Wow, it is hard to believe that there will only be one more monthly post for Elise before Jack arrives! This has certainly been a challenging month for us with the whole potty training fiasco and the simple fact that she is a two-year-old. Here's hoping that next month goes a lot more smoothly!
Sleeping: She's still sleeping and napping well. She sleeps for about 12 hours at night and 2-2.5 hours for her nap. I'm still playing around with the right time for nap and bed since daylight savings time. She always falls asleep quickly for naps, but for bedtime, sometimes she's asleep in a few minutes and other times she talks happily in her crib for up to an hour. The routine goes the most smoothly if we get ready for a nap right after lunch and get ready for bed right after dinner. During the potty training, she started waking up at night when she needed to pee and letting us know about it (and insisting on a trip to the bathroom and a new diaper). Thankfully, now if she pees in the middle of the night (I can hear her stirring over the monitor), she goes right back to sleep. Though, as soon as she pees in the morning, she is standing up in her crib and ready to be changed. She used to stir and go back to sleep or stir and talk in her crib for a while, but those days were gone as soon as we attempted the potty training. It takes us a little more effort to get her settled down before she goes to sleep. We used to just read books, pray, and lay her down, but now we have to make a few trips to the bathroom (she doesn't want to sit on the potty though... just an excuse to not go to bed yet) and distract her with a choice of blankets before we lay her down.
Eating: She's still a very good eater and this was has not been affected by potty training or the onset of the terrible twos. She is picky about meat but will still eat a good variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, cheese, beans, etc. She's become a big fan of yogurt lately and that is almost always her afternoon snack. Here is a sample "menu" of the foods that she ate yesterday. You will notice that these are all "a la carte" things... she still won't eat exactly what we eat, but she will eat parts of what we eat. For example, we had sandwiches and salads for lunch, and she got a bunch of the salad toppings, sliced cheese from the sandwiches, and leftover sweet potatoes from the night before. For dinner, we had spaghetti with egg noodles, asparagus, and rolls, and she ate the plain egg noodles, asparagus, roll, and leftover black beans. It doesn't take much extra effort on my part to set a few things aside for her as I am preparing meals.
Breakfast:
strawberries
blueberries
dry cereal
yogurt
Morning Snack:
raisins
Lunch:
sweet potatoes
pecans
cheese
cucumber
yellow bell pepper
Afternoon Snack:
banana
walnuts
Dinner:
black beans
egg noodles
asparagus
small roll
I am definitely glad that I introduced her to a bunch of different foods and tried to maintain a good variety before she entered this stage. It seems like she is picky about EVERYTHING except food, so hopefully we will bypass the picky eating stage that is so common at this age. I will certainly make the same effort with Jack. Now, this doesn't mean that she doesn't have an opinion about what she eats... she definitely does... but if it is time to eat and I put a plate of food on her tray that is made up of several different things that she is familiar with, we don't have any issues. I learned a while back not to ask "What do you want to eat?" unless I really didn't care what she answered. I also don't ask "Do you want ___ today?" because the answer is almost always no, whereas if I just put it on her plate without asking, she will eat it with no problems. If I want to give her a choice, I have to say "Do you want ___ or ____?"
Personality:
It is very interesting to see her personality develop. She is:
-not adventurous (doesn't like to try new food, do new activities, play with new people, etc)
-caring (she gets very concerned when she hears someone cry or sees someone get hurt and wants to give them something to help them feel better)
-stubborn (as evidenced by the potty training and the fact that she wants EVERYTHING to match... dishes and utensils, bows, clothes and even the cloth diapers!)
-funny (she knows what will make us laugh and says the funniest things)
-imaginative (she loves to pretend)
Big Sister Readiness:
She definitely understands that there is a baby coming soon and that he is in Mommy's tummy. Based on her comments, we can tell that she isn't just reciting memorized answers to questions, but she really believes there is a baby in there. We never modeled any pretending to her with the baby, but she initiates doing things like feeding him milk from her cup (by putting it next to my belly button), picking out clothes for him to wear, pretending to take him out of my tummy to put him in his car seat or in the stroller, changing his diaper, etc. She will tell us that she dreamed about him and will ask what he is doing. This definitely doesn't mean that the transition will be easy, but I don't think she's going to be surprised when "Baby Gak" comes home. In fact, she often comments that she can see my tummy and that it is very big. A few weeks ago, she was going a little crazy before bed and I was trying to get her to calm down, so I randomly asked her if she had talked to Baby Jack that day. She pulled up my shirt, kissed my belly button, and said "Goodnight Baby Gak, I love you!"
Learning/Playtime:
She loves listening to music and reading books. She isn't into many toys right now, which is quite frustrating sometimes. Most of the time, she would rather sit in her booster and watch me make food instead of play by herself. She climbs into her booster and buckles herself in, which is really nice for me. I hear some variation of "Mommy, I really want to hold you for a few minutes" at least 50 times a day. She requests songs by name and will occasionally sing along with them. She loves all books and is content to sit with one of us and "read" for a long time. She is recognizing more and more words and will "spell" them for us as she looks at the word... capital words, lowercase words, mixed words, it doesn't matter. She is pretty good at spelling short words without skipping letters but if it is a long word, we usually have follow the word with a finger as she spells it so that she doesn't skip letters. I think the longest word that she has spelled without me pointing to each letter is "orange". I need to get this on video.
She does like to pretend and has a vivid imagination. She will chatter away and carry on one-sided conversations with Boss, Baby Cookie Monster, her Duplo people, and Lucy (her doll). I really need to get this on video because it is so funny!
She also started rearranging things to form letters or shapes. The first time she did this, I was really confused as to what she was doing since we have never modeled it for her. That time, she took a board book and made an "L", a "Y", and a "T" by opening it and bending the spine backwards to reposition the pages. Today at lunch she rearranged her kiwi pieces to form a diamond and then attempted an octagon. I do have a good video of this that I need to download and post.
She has learned several Bible verses and I just bought her
this book to give me some direction on which verses to teach her because she is so willing to learn right now. Our church does a new verse in the preschool program every month, but she picks up on it very quickly (waaay more quickly than the class of 3-4 year olds that Mike and I teach) and I think we might try to do a verse each week at home. Hey, it would be good for me to do too :)
Potty Training:
I did a few previous posts on our potty training experience that I am not anxious to relive by retyping here so I will just briefly summarize where we are at right now. We're back in cloth diapers. I refuse to buy another box of diapers because I feel like one day she's going to wake up and decide that she's ready to go on the potty again. I did buy a few
new cloth diapers that fit her better than her old ones, but I'll be able to use them for Jack or at nighttime so it isn't a waste. The new ones are also easier for me to send with her to church or the in-home daycare that I take her to when I have an appointment. After about a week of not sitting on the potty at all, she has initiated sitting on her little potty several times (hasn't done anything on it, but has at least overcome the "I don't want to sit on the potty" phase). She wears panties around the house sometimes and has always kept them dry, but will ask for a diaper when she needs to go.
Funny sayings:
(after thinking she needed to poop and going to the potty but just tooting... sorry for the extra information)
E: "I need to flush my toot!"
Me: "Elise, you are too cute. Who else thinks you're cute?"
E: "Jesus!"
(flipping through her little pink Bible in the car... doesn't have pictures, just text)
(points to a page)
E: "Look! There's John 15:12!" (one of her memory verses from church)
(puts the Bible back in it's box and puts the lid on)
E: "I cover the Bible. It is warm now."
(sitting on the couch in need of a new diaper)
Me: "Elise, do you want to go see your new blue diaper?"
E: "Mommy, I would like to watch a movie."
Me: "No, let's go try on your new blue diaper."
E: "Mommy, I would like to watch a movie I said. Mommy, I SAID I would like to watch a movie!"
(runs into the kitchen when she hears Mike open the freezer to get out some M&Ms)
E: (in a very playful tone with a playful smile) “What are you doing, Daddy? Don't eat that, Daddy!"
