24 Months Old

Two whole years. I still can't believe it.

Lane continues to seem like she's becoming a little girl, as opposed to the whiny, needy toddler that she has been. She's still needy, don't get me wrong, but she's just seeming to...grow up...a bit more every day. She is quite the joy, and quite the work as well!

At 24 months (and 6 days) old, Lane:

*continues to get better and better at playing pretend. She likes to "cook" in her kitchen, brings me and Shannon food or drinks, gets bites of pretend food and feeds it to Elmo or other dolls/animals, and so on.

*is learning new words almost every day. I'll never forget about a week ago when she was on the potty and just started saying "yes" and "no," working out the sounds until she was saying them correctly and then repeating them over and over again. It was amazing and hilarious. Some new words this month (I'm sure I'm forgetting some) are: black, backpack, hi, hello (sounds like "yellow"), I, two, nine, bye-bye (bye-bye-yuh), spaghetti (pa-geh-ee), please (peeze), yes (yesh), no, doll, m, love (wuhve). She can also say correctly the letters B, E, I, and O. We haven't taught her any more sign language, but she still uses the signs she knows, accompanying them with speech if she can say that word.

Sitting on the potty!

*is showing signs of being ready to potty train. We've been letting her run around the house without pants on a lot of the time and most of the time if she needs to pee she'll say "poo-pa" (we're still not sure what that means...peepee, poopoo, or potty?) and we'll all run off to the bathroom and she'll pee in her potty. She's had a couple of accidents, but only a couple. She is not interested in pooping on the potty though and will wait until nap or bedtime, delay it for hours (getting up, saying she needs to "poopa," not going, and so on), finally go in her diaper, and then fall asleep. We'll probably start "officially" potty training her in a couple of weeks, at least for awake periods of time.

*is 34 inches tall and weighs 25.25 pounds. We've all been to the hospital way too much in the past two weeks, once for her 2-year checkup, again for her Hepatitis A shot (she was sick at her 2-year checkup so I didn't want her to get any immunizations then), and again for nursemaid's elbow. She's actually gotten nursemaid's elbow three times now (once in November, I think, once last Thursday, and again this past Tuesday). On Tuesday when it happened I managed to fix it myself...how sad is that, that I've watched doctors fix her arm enough that I can do it myself now? Sheesh.

Just readin' a book.

*is getting better at letting us brush her teeth (she needs to be since she's getting so many cookies for peeing in her potty!). The trick that finally worked?: let her hold a toothbrush while Shannon or I brush her teeth, then let her brush them. She hasn't shed a tear yet with this method.

*holds up two fingers and says "two" when we ask her how old she is. She can also hold up either one or three fingers, but doesn't know the numbers that go with them.

*loves the color blue. I think it's mainly because it's one of the only colors she knows how to say, but she only wants to eat out of her blue bowl, drink from her blue cup, and wear blue diapers. It's quite comical.

My happy girl at the aquarium on the last day of her second year.

*is just plain funny. She was carrying a pretend cupcake on a plate last night and as the cupcake would tip over she'd stop and put it back upright before continuing on her way. She also likes to blow zerberts on our bellies, gallop around the house, jump down stairs (while holding onto one of our hands), or just jump down the hallway.

*is still fascinated with farm animals and the song "Old MacDonald." She still bounces animals (or other things) in front of us to indicate she wants us to sing Old MacDonald with whatever animal she's showing us. It's really funny when she bounces, say, Elmo in front of us. What does Elmo say? So we sing Old MacDonald with all sorts of weird animals: alligators, giraffes, seahorses, elephants, frogs, and all the normal animals, too. Pretty much if it makes a sound at all, we sing Old MacDonald with it.

*loves a couple of new books this month: Llama, Llama, Red Pajama and A Potty for Me.

Christmas jammies, a crazy ponytail, and a fake smile.

*has started asking us to pray at random times for people: baby, mama, dada, and all the grandparents. She folds her hands and then says who she wants to pray for.

*is pretty obedient most of the time. The things she gets spankings for the most are: hitting and/or kicking us (usually when she's upset that she's getting a spanking for something else), screaming, or just being plain disobedient. She pitches a fit sometimes, but generally speaking she's good and obedient, and most of the time if she's pitching a fit it's because she's tired and needs to go to bed.

And there you have it. Parenting is a lot of work, but it really is just all worth it. Even when I want to pull my hair out just one look at Lane's big, hazel eyes and curls falling around her face will cause me to stop and be so thankful for her. Where else can you get a giggling, squealing ball of energy tugging you to go play with her or blowing zerberts on your belly?

***Sorry for the lack of photos...it seems that taking pictures has not been very high on the priority list these days...***