be clean. if she gets dirty she comes to me for help and asks to "wash hands soap" or even to wash her feet. sometimes before bed if i'm not quick enough, she'll get upstairs way before me and like last night, i'll find her clothes and diaper on the floor of the bathroom and her naked body standing in a dry tub. this was tricky the first time it happened because the shower curtain was totally closed and she was completely quiet.
she's a rule follower. even when i'm not really "present" i can hear her enforcing our family rules (like no shoes on the sofa). "shoes off, i want shoes off" and then i hear them hit the ground before she climbs on the couch or bed or whatever. also, not to say that she doesn't get whiny or have tantrums because that totally happens, but 99% of the time, it's easy for her to snap out of it. she can whine that she wants to stay outside on her bicycle but if i explain a time or two that we can't because we need to eat lunch and take a nap, she'll happily walk inside. it normally goes something like "we can't stay outside right now because we need to go in and eat lunch so we can take a nap. would you like a nap with your binky? we'll play with your bicycle later so FIRST, lunch and nap, THEN bicycle." and her body will become less tense and she'll walk inside and climb in her highchair. the first/then technique works so well with her.
she still calls most animals by the sound they make. she shortens bicycle to "baca" and strollers are all called "push."
she loves singing, dancing, and jumping.
we've reached the adorable stage where she narrates to me everything she sees out the car window. she's still rear facing but with the kind of car i drive, she has an awesome view of everything anyways. her favorite things to see are cows and horses (we live in the country), bicycles, dogs (normally in other cars), "everybody house", and other cars. simple requests, right? so there's never a dull moment. i will admit i was getting anxious for this stage and now that it's here it makes my heart swell up with pride and then melt in a puddle of adoration.
her favorite "toy" right now are these learning flashcards one of honey's clients gave her. they all have pictures except for one informational one telling parents how to keep the cards educational even with different age groups. honey calls that card "nothing" and now it's baby's favorite card. "doggy! it's a doggy!" "rocks! there's lots of rocks!" "NOTHING!!!!! hahahaha it's NOTHING!!!!" seriously hilarious.
we might rest our feet on the coffee table just like this. kids really do learn by example.
i think baby girl really wants to like tv but it just doesn't occupy her for very long. she's fine to roam around and watch it occasionally if honey has the tv on but except for the olympics, it's just not every interesting to her. i think she likes hockey and basketball and football though so maybe it'll pick up? as far as kid shows, i never turn on the tv so it's just dvds i get from the library or random clips from you tube. she does not like curious george at all. like will tell us to change it as soon as she sees what it is. and she gets bored with strawberry shortcake, clifford (even though she requests it like crazy) and pretty much every single video we've tried. the only two that will hold her attention longer than 4 or 5 minutes at this one baby einstein dvd someone gave us "i want to watch babies!" and "sesame street: elmo's music magic" when she says "i want to watch elmo abby." abby is elmo's friend that has pink/purple pom pom looking pigtails and baby girl loves her. so one day i went to the library and checked out every dvd with abby in it. she got bored. so that's how i figured out that elmo and abby specifically referred to the music magic video. so for as much as she whines to watch tv... she watches almost none. ha. just my luck.
baby girl is twirling knots into her hair more and more frequently. to the point that we have to periodically brush through her hair during sacrament meeting so that nothing has time to build up to the point of no return. i used to have to cut them all out but maybe my skills are increasing... or baby's tolerance for pain... because now i'm pretty good at ripping them out. you can't tell that her hair is uneven because it all it, but it makes it look even more scragly because the ends are literally "broken" and it gives me more confidence in those panteene pro v commercials that broken ends really will affect the look of your hair.
as for random stats and specifics, i'll look them up from her two year appointment but she weighs 22 lbs. lately she's been going to bed around 9:15 or 9:30pm and waking up sometime between 9:30 and 10am. breakfast at 10:30, lunch at 1:30, nap from 2-5 or 2:30 to 5:30 or 6pm, and then bedtime again at 9:30pm. in the evening she eats twice. once when she wakes up and once before she goes to bed. it varies from day to day which eating time is the meal and which one is more like a snack. depends on how big her lunch is i guess.
the binky situation hasn't changed in a long time. she gets it for naptime but not at night time. she also sometimes gets it for the last part of sacrament meeting during church. other than that, i keep it in my purse (and she has two tucked away high in her bedroom closet) for special situations. like when we're at joseph and the technicolor dream coat and we need her to be calm enough to sit and watch. she watched the first half without but the second half with the binky. but really, snacks typically work better. like when we do our big shopping trips at costco she gets samples and at walmart she gets a slice of cheese about 2/3 of the way in. i have no intention of taking the binky away in the foreseeable future. if she's 4 years old and naps with a binky i'll be a happy mom indeed!
food preferences right now are less defined than ever before. some days all she requests is soup and other days she's just not that into soup. same with every single food ever. she doesn't have any foods that she won't ever eat. but along that same line, she doesn't have any food (that isn't sweets) that she will 100% for sure gobble up. mangoes and kiwi are recent fruit favorites and honestly she's doing way better with meats of all kinds. everything from bacon to ground beef to chicken to pork sausage to roast. it's delightful to know your kid is getting protein from something other than beans and eggs (and yes, i know dairy has quite a bit of protein) but really i just want my kid to be a well rounded eater. and she totally is. also as a random note, she is obsessed with seaweed. a few weeks back we bought a big box at costco because honey loves it. well, apparently baby does too because she can hear the crinkle of that packaging from anywhere in the house and comes running "abigail want too!" awesome.
she's wearing a size 4 diaper these days. and we ran out of nighttime diapers and realized she actually doesn't need them anymore which is super nice because they're expensive. back when she was in size 3's i bought a box of 4's to put on her at night but she would soak through them and her pj's would be drenched from her shoulders to her toes. now, it's just a really full diaper but completely contained. also, somewhere along the line, baby girl decided that "nap diapers" were cooler than just regular "diapers" so i had to work on my marketing. regular diapers are now called "monkey diapers" because we use the luvs brand and they have little purple monkeys on them. baby girl loves this and thinks they're so cool now. my favorite part? she can't quite say monkey so it's always a super excited "BUNKY DIAPER!!!!" and i love it every time.
baby girl is eager to use a baby potty but no matter how hard she tries, she can't get anything to come out of her when she's sitting on it. and she tries soooo hard! i take the potty away for days at a time when i think she's getting too into it. she doesn't seem upset by it but it just seems like a lot of trying and i don't want her to get discouraged. also, she hates poop in her diaper so much i've started always changing her poopy diapers while she's standing up. if i lay her down on her back when she's poopy, she keeps her lower half up in the air kinda like this...
our only free time during the day is in the mornings after breakfast but before lunch. these few hours are really the only thing that make one day different from the next so they're pretty important. i don't stick to a defined schedule but in any given week with five weekdays i make an effort to attend story time once, walmart once, and a playdate once while one day is devoted to staying home laying low and doing cleaning and laundry. i don't clean or do laundry when she's asleep so it's necessary to devote a morning to it. and starting today, every wednesday from 10-noon she'll be at baby preschool. so the days are flexible and extra days are for whatever we want. like the pool or doctors appointments or quilting with my mother in law or whatever. this week, monday was cleaning at home and a trip to the park with jodi and elle. tuesday was a trip to a different park with michaela. wednesday was baby preschool. tomorrow will be my doctors appointment. and friday she'll go to a friend's house to play because honey and i have a lunch date with his family. we're going strong on food and honey has a trip coming up so this week we didn't need a big shopping trip at walmart this week and sadly we won't be able to get in story time til next tuesday probably. also, for a lot of the summer we were trying to hit up the pool twice a week and then just once a week but it was so hot and so much of a pain we just kinda faded that out... whoops.
baby girl's best friends right now are my friend jodi's little girl elle who is three months older, kirstyn's little girl michaela who is six months older, and lucy (affectionately called "sooosssy") from across the street who is six months older. we don't play with lucy much but baby girl talks about her all the time. we have playdates with lots of kids and she spends time with kids at nursery and story time and parks and things but these three girls are the ones she gets along with best and seems to enjoy the most.
i'm going to rotate through with a few of my friends and do a super unofficial baby preschool like what a lot of people call "joy school" and today was baby girl's first day. it'll only be once a week from 10 to noon but i'm already wondering what i'm going to do with my free time. this morning i hung out for an hour and then thoroughly cleaned my kitchen for an hour. it was so weird because i kept trying to be quiet because it felt as if baby girl was just upstairs napping or something. and as i said, unless it's at night before i go to bed, i don't clean unless she's awake and hanging out with me. so these two hours each week will be interesting. as if i didn't have enough down time on my own... it's energy and motivation that i need!
