Molly: A "Toddler" with Attitude

Things have really taken a turn toward "toddlerdome" recently.

I know, you're thinking "walking?".  No.  Better, but no.  I've started having her walk everywhere holding one of my fingers so she can see how lovely it is to be able to carry things and move.  It takes us ~37.48x longer to do everything but in just a couple days of doing that she now wants to walk more and has been taking more "risks".  I think she has two primary problems: (1) She has super narrow feet  and they're attached to a tall spindly little body and (2) She keeps trying to RUN everywhere.  When she absentmindedly walks slowly from one place to another she does fine.

She has started to throw some truly delightful temper tantrums.  

She is refusing to eat many things.  Pretty much every vegetable and every meat.  Ham being the exception.  She loves eggs though and quesadillas...and you can hide a lot of things in those.

We try to use a spoon and a fork with every meal now.  She'll normally give it a great effort and be marginally successful before she either starts using her hand or asks me to help her.

Since we got back from Minnesota she has slept at least until 7:30am 6 times.  That is 66% of the time!  I've held off mentioning this because I thought I might break the mojo of it.  Which I might but it is so exciting that I couldn't leave it out.

She's still doing two naps a day though these are getting shorter and shorter.  I'm very interested to see how she ends up going down to one nap.  I thought maybe we were drifting that way when she start fighting me to go to nap.  (By fighting I mean throwing a temper tantrum when I say "nigh nigh" and carry her upstairs.  But then as soon as I get noise on and lights off she just lays down and goes to sleep.)  We tested the waters recently by waiting longer to go down for nap and see if she slept longer.

No, she didn't.

If we transition to one nap and she still only sleeps for a hour...I will lose my mind.

She has gotten really great at communicating what she wants - mostly through pointing and using her typical sounds.  Her words include, "outside", "hot", "mama", "dada", "more", "dog", "cheese", "shoes", "icky", "key", "juice", "teeth".

Books are back!  There was quite the dry spell there for a while.  Every time I tried to read to her she would close the book and say "all done".  (O yea, she can say "all done" too)

Now, her fav is "Brown Bear, Brown Bear".  We don't actually read it though.  We flip though the pages and point at the animals and make their noises.  But, shortly after we started getting through that one, she has developed more patience for others.  Her peekaboo baby book is really fun, as is her Monsters Inc flip book.  Yesterday she let me "read" our LMNO Peas book, and in the car she's been keeping herself occupied with Dr. Suess' The Nose Book.

Molly has been loving her piggies.  She has requested them for the last few days whenever we're getting dressed and this morning she wanted me to put them in the moment she got out of bed.

She loves being helpful and gets pissed at me when I do things without her.  She wants to help throw everything in the garbage.  She wants to help me with laundry (she helps we throw things into the washer...then helps me throw things into the dryer...then hands me clothes to fold out of the basket.)  She insists on wiping her own face and hands and tray before me.  I have to pretend to be "double checking" what she did ("Let Mama see, did you miss any?") to prevent a fit.

She likes to help clean up her toys, open and close the garage door, open and close my purse, pay for anything.

She hands me all the groceries from the cart as I scan them and insists on handing me the toilet paper when I'm going potty.  (Implied...she insists on joining me in the bathroom.  Every.  Single.  Time.)

And, she now wants to brush her teeth all by herself.  (All the dentists just crossed themselves.)

We've got so many big plans coming up the next fews weeks.  A trip to Put in Bay, Nana is visiting, a trip to Cincinnati, going to watch Nancy's Ninja's in Chicago's Komen walk, and a trip up north for the first time...

Listing those out made me nervous at how fast summer is flying by...

What am I going to do with this outside baby during the winter?  Ryan claims you can still play outside in the winter, but I don't believe it.  I'll freeze my butt off.

Though hearing "Mama, ousii", "Mama, Shooes", "Mama, ousii" over and over and over again may change my mind.