2 Years Old

As I look at my little sweetheart I cannot believe we’re already at 2 years old. I remember those first few months with her wondering how we were going to make it through the sleepless nights and crying spells. Somehow we made it through and before we knew it we have a little person who is beyond cute and is such a joy to have around.

It is amazing how much and how fast she changes. Her vocabulary and sentence forming skills have been exploding this past month. She is constantly talking – usually saying “Look at that, mommy!” She is so curious and eager to learn. She loves to explore and be free and play.

She is such a funny little girl. During choir practice or during the songs in church she'll wave her arm back and forth and try to conduct the music- quite a sight indeed! She loves when we play Mario bros because she wants to dance to the music and asks us to play almost every day.

Lately she is becoming more opinionated and sometimes defiant, as any 2 year old does. She’ll say “I said NO!” or give us a (very cute) little scowl, but a little time out or tickle attack can usually clear that up. Or we’ll just ignore her when she falls to the ground in frustration and she’ll come back around when she realizes that won’t work. It’s just your typical toddler stuff, but I appreciate that she turns it around when we tell her to. Overall she is such a happy little girl. I just spent 2+ hours in the hair salon and she was so quiet and calm (while playing with my phone) that a few of my former coworkers said they’d want a child that was as well mannered and nice as Lily.

We had a little birthday party with some of her favorite friends and it was a blast. Bubbles, balloons, and jumping on the bed provided all of the entertainment they could ever want. I know she felt so special and that made me so happy! She is now going around singing happy birthday to anything she sees. Yesterday she sang Happy Birthday Cream of Wheat :). For her birthday she got a bunch of “Tangled” merchandise
and she’ll sing songs from the movie while playing with her Rapunzel doll. 

I love this little girl so much and I’m so grateful she is in our care.

Sorry…Here comes a lot of pictures :)

Birthday party fun

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23 months and 3 weeks…

I can’t believe how incredibly fast Lillian is changing and learning. In the past week she has grown by leaps and bounds in her vocabulary and in how she puts together sentences. She is constantly asking “wha’s dis?” or saying “yook at dat, mommy!” whether we are at home or out and about. She is so curious and inquisitive and hungry to learn about everything she comes in contact with. It is quite funny sometimes to hear her try to repeat new words and not come even close. She also gets hooked on saying certain things for a while. For example, this past week she’ll look up at the ceiling and say “Yook at dat sky, mommy!” No matter how much we try to get her to say “ceiling” she won’t budge.  She is on this kick where she’ll clap and jump around non stop and sing a song, usually the ABC’s. She’s also started to say small lines from the movie “Tangled”- this probably is a bad sign but it’s so cute!

Here are some shots of her playing this past week

 

She wanted me to put the whole pack of clips in her hair

She was playing on the couch

She managed to get the whole 6 pack of undies on

                                 

What was I thinking…?

For some reason I was inspired to start potty training Lillian this last week. I don’t really know how it happened, but here I am rushing to the potty with her every time she signals and most of the time successfully helping her keep her little “Tangled” or Elmo undies dry. Maybe she wasn’t quite ready yet, because at first I felt like all I did was make her afraid to go to the bathroom either in the toilet or in her diaper. This being the case, I figured I might as well just keep up the training since she was proving that she is VERY good at holding it in and very aware of her little body’s signals. We get a lot of false alarms, mainly due to the fact that she enjoys putting toilet paper in the toilet and then watching as it is flushed away. I had started on Monday in the hope that by church on Sunday she would be a pro and I wouldn’t have to worry about her, but I followed her in nursery and kept her in pull ups just incase. Good idea, because I don’t think she had a clue when she had to go while she was running around with all of her little friends. I caught the “oh no” look from her from across the gym and rushed her to the bathroom at church that has only ONE stall (another discussion all together) and waited for it to be empty before realizing that it was already too late. So I think we’ll stick with pull ups while we’re playing away from home for now. There were a few tears shed ( from both Lily and I) this week, but I’m just so proud of my little girl. I can’t believe that we’re here already and that she will be 2 in a few weeks. Where have those years gone?

I’ll probably be killed for having this picture someday…

Almost 2

Lately you have been an extra fun little person to be around.  With so many expressions and words it is so much fun to interact with you. You seem to understand almost everything I am saying, which is just amazing to me. You definitely have a will of your own and know what you want.  I have to make sure the pantry doors stay closed so you can’t get into the food and so you don’t see all of the food I don’t want you to have- because once you see it, there’s no changing your mind. You have figured out little tricks that just melt our heart when you want to do something you know we will say no to. For example when you want to play with our phones you’ll turn them on and say “ta-da!!!” at the top of your lungs with the biggest smile on your face and hope that we’ll unlock the screen for you. You have gotten the concept of saying please when you want something, though you haven’t quite figured out why we still sometimes say no.  Every once in a while you’ll try to change our mind by pouting, throwing yourself on the ground (or just dropping your head to your chest) and instead of making a “hrumph” sound or letting out a sigh of frustration, you’ll blow a raspberry. Unfortunately for you that only succeeds in making us laugh :). And when that doesn’t work you sometimes try to throw a little tantrum but usually I can look you in the eye and explain that I can’t understand you when you’re whining and you’ll perk right up and ask for what you want- or we’ll just ignore the crying and you stop after about a minute. I can tell that we’re going to have a lot of fun as you get older! Poor dad won’t know what hit him ;).

Today in church you did the cutest thing! After our choir number finished and I was walking back down to our seat, everything was quiet and you said (at the top of your lungs) “Yay, mommy song! Yay mommy singing!” It was the funniest thing and I was so happy that you enjoyed it. You are such a little musical person. You dance and sing whenever you have the chance. Your favorite song is the ABC’s and you  sing that all day. I get a kick out of the fact that you make up your own words  to that tune sometimes. One day it was “auntie, auntie, auntie Jen”, and today it was “ goodbye mommy, goodbye mommy.” I hope you’ll share our love of music as you grow older. You also LOVE the movie Tangled and you ask to watch it every day, usually 2 or 3 times a day. Fortunately for you I have given in and we have watched it almost every day for the past 3 weeks. The best part is the fact that you sing along with the song at the end- and that I actually like the movie, so it doesn’t bother me to listen to it all the time :).

You are getting more independent by the hour. You LOVE to go up and down stairs and refuse to do so unless you’re NOT holding our hand. You want to run free and to be able to do things by yourself. I try to let you “off the leash” as much as possible. We have been spending a lot of time at the park with your friends Atlas and Parker and you love to go all over the place. I have stopped worrying when you take off across the lawn, since you usually come back :). I just love you so much and can’t wait to see what you do next!

Vocabulary

As we approach Lil’s 2nd birthday I’ve been trying to capture not only the words she’s using but, more importantly, how it sounds when she says them. At this point she’s a little parrot.  Most everything we say gets repeated back to us in some form, which is often quite amusing. Here’s a little list of the latest, most used, and cutest sounding words she’s using right now.

There you are= dah du ahh

When asking for help= I hep you?

Banana= ganana

Monsters= monkahs

Juice= duce

Strawberry= dah-do-we

Atlas and Parker (her little friends)= Ashy and Pocket

Binky/Plug= beeky or pwug

Please= peas

Goldfish= guhfish

Hello= hewwo

Piano= peeno

1-10= ohn, too, free, fohr, fi, sick, seben, eigh, ni, ten!

Bath=baf

Peanut Butter= buda buda

Eye brow= eye eye

I love you= I wuv you

Grandma/Grandpa= gwah-gwah

Hug= huggie or “Oh hug”

Porcupine= capu-kine

Football= foofall

Lap= yap

Basketball=ga-ke-bahl

When asking to watch her Elmo movie= DDD?

The letter W = dudda-boo, dah-boo-boo, or doo-doo-doo

 

I’ll add to the list if I hear/remember anything else in the near future.

2nd Christmas

This year we spent Christmas up in Idaho with Clark’s family. Due to work schedules we had to drive through the night to make it out there. The best part about that was Lily slept most of the way. When we arrived outside their house we checked our phones and were informed that it was a balmy 3 degrees outside. Lovely. Though that’s not too much different from the 60 degree highs we were experiencing at home, right? Anyway, I was only there for 2 1/2 days due to the fact that I had to be back home to manage the apartments. Even so, we had a nice little trip and got to enjoy Lillian’s second Christmas with lots of family around.

Last Christmas was fun with just the three of us but Lily was still a little unaware of what exactly was going on. This year was such a blast! About a week before Christmas we made the mistake of letting Lil open our gifts from my aunt and uncle and she quickly figured out that the presents under our tree also needed to be opened. With enough distraction, however, we kept our gifts safe. Christmas morning we woke up early to talk via Skype to my brother-in-law Van who is on his mission in Germany. We then went to church for a little bit and came home to commence with opening the presents. I am lucky enough to have a husband who always gets me wonderful gifts, but the best gift I got this year was being able to see my sweet little girl open her presents. She’s not quite to the stage yet where she wants to open every gift she sees or is unhappy that there’s not more. She’s at the perfect spot that she is simply tickled pink that she gets to discover and play with something new.

I was able to catch a few of these precious moments with my camera, the first of which being my favorite. Lily had just watched her cousin open a set with a baby doll and lots of accessories, the most important part being a little stroller, over which the two of them immediately began a tug of war. I let grandpa know that it was absolutely necessary to now open the baby stroller we had gotten for Lily before things got any worse. I grabbed my camera a little too late, so the picture is blurry, but I managed to capture the look of pure joy on Lily’s face as she realized that she too had her own little stroller. I don’t think I have ever seen her open her mouth so wide or for so long :)

 

I love how in this one she looks like she’s sneaking off with her own little treasure

 

Seeing Clark’s joy only added to the fun :)

 

Playing with her Elmo phone

 

Opening the blanket I made for her

 

Clark even took a turn behind the lens

 

Tuckered out after a fun filled morning

                          

And then finding something else to open…

                       

I’m so happy to have such a precious little girl who brings me such great joy.

18,000 ways to say I love you

So I’m not very talented when it comes to crafting. I can’t make a quilt and I can’t sew Lily any clothes. I’m not a painter and I can’t decorate cakes beyond getting the frosting from the jar to the cake. Probably a good thing because I’d waste too much time on that instead of actually spending time with my child. I did, however, find a pattern for a cross stitch blanket a few months ago and I decided I should make an effort to actually make something for my child. I have done enough cross stitching in my life to know that you don’t really need talent to make something, you just need patience and time. Lots of time.Time here, time there. Time when you should be cooking or cleaning or playing with your child or sleeping. I figured I could handle that but I severely underestimated how much time I really would need. Or  how much your fingers can bleed when pricked by a needle, or your toes, for that matter, when they are unintentionally  used to find the needle that has been lost in the carpet… Anyway, I ordered the blanket kit and it arrived in the mail just as we were leaving for my dad’s birthday party on September 24th.  I was very excited and got started on it that night when we got home. This is what it looked like when I just started (after adding all of the eyes, beaks, and other small details)

 

Being a stamped cross stitch blanket, all of the blue markings are there to show me where to go and I can wash them off when I finish. I went to work on this and worked, and worked, and worked. I’d say that on average I spent at least an hour a day, five days a week on this. Though most weeks it was 2-3+ hours, seven days a week. To be fair though, I was definitely distracted by the T.V., my daughter and husband, and duties from our apartment managing job during those long hours of stitching. Though tedious, it was rewarding to see the blanket coming along and the work helped distract me from the fact that Clark was usually working on homework…again. I had to be reminded at times that even though I was making this for Lily, she would probably appreciate me putting down the blanket and playing with her more. Lily even helped a few times. She loved to pull the needle and thread for me, most times pulling way too hard. I can say the best $0.99 I ever spent was on my needle threader! This blanket would have taken me years if I couldn’t have used that! Finally on December 18th- three months after starting my project, I tied off the last piece of thread and declared the blanket finished. A friend will help me sew fabric on the back to cover the backside of the stitching later, but all of my hard work was done :).

Here is a pic of Lily playing with it to give you an idea of the size of the blanket

 

Naturally, when I finished the blanket I had to count (approximately) how many stitches there are on the blanket to know just how many little x’s I stitched. Each of the 12 circles contains 282 squares of 4 x’s each, which came out to 13,536. The border contains about 4220 x’s. Adding in the thread used for the detailing and outlining, that comes to around 18,000 x’s on this blanket.

I hope Lily someday knows that those are 18,000 hugs, 18,000 bits of encouragement, 18,000 “I love you”s.  In a few days I’ll give this to Lily for Christmas, even though it’s not exactly a surprise. She has been watching me and using it to learn some new animals. My favorite of which is the porcupine, or in Lily’s words “cok-u-pime.” I would not be surprised if she opens this present on Christmas and quickly brings it to me and says “ Mommy’s blanket, don’t touch,” as that is probably what she heard most whenever trying to steal it from my working hands. To be honest, though, I’m kind of terrified of giving it to her fully. If she destroys it somehow I will literally cry. Knowing my little tornado of a daughter, that is a very real possibility, but I’m willing to take that risk