Toddler Time

I started to write this a couple weeks ago, and in all the fuss over our newest kid, I'd hate to forget to update everyone about our first-born, now 2 years and 3 months. These are some of the things she's doing or, as she would say, "doozing." Or "duding."

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Our daughter's becoming quite the negotiator.

"I thirsty. I need chocolate milk."
"How about smoothie instead?"
"How about chocolate milk?"
"Don't you want some smoothie instead? You already had chocolate milk today."
"How about chocolate milk?"
"How about white milk?"
"How about chocolate milk? How about chocolate milk? How about chocolate milk? How about chocolate milk? How about chocolate milk? How about chocolate milk?"

Guess who got chocolate milk.

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Our daughter really wants to be able to read. She pages through her books, "reading" as best she can, which for her means either repeating what she can remember or summarizing what's going on in the pictures. Sometimes, though, she gets really frustrated because "I don't know the magic words!"

That's right kids: reading is magic.

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She's also very musical. She lets us know that "I wanna play song on the pinot [piano]." And then she'll happily bang away on it just about as long as we'll let her. And then she'll pause and say "That's a good song."

Not content to be just an instrumentalist, she also loves to hear us sing songs and to sing them herself. One of her favorites to sing is "Tink-o, tink-o yitt-in star. How you... what you are." Recently, she mastered both verses of "You Are My Sunshine," and she'll bust them out pretty much any time. "You'll never know, dear, how much I love you."

She doesn't get to watch a whole lot of TV, but one show she's discovered by way of Netflix Instant Streaming is Timmy Time (it's a spin-off of Shaun the Sheep, which was a spin-off of Wallace and Gromit, which she also enjoyed). As much as anything about the show, she loves the theme song, which she sings any time the mood strikes: "Timmy maa it's Timmy maa." (Here's the original)



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She's started calling everyone "somebody." For instance, we were at the home of some friends and their 4-year-old, with whom she'd been playing, fell asleep on the couch. "Somebody go to sleep."

It can't adequately be reproduced in text, but she gets so excited when something is given to her: "For me??" she squeals in delight.

And for some time now, she's been so very independent, demanding to do things "all by myself." Until she finds she can't do it herself. "I need help." Usually, we could have told her that ahead of time, but experiential learning is the way, right?

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When we moved to the house we're in, we put the carpet remnant we'd had in our living room into our basement. Finally, here over spring break, I got that area cleaned up and in a fit condition for our daughter to play in. Now she's obsessed with playing in the basement. Literally, she will go to sleep demanding to go play in the basement and then wake up wanting to play in the basement before she's even eaten breakfast.

The funny thing? When she's actually down there, she doesn't play so much as she follows around mom or dad as we further tidy up the basement. But hey, if she's having fun, who are we to question her choices?

She's also loving the spring weather and the chance to go outside. Her favorite thing is to blow bubbles, but she also enjoys the sidewalk chalk and her sandbox (which is a water table filled with sand). For that matter, though, she seems pretty happy following me around while I do yard work, too. She's not really picky.

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At the end of many days, as we've put her to bed, Lauren has asked her "What did you/we do today?" Sometimes she can remember what she did and sometimes not, but recently she's starting asking us "What we do today?" at bedtime. Every day. Sometimes twice a day, including naps! Scratch that, five times a night, even after we've gone through the whole day.

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The community Easter Egg hunt went well. She got her fair share of eggs, even if an older kid did swoop in and snipe the last egg she would have gotten. The picture with the Easter Bunny went much better than sitting on Santa's lap. Neither of them cried even a little.