23 months

How did she get to be 23 months old?! I find myself more often lately describing her as being almost 2. Wait! How can she be almost 2? Can it really be 2 years ago that I was 8 months pregnant and ready to pop?

To watch her now is amazing as it has always been. I've been working on framing some pictures of her from the first year of her life. She's changed so much! I suppose it's cliche to comment on how they are little sponges at this age and just soak up everything. She really does, though. She spouts off random numbers and letters and sometimes even gets them right. She knows right foot and left foot. She has her own set of "rules" (babies must not wear clothes being one). She has her own opinions. She has favorites. She is becoming more and more of her own person.

Wow.

I suppose I should warn that there's the possiblilty of nostalgia overkill over the next month as her birthday looms closer. The plans are for a small celebration because it feels like the right thing to do rather than a larger party. We've talked about getting her a good-quality toy xylophone or maybe some wooden food to "cook" with on the cardboard stove that I made for her months ago and she STILL plays with. Maybe a couple of books. Definitely some chocolate cake as it is something she has developed an affinity for since her last birthday. She'll now zero in on chocolate and tell you "Want choc-ate!"

Still don't know if it's a good idea to have real candles on the cake, though. A 2 year old and fire just doesn't seem like a good idea!

Dillon do it

She has learned what has to be the second most popular phrase of toddlerhood-- "Dillon do it." I would think that it could only be beaten by "No" in the frequency of use in the typical toddler vocabulary. I think for Dillon, it is actually for popular than "no." Her favorite activity to do on her own is putting on her pants. In fact, I noticed that she was quiet the other morning, checked on her to find her happily going through a basket of clean laundry, trying to put on every pair of her pants she could find. So, all told, when I found her doing this, the she had on the pants I dressed her in, a second pair of pants, a pair of tights and a pair of socks. A fashion statement all it's own! It was absolutely hysterically funny!

I have learned to use this need to dress herself to my advantage. If I need for her to be busy for a few minutes, I just give her a pair of pants and let her go to work :-)

We went, very briefly, to a birthday party today for one of the little boys in our playgroup. Her turned one yesterday. He is Indian and it must be a part of their culture to celebrate birthdays in a big way. There must have been seating and food for 50-75 people. We went early and left after about 1/2 hour because the party started at just about her naptime. Between a huge group of people, loud music, a bunch of ballons that kept getting popped and the proximty to naptime, it was pretty easy to bow out of the party early. I'm glad we made an appearance, but it was really just WAY too much for my personal taste. As fun as all the stuff was to her, she definitely had a look of just being overwhelmed by it all.

We also had the issue of the snow to deal with. We got probably on the order of 6 inches of snow today. It is gorgeous! I'm not sure how much she'll like walking in it since it's so deep. We'll see tomorrow as there will be a request to "Walk in snow!" followed by a request of "Dillon do it!" when it comes time to zip up her coat.

So when will there be a request to do all the snow shoveling?

Tower building

She loves crawling up on ths table! She also loves to jump off of it onto a pillow. Thus far she has waited until someone is sitting on the floor by the table to catch her. Hopefully she won't get a lot braver for a little while- at least until she can land a little more steadily on her feet.

She surprised us the other day by rattling off about 70% of the alphabet. It wasn't all in order, but it was definitely the alphabet. Up until then, all she'd really said was ABC and EFR. She's also learning the motions to that little song "Head and Shoulder (Knees and Toes..)" Dave got her one of the Baby Einstein videos that has several kids singing this song in it. She just grins from ear to ear, touches her head then bends down and touches her toes.

She's really enjoying all of her Christmas presents. I really need to go through and put away some of the older toys that she is no longer interested in. The tough part, of course, is that she suddenly becomes interested as soon as I try to put them up. Or she spots them wherever I have them put up and insists on seeing them. Yeah, that's why they never get put up....

Merry Christmas (aka What's that right there?)

Christmas was so much fun!!! Dave had Christmas eve & day off which was wonderful. Christmas morning, he & I got up and made breakfast while Dillon slept in until after 8:30. We ate breakfast then got down to the business of opening gifts. She didn't quite know what to do at first, then figured it out pretty quickly and turned into quite the expert present opener. This meant we each had help opening our own gifts! She got several books, the Learning Tower I mentioned in an earlier post, and some really cute clothes ("Oh my gosh, how cute!" she declared. Wonder where she got that?!) She's been enjoying her Legos and new Baby Einstein video from Nana and her new tennis shoes, now known as Nana's shoes. She loves her new doll and handmade cradle from Mimi and Addy. The doll has gone through various stages of undress, and is now laying on the floor naked. What is it with kids and dolls having to be naked?! She's tried several of her animals in the cradle and has even gotten in it herself a few times. "Dillon too big" she says about that. She's also really enjoying the Mickey and Minnie Mouse dolls that Courtney got her as well as the Magna Doodle. She's decided that it must always have a horsey drawn on it. Unfortunately, she knows how to erase it, so the requests for "draw horsey" are frequent. The horseys get more and more abstract looking as the day goes on, strangely enough!

As she was standing on the Learning Tower watching Daddy put together his dressing for Christmas dinner, she spotted a robot sitting on the table that was Dave's when he was a kid. And thus started the newest and most popular phrase over the last couple of days-- "what's that right there?" It used to be that "what's that?" was good enough, but now it's a whole sentence used very liberally. She wants to know what everything "right there" is. It's pretty cute, I have to admit.

We made the right call in getting a shorter tree for Christmas- she's been fascinated with the ornaments. There's a couple of non breakable ones that are low enough for her to reach and play with but there are frequent requests to be held up to see the ones out of her reach. I'm pretty sure there would have been a toppled tree if it had been a full size one.

Next year will really be fun since she'll have a better idea of what is going on. Dave really enjoyed the staying up late on Christmas eve playing Santa.

We were amazed the other day as she was looking at the keypad to the phone, she said "8, 9 10 11 12" Wow! She wasn't pointing to the right numbers, but she did recognize that those were numbers. She will also say "E, F, R" for letters. She's brilliant, I tell you!

I know all moms think their child is brilliant, but mine really is!

Christmas tree doin'?

We put up the Christmas tree yesterday afternoon. For the sake of my sanity and desire to not have to constantly tell Dillon to stay away from the tree, we chose to get a smaller tree which we have sitting on top of a small table. It's just high enough that she can see it well, but not get a good enough grip on it to pull it over on herself. Or get ahold of the ornaments. Dave did most of the work of putting up the tree, so it now known as Daddy's Christmas Tree. When she woke up this morning, she wanted to know "Christmas tree doin'?" "Umm, just sitting there honey." What else do Christmas trees do, exactly? Just wasn't sure how to answer that question. I'm sure it's just the beginning of many questions that she'll ask that I won't know how to answer.

We got about 3 inches of snow last night. It started snowing yesterday evening and we stepped out on the back patio to see it. Of course, then she didn't want to come in. "Walk in snow!!" We hadn't put coats on, so she was quite upset with me when we had to come in. It's tough to understand the danger of below freezing temperatures when there's all that fun stuff to play in! She was a little happier at being able to leave shoeprints on top of the picnic table and the grill then looking at them from the inside. It's just the little things that make the difference, I suppose. We went out again this morning before I had to leave for work. Bless her heart, between 2 layers of clothes, snowsuit, snowboots, hats, gloves and 3 inches of snow, balance was impossible. She kept falling down, then couldn't get herself up again. "Momma hold you!" she kept saying. Poor thing. She wasn't as upset at having to come in this time!

There's a newfound fascination with the toilet at our house. She drags a stepstool over to the toilet, puts her little seat up there and says "Diaper off!" As soon as she sits down there is a request for "wipee." Then a flush and another wipee request. And another flush. Sense a pattern here? The very vital part of this that is missing is the peeing part. Thus far, as far as she is concerned, the toilet is for sitting and throwing wipees in. Oh yeah, and for sticking you face in and declaring "Smells good!" For all the imitating she does, I'm going to give her full credit for thinking that one up all on her own!

C'mon Satch-o

She will stand at the back door and yell this outside. Sometimes she even does it when satchmo's not out there, at which time he stands there and looks at me like "what's with her?" She's even starting to be helpful with taking care of him. I can ask her to let Satchmo in and she'll open the door wide enough for him to get in. She knows that he gets a treat when he goes outside, so she starts dancing around say "Satch-o treat." While that sounds really sweet, what she really does is get the treat in her hand, then run off to a corner somewhere and put it in her mouth. It's easy to find her, though- it's whatever corner that Satchmo is also standing in. Eventually she'll hand it over, but often only once it has gotten positively disgusting and slimy. He doesn't seem to be too particular about it and will eat it anyway.


She's developing all these cute phrases that she uses- like "oh no! What happened?"
I guess I've said this to her a few times because she goes around saying it all the time! Anytime she falls down, anytime someone else falls down, anytime one of her babies supposedly falls down or falls over, they get an "Oh no!! What happened?" then a hug and a kiss. She also says "how cute!" or "how pretty!" fairly often as well. Dave was holding her up to the window earlier this evening and she could reach the curtain. She took hold of it to look at it and declared "How pretty!"
"Cuddle mamma" is a pretty popular one as well. She'll follow me around, especially if I'm trying to do something and say "hug mamma!" or "cuddle Mamma!" So, of course I do it happily, because, really, how do you resist that?!

Snow

Snow!!

We got about 1/2 an inch of snow this morning, so we did what all kids love to do-- played in it. This is really the first snow fall that she has any awareness of and she had a ball playing in it! At first she just kept walking around, looking at her footprints saying "walking snow?" Then I showed her how to make snowballs and throw them so they'd break. "Momma more!" she said. As further proof that she is her daddy's child, once the snow was more or less gone this afternoon, she kept saying "more snow, more snow." I assured there would be more and then some.

This evening I told her that it was time to go change her diaper and she said "No!" and ran and hid between the fridge and the dishwasher (we have a portable dishwasher) and giggled. She loves to get in between there and have me pretend like I can't find her. So, that's what we did- I'd find her and carry her back to her room. She'd jump off the bed, go hide in the same spot and yell "Find Dillon!" I'd look in the cabinets and in the dog treat jar and in the sink, all the while with Dillon absolutely squealing with laughter. Then, of course, a big production about finding her and carrying her back to her room to start the game all over again.

Once that game was fininshed, she laid on the bed with Dave and said "Daddy tired." She patted him on the back a few times, gave him a hug, kissed his nose and told him the kiss would "make it better."

Isn't she just the sweetest?!