26 months

So what is my little toddler up to these days? Other than bringing a constant smile to my face?

She's very reasonable at this age. She very rarely has a temper tantrum. When she is beginning to get upset about something, I can almost always talk her out of whatever it is that is upsetting her. She was digging through my purse today and pulled out a pack of gum and brought it into the kitchen for me to see (instead of just eating the entire pack while I wasn't looking). I told her that she couldn't have a piece and she started getting upset. So I told her that if she puts it away, she might be able to have a little piece after her nap. She stood there with the gum in hand, thought about it for a minute, said "O-tay" and put the gum back. I think that's pretty reasonable for a 2 year old!

She gets herself out of bed in the mornings now.  It's quite possibly the cutest thing ever - we leave our bedroom door ajar and every morning at about 7:00, our door bangs open and we hear her sweet little voice say "Hiiiiiiii mama!  Hiiiiiiiii dada!" and then she proceeds to try to worm her way into our bed (along with all of her stuffed animals and blankie).   Love it.

She is very imaginative.  She loves to pretend to make us dinner and set the table and then pretend to feed us, or Lola.  Her newest thing is pretending that a jar has m&m's in it and then very excitedly eating the pretend m&m's.

She still loves to snuggle.  Oh, how I love to snuggle with her.  One of my favorite parts of our day is when she wakes up from her nap and I sit in her bed and hold her like a little baby and we can just stare at each other for hours.  She loves it when I hold her like a baby.  And I hope she let's me do it forever.

Potty training is still going great.  Her fear/anxiety of poop is gone, which is awesome.  Every couple of days, we still might have a little pee-pee accident, but as soon as she realizes that Elmo is wet, she gets very upset and runs to the bathroom to finish going.  And I thought that being out of the house and having to run errands would be the hardest part about potty training, but that is actually when she does best.  We have never had an accident while out and about, and this morning we ran errands for hours.  The most exciting thing for me was packing up all of her cloth diapers yesterday and putting them away in storage.  Yes!  I loved saving the earth and everything, but I'm not gonna lie about how excited I was to be done with cloth diapers!

(please try to ignore the fact that Marc is wearing socks with flip-flops - not sure what was going on there)

Oh - the concentration!

So somehow, my little baby has turned into this little person that is full of emotions and opinions and love and attitude and everything else.  And I'm loving every minute of it!

Little Suzie homemaker

She could spend hours a day playing with this little kitchen.  It was given to her by one of my 1st grade students, which I think is really sweet.

Hmmmm, should I try eating this?

This afternoon wasn't just all about playing in the kitchen though.  Her buddy Claire stopped by for a visit too!  It may not look it from their expressions, but everyone was having fun in this wagon ride, trust me!

After the wagon, Poppy was so proud to show Claire how she can go pee-pee on the potty, and then Claire taught Poppy how to jump on her bed.  Good times!

4th of July

Check out her new bad-ass Sleeping Beauty sunglasses.  They are way too big for her and they always fall off within a minute, but she just loves to wear them.

So we spent the 4th down by the river hanging out with the fam.  Poppy had a blast playing with her cousins and staying up waaaay past her bedtime.

She loved the fireworks and pretended to catch them and share them with us.  As much as she loved them, she was barely awake by the time they were finished and then fell asleep within minutes of the car ride home.

At the farmer's market...

is where you can find us just about every Saturday morning.

And our little scavenger goes from stand to stand trying to see how much food she can get.

Pre- Fourth of July bbq...

Hoping she'll be able to stay awake for fireworks tomorrow!

{talking to dada on the phone while watching The Little Mermaid after nap}

So we have some very good news and some very traumatizing news to share on the potty training front.  I'll start with the good.  We no longer use the timer at all because she tells us when she has to use the potty and her underwear stayed dry all day today- including during her 4 hour nap ordeal (2 of the 4 hours were spent singing and playing in her room when she should have been sleeping).

And if you have a weak stomach, you might just want to skip this next part:  I think she's been having anxiety about pooping on the potty.  She's only been going every other day, which is very unusual for her, and when she does have to go poop, it turns into a long ordeal that involves about 20 trips back and forth to the potty before she finally goes.  So we basically just let her do her thing and take her time and we try to not make a big deal out of it.  When Marc got home from work today, she said she had to go poop, and so the ordeal began of running to the potty, taking her underwear off, not wanting to put them back on, getting off and on the potty, taking a break to go play, etc.  So at one point, I was in the kitchen doing the dishes, Marc was upstairs and Poppy was playing on the first landing of our stairs (sans undies).  And then we heard "Oh no!  Poop!!!!  Poooop!!!"  By the time Marc saw her at the top of the stairs, there was a trail of poop (including one big poop) going up the stairs.  He rushed her to the potty and called for me.  I made my way through the staircase of poop and went to the bathroom to clean her up while Marc went back to the stairs to clean the poop up.  But when he got to the stairs (literally 2 seconds later), the poop was gone.  And Lola was sitting at the top of the stairs licking her chops.  I seriously thought Marc was going to start crying.  And I have felt nauseous ever since.  And Lola is acting like she just had a feast.  And from now on, we're going to make sure Poppy keeps her undies on.

On a much lighter note, this is how Poppy was walking around the house this morning:



She's carrying a shopping bag, Baby Doll, and she put her camera (or her 'cheese' as she likes to call it) in her underwear.  Smart and resourceful.

Sickling.

The baby is sick today.  Last night she was fine at dinner, but by the time she went to bed she was a mess.  It's just a cold, but I've never seen anyone get as congested as she does.  She was up all night long too.  Hoping tonight goes a little better.

I made my little sickling a big bowl of seaweed soup for lunch.  (I have a Korean cookbook that claims seaweed soup cures a cold.)  She ate the whole thing, so hopefully it works!