February 2009 update!

The latest gems: 'you guys' for us (mommy and daddy) like, 'hey you guys! come into the kitchen and help me', when asked if her other friends use the potty at school, she answered yesterday, 'they use the potty mommy, but they're big kids. i'm a little baby'. not long after that, when we got home, she wanted to sit in the front seat of the car. i let her and told her that she can't ride in the front seat until she's a big person like mommy-- 'i'm a little baby and a little bit of a big kid, too'. She told Andy recently that she wished his boobies could be bigger like Mommy's. Nice. She also, at pretty much every meal, sets some food for Wiley aside. When dividing her orange pieces-'one for daddy, one for mommy, one for Wiley, and one for Olive'. She's started to say who she'd like to come over-- usually one of her school friends-- 'I wish that Sasha could come over to our house and play' and then tonight 'I wish that Lucy could come over to our house by herself. I love Lucy! Do you love Lucy? Lucy is a little baby!' Lucy is probably a year and a half old. I think that Olive is very against the idea of using the potty-- and so she's really been into 'being held like a baby' and being put in the sling...we have a song that I 'wrote' that goes: Goo goo gaa gaa goo goo gaa gaa I'm a little baaaay-beeeeeee. She sings it all the time, and is really into getting put in the sling or being wrapped up and picked up post-bath to be held like a baby. A lot of her friends at school, and Wiley, too, have little siblings, and she's really erring towards wanting to be the baby- though she also is doing intense amounts of play with her baby and little baby. She put little baby and the lamby into a sling that Andy made for baby to wear. She makes her animals wear her other animals a lot.

On the flip side of that-- there's not a day when we go out in public that someone doesn't look at me like, 'did your kid just say that?' Olive's vocab is through the roof, and while every day is a surprise, I am so used to it that it's always fun to hear when other people respond to her. I guess things like, 'we need pomegranate juice and chocolate almond milk for our refrigerator' sounds pretty big for a 2 year old to say. She corrects her own grammar, which is wild-- and shows how incredibly close her attention is to detail with words. I asked her about looking in the mirror at school, what does she see? "I see myself, and Becca sees herself, and Sasha sees hisself....Sasha sees himself".

She is really into making a 'chicky egg' with daddy-- they get under the covers and cheep and peck then burst out of the covers. Lately she likes to sleep in the chicky egg-- now in her big twin bed on the floor, she really needs us to lay down with her until she's asleep (and often we are too...i got up at midnight out of her bed, got into ours, then when she said, Mommy? at 5 am, I got back in bed with her again. As she's falling asleep she'll want the sheet over head a la chicky egg to go to sleep. Tonight she said, "It's too hot in the chicky egg" and I agreed, so off it came.

Full test mode is on: she has that sparkle in her eye and I'll say something like, 'you do not drink the bath water. if you try it one more time i'm taking you out of the bath' and sure enough, twinkly eyes bring the water to her mouth, and I take her out saying, 'you wanted to see if I meant it and I did. You should not drink bath water, and you should listen to mommy'. Interestingly, that brought no tears. She seemed content with just seeing me do what I said I was going to do. It's hard to come up with quick consequences for actions she's doing that I don't really like for her to do, and even harder not to give in to 'one more book' since books are gold, or 'i'm not done eating yet' even though it's 5 minutes until I need to leave the house.

Things that need work--- She eats for about an hour for every meal. On the one hand it's great, but on the other hand, oh jeez, she's stillllllll eating when it's time to get ready to go to school/work, or she's stillllll eating when it's time to get in the bath or start the toothbrush/book/jammies routine. I'm glad she still eats pretty well (veggies are down to peas, corn, tomatoes, potatoes in tot or fry form with dip dip -- that's organic ketchup-- no hfcs, and then we find other foods that she'll eat for hours, usually keifer and fruit and oatmeal and sausage and cereal and scrambled eggs and ham and avocado and yogurt and orange cheese/cheddar, hard boiled eggs or shredded mozzerella, or homemade pizza, or kidney/pinto/black beans or pesto pasta, or applesauce, or cereal bars, or everything crackers, or bagels...things that are surprisingly out, but I guess it's from ODing are mac and cheese, green beans, and broccoli. I'm mainly surprised about the mac and cheese. Isn't that total kiddo food?

The other thing is her 9ish pm bedtime. Now that she's got a twin bed (mattress and boxsprings on the floor) we have to lay down with her, and so with her being at school all day, we both seem to let her keep going-- really because she's always ready to keep on playing full-strength each night...and that usually means dinner at 6:30ish, note above that dinner with O can take an hour, and see where this goes? We're already at 7 or 7:30 when bath begins, or the night routine, and we just seem to take out time playing as we go...finally after many books and a wiggly kiddo, she seems tired and we're able to really make bedtime happen.

Of course, it's now almost 10 and it looks like Andy has fallen asleep with her (as I did last night) since he's not in her yet.

AND- BIG NEWS- This week marks the first official time week where she's into pony tails! It's amazing, but she spent her first two full years sans anything in her hair ever, and I was able to support that, though the dreadlocks were getting pretty thick (I had decided that she was just going to be that 19 year old that comes back from her first year of college with dreds down her back) and she hates to get her hair brushed. I think as she gets older she may actually be a kid that is into hair...we'll see-- she's always loved playing with mine-- always stroking my face and brushing my hair with her hands-- even since she was tiny, she would hold onto my hair a lot. She also (with about 3 cries of 'i'm not sure about this!') let me clip all her nails as Andy read her Snoopy's Nature Book.

Favorite books right now include Elsa Beskow's The Sun Egg-- seems O has a crush on Larch. Totally cute, she says his name and gets all coy--- "Laaaaarch!"
See Inside Fairyland-- this is a tiny flap/peekaboo book that's totally totally great-- it's big and kindof long, but she has the words that are under the flaps memorized, like she'll say 'Come and buy my beautiful garlands!" when she lifts the one where the Goblin says that. Goblins are all bearded old cute things in this. There are 50 flaps, and I swear she knows what each one says, from "Playing catch can be sticky business' to "Shoo fly! Get out of my mushroom house!" I just read on their website that it's for five years and up. Oh really.