I stopped doing monthly posts for Lydia because of the time and energy that it took, but also because she isn't changing as drastically as she has been for her first two years of life. However, I still want to catch all the things that she's been up to over the past several months. It's amazing to think about how much she's changed since she turned two - she is constantly saying new things and showing a new level of understanding of the world around her. Things have been a little crazy having a pregnant mama and a two year old battling it out over what we should do each day - but quite honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. She's smart, opinionated, adventurous, loving, and very very special. We absolutely love this girl.
Here are some things we've been up to this month/things I want to remember about Lydia at this age:
--She's getting so much bigger and mimicking everything that we do. We have to watch everything that we say (David called me Shantel a couple of times and Lydia started calling me Shantel as well, which I was
not okay with and nipped in the bud immediately), and everything that we do. It is a great reminder that she is always watching and internalizing everything. It's so fun though, and I love that she wants to be just like us.
--She's started potty training, pretty much on her own. We've tried to be very positive with her about the toilet and her bowel movements ever since she was a tiny baby, and letting her be familiar with flushing the toilet and such. Around June she started asking to sit on the potty, so we'd let her - but we were planning a big trip to Indiana in July so we didn't want to push it before we left. (Mostly we didn't want to have to deal with a half-potty-trained toddler on vacation.) However, she'd ask to sit on the potty and she went both pee and poop a number of times, as well as saying she needed to "go poop a'gin" right after she had pooped in her diaper. So we bought a little pink potty and mostly just let her get used to the idea. After our vacation, I was totally wiped out - exhausted. But she was still showing interest and I didn't want to miss the window of opportunity. After a day of taking her diaper off 50 times for her to sit on the potty, I decided that the next day we would start potty training. Three exhausting days of continually sitting on the potty and we were feeling pretty good. No accidents, she always knew when she needed to go and she'd sit down and go. But the problem was we don't really know how to transition that to wearing clothes/having a normal schedule. We've kind of backed off a little bit and are letting her go at her own pace (mostly because I'm exhausted), so we let her sit on the potty when she needs to and don't stress about when she forgets and goes pee in her pull up. She's getting better and better, and I'm hoping that the more laid back approach works for her.
--She's pretty much awesome at her letters and numbers. She can name all of the upper case letters and about half of the lowercase letters. She can also identify about 2/3 of her numbers and points them out on a regular basis.
-- The other day at the park, she was swinging and I asked her "How many pushes do you want". Usually she responds with "Three!", but this time she said "Five!" and as I started pushing her she started counting, but didn't stop at five - she went all the way up to ten, not getting any numbers out of order. I was so surprised and impressed with my smart little girl. She's pretty much a genius. (I took a video, but she wouldn't do it again - however the video ended up being incredibly cute so you should watch it.)
--She's never really been a "lovey" baby. She's never loved to cuddle or been overly affectionate. Even when we tried to teach her to give kisses, she'd just lean her cheek over to you like "Okay, you can give me a kiss," and her hugs consisted of her barely leaning into you. But lately she's gotten much more loving - sometimes out of the blue she'll come up to me and give me a real hug and say "I zove you, mommy." Melt. My. Heart. I'll give her a hug and tell her that I love her, too - and then she'll go back to playing... but I'm so grateful for those sweet moments of pure love from her.
--Lydia is also very polite. She says "Please" (Peese) when she wants something and "Thank You" (Dank You) if you hand her something. We often prompt her to say these things, but much of the time she'll just say them on her own. Sometimes though, she'll say Thank You for such little things that you can tell mean a lot to her - but it comes as a surprise to hear her verbalize it. Like, if she's upset that she spilled her water and I hand her a rag to wipe it up with - she'll say "Dank you Mommy" and my heart just melts. Especially when I'm not doing something particularly kind or helpful, just picking up a piece of garbage off the table or something - but she sees that I'm doing it and expresses her gratitude. We also encourage her to say sorry when she hits or throws a toy or something to that effect. But she'll often say sorry on her own for things that she doesn't need to be sorry for, but you can tell she's very sincere. Like, when she accidentally drops something. Or, if she spills something she almost always says"I'm sorry, Mommy" and then when I wipe it up she says "Dank you, Mommy". She's so sweet.
--Along the same lines, she's a very sensitive little girl. If you tell her to stop doing something, she stops and looks so sad. You can tell that her little feelings are hurt because she wasn't trying to be bad, she just didn't realize that bashing her grocery cart into the cupboards wasn't a good thing to do. She's really good at verbalizing her feelings (most of the time - frustration is still our hardest feeling). If she's happy, she'll say "I happy" or "You happy, mom." If she's sad, she'll say "I feel sad" and hang her head with the saddest little face and hunched shoulders. I try to encourage this behavior and talk about why she feels sad and what we can do to help her feel happy. Sometimes during the day she'll just stop in the middle of what she's doing and say "I feel sad", and when I ask why she feels sad, she'll say "Daddy go to work. (pause) I miss him." It's so sweet and so so sad.
-She still adores Carson but Elsie and Lydia have been getting along more and more. It's always been "Carson and Elsie, this. And, Carson and Elsie, that", but now it's often "Elsie and Carson" or even just "I want to play with Elsie." I love that they are playing more together - you can tell that they really love each other. Lydia says Elsie "Ellw-see" and Elsie calls Lydia "Na-na". We went to the Little River the other day and they walked around holding hands and playing together. It was so sweet to hear the little "Hold my hand, come with me"s from both of them.
--Lydia loves her dad and loves when he draws things for her. For the majority of the last three months she hasn't shown much interest in drawing herself, and would just bang the pen/crayon/chalk on the paper to make lots of little dots, but she's starting to draw scribbles and will tell you what she's drawing "I draw Mommy! I draw our house!" (Both things that David will draw as well.) She especially likes to have David, or me, draw things for her while she's sitting on the potty. (It works out because it helps her stay seated long enough to really finish her business.) One day I drew her riding a horse at the farm, and she asked me to draw Daniel Tiger riding a horse at the farm with her. It was cute that she asked for him by name - and now she often asks me to draw a recreation of that picture.
--She's so silly and laughs all the time. Oh, and she's still totally a social laugher. If we are laughing about something, she'll start laughing which only makes us laugh harder. (I say she laughs all the time, but that is to say- all the time when she's not pouting. She does that a lot, too. She has such a sad face.)
-She's still quite the climber and is pretty much completely fearless when it comes to heights and such. However, bigger kids make her pretty nervous and if there are a bunch of kids around she won't do things like go down the slide. Instead she'll climb up to the slide, get intimidated by the kids who are obnoxiously trying to cut in front of her because she's taking too long and then she'll try to come back down the stairs/ladder. It's not that she's scared to go down the slide - just that she's under too much pressure.
--She may be fearless when it comes to heights, but lately she's started getting really scared of loud noises. Even when the trains come by, which she has always loved, she'll get really scared and if I'm not right there she'll come running to me crying because of the train. I don't know what triggered the change, but you can tell she really is terrified. The same thing happens with trucks that drive by (or even cars that drive by). Really, any noise can be frightening to her. We are working on validating her feelings, but trying to teach her that she doesn't need to be scared of the train/truck/car.
--She is absolutely, positively, terrible at taking pictures. She used to look at the camera and give the sweetest smile - but now when I pull the camera out, she wants nothing to do with it. She'll ignore every attempt at a picture, including my shouting her name, trying to bribe her with candy, or "hey look and see what crazy thing dad is doing". We're pretty sure that we are never going to get a picture of her looking right at the camera again. Which is sad because she's SO cute. (The closest we come is to getting her to look at something over our shoulder - but she won't actually look at the camera.) And when I say sad, I mean- literally sad. Intense photo sessions usually end up with one of us in tears.
--This last month we moved her from her crib to her very own big girl bed. I referred to it as such when we first showed it to her, and now she calls it "my own bed". It's really sweet. The transition from her crib to her bed was actually fairly smooth. We set up the bed frame in her room while she was still sleeping in the crib and pretty soon she was asking to sleep in it. She'd say "That my bed, this baby's bed." So we moved her over and each night we'd tell her "Stay in your bed, close your eyes, and go to sleep." She doesn't always stay in it (more often than not, all of the books in her room would end up in her bed with her, as well as all of her hairbows, and all of her toys) but she doesn't come out of her room and she always ends up in her bed under the covers. She sleeps in it like a champ at night and in the morning she sits in her bed and calls to us until we wake up to come get her. Then she'll get out, but not before. We are still working on naptime, though. She'll just play and play in her room (not coming out of the door but not sleeping either), unless I put her in her crib. Most days we start in the bed and when I'm worried that she'll miss her nap if I don't intervene I'll come up and put her in her crib. She's started saying "that my nap (pointing to the crib) and that my bed". I think that we are going to have to move the crib out of her room soon so that she'll learn to nap in her bed but I'm scared of loosing that afternoon nap! Overall though, it's been an awesome transition and I'm grateful that she's done so well.
-She is such a good helper. We finally got ourselves into gear and as soon as we moved Lydia into a bed instead of a crib we used a wall mount kit to secure her dresser to the wall so she couldn't pull it on herself when she was playing in her room unsupervised. She wanted to help and did pretty much everything but the actual drilling. (When we put together her bed, she helped set in all of the screws and helped me with the screwdriver.)
--She loves this little bag that she got from her Indiana cousins. She loves to carry it around and fill it with all of her things. She calls it "my bag", which sounds funny written out - but it's so cute when she says it. She also has a little green fabric bag, like a mini reusable grocery bag, that came with her grocery cart/food and she loves to carry that bag around as well. That's known as "my green bag."
-- Background: I have a stuffed bunny rabbit from when I was a little girl and at one point it got pulled out of a box and Lydia saw it. We talked about how it was my special bunny, and it's kind of floated around a little bit since then. When we moved Lydia into her "very own bed", she did really well, but the first couple of nights she would wake up and be a little scared. One night, on a whim, I grabbed my bunny (affectionately known as Bunny Sue) and brought it into her room. I told her that it was mommy's special bunny and that she would take care of Lydia in the night for mommy and to just hold onto her if she got scared. It worked amazingly well, and it made my heart so happy to see her holding onto my sweet bunny. After a day or so, Lydia told me that Bunny Sue was my special bunny and that she wanted her special bunny. Then she proceeded to go downstairs and find a fuzzy purple bunny that my mom had given her before she had even turned one. She's played with that bunny and snuggled with it plenty before - but this day it turned into her special bunny and she loves it so so much. She sleeps with it and carries it around and reads books to it. One morning, she told me that she wanted to name her bunny. I believe the exact words were "My bunny. A name." So I asked her what she wanted to name her bunny, after a few minutes of thinking she said "Bunny Sue!" My heart was about to burst as I said "You want to name your bunny, Bunny Sue?" She said yes, and I asked "What is Mommy's special bunny's name?" She responded "Mommys special bunny, Bunny Sue, too!" Oh. so. sweet. I thought that maybe it would wear off, but she really does call her bunny, Bunny Sue. (For those of you who knew me when I was little, know that my Bunny Sue was very very special to me. She was my constant companion when I was little, and even when I was in high school I'd pull her out of my cedar chest after an especially hard day and cry and cry, using her ears to wipe my tears. I'm pretty sure that every single seam has been restitched and all of the batting replaced with cotton balls. It makes me so happy to know that Lydia has her own little Bunny Sue.)
-She loves chocolate. Really treats of any kind. We've tried really hard to limit her chocolate/treat/candy intake over her little life because we really wanted her to be exposed to real food first. We still do have limits, but we let her have a few things here and there: some candy from her parade treats, a cookie after dinner, a donut or ice cream cone from the store, a
giant piece of chocolate cake while out to eat with my family. Haha. We couldn't resist her face when we walked in and she saw the cake and said "choo-coo-laaaateeeee". We also made a cake to take to the Renchers house for dinner one night, and she'll often ask "Go to my cousins? Eat cake?" She's got a sweet tooth, that's for sure. We are just grateful that she's such a good eater anyway. (Other side note: we turned her forward facing in her carseat and now I can't eat any candy in the car because she sees it and demands some from me.)
--She loves to sing songs. Her favorites are "Sunbeam" (Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam), "Ball Game" (Take me out to the Ballgame), and "Raindrops" (If all of the Raindrops). She'll ask for them specifically by name. She also often asks for "The Bear Song" but we have no idea what that song is. Sometimes David will make up a song about a bear, or sometimes I'll just convince her to sing something different. I wish that we could figure out what the bear song is because she apparently really loves it. She will sing along to the songs we sing throwing out a few words here and there, but she wont do it for the camera, which is really too bad. She will also sing along to I am a Child of God and Teach Me to Walk in the Light.
--She is already turning into a stellar little Utah State Fan. Out of the blue (oftentimes to get a reaction from us) she'll say "Go Aggies!" We love it, and both respond with some Aggie cheers of our own and it makes her giggle. Whenever David wears a Utah State shirt, which is frequently, she'll say something to him about his "Aggie Shirt". She also has a cute Aggie shirt of her own that she will sometimes ask for by name. We are so proud of our future little Aggie-girl.
--One of the biggest things that I really want to remember about the last few months is her vocabulary. She's growing and learning so much. She has been calling the maple syrup on her pancakes "syrbit" for months and then all the sudden (like overnight) it was very clearly "syrup". Elephant went from "he-dent" to "el-fant". Fingers went from "svin-gee" to "vin-ger". Some of the things that she still says that I absolutely love:
- she calls bracelets "wrists",
-she calls dinner "nizzer".
-she's started calling her grandparents by name "Grandma/Grandpa Walker" and "Grandma/Grandpa Pea-bee",
-If you ask her if she wants to do something that she doesn't want to do, she'll say no thanks, but it sounds like "no dace". I don't know where she learned it, but it sounds so polite - I hope she never stops. In addition to this, when we ask her if she needs to sit on the potty she'll often say "No dace, I prob-ly fine." We can barely keep from laughing every time she says it. "I'm probably fine"- where does she come up with this?
-Whenever she wants to eat, she says "I want lunch." Doesn't matter what time it is.
We just love this girl and are grateful to have her in our lives. The other day my sister Jenna posted about her baby Camille and she said something to the effect of "By the end of the day I'm exhausted, but after I put her down to sleep I can't help but just look at pictures of her and think about how I miss her." This is how I feel so much of the time. She exhausts me, but after she goes to bed - all I want to do is tell David about all the sweet things she did/said that say. She's perfect for us.
