Little Miss at 2yrs 3 mths

It’s been a little while since I have written an update about our gorgeous girl and she is changing so much all the time so I thought it was about time I did. I know that even in just a few months time she will be different again so I do want to try and capture her funny little ways as best I can.IMG_20170122_195901_828

She is really starting to grow into a little girl now while also still being very much a toddler. As an example, for along time now she has eaten everything with her hands. And I mean everything. I have never seen anyone eat soup using their hands quite so efficiently as she does. It is obviously a mess fest though so I have to admit to being massively relieved that she is now using forks and spoons a bit more. She still uses her hands a lot but there is a lot more cutlery being used.. And she’s starting to dislike her hands being so filthy which I see as a positive change! PhotoGrid_1485107527519

Another sign of her growing up is obviously her speech and how that really seems to be improving all the time now. I wrote an update recently and there’s been a lot of development even since then. It can be hard to quantify it but there’s a lot more sentences and a lot more that we can understand.

Until very recently she was a bit obsessed with jigsaws or “a di” as she put it. She’s brilliant at them and the ones we have done about 5000 times she can do by herself, even sort of 24 piece ones, and one of the 48 piece ones she is brilliant at.

Her obsession recently though has moved onto an Usborne “find the duck” book. Hubs and I both remember these books from childhood so we got it when Monkey was little, he loved it and now it is very much LM’s turn. She loves looking for the duck. “duh, waryou” (duck, where are you?) “dere” “down do” (there, found you.) It’s a brilliant book for her as it gives her a great opportunity to grow her vocabulary. We ask her what something is, or we say a word and ask her to find it. She doesn’t always get it but that’s the point as it’s about learning, but she surprises us a lot with what she finds. Her favourite things to point out on every page (other than the duck) are “a mama” “a daddy” “a baby” “a gur”(girl) “eeow” (as in miaow/cat) . Though I must admit I wasn’t 100% happy when she pointed at the picture of sumo wrestlers and said “mama”… must be because their hair was up in a bun or something….must be …(I am going to keep telling myself that rather than it being the wobble that made her think of me hahaha). PhotoGrid_1485107932961

“Daddy” is her favourite word because he is without her favourite person. It is the word she says most throughout the day, from the moment she wakes up in the morning and she is generally who she would choose out of mummy and daddy. I try not to mind (sob! Only joking it’s quite nice at times actually haha) but it can be tricky when Hubs is working from home and she can’t understand why he can’t play with her.

Her other favourite person is our friend Susie, though she calls both her and her little girl, A, “cha” no matter how much I try to get her to say their names! She loves “cha” though and again prefers her to me if we are out and about together.

She’s starting to get some of the other family names, though she doesn’t call her brother by his name, as she just calls him brother. Or rather “cujjer” or “cugga” or “bujjer.” She knows Pops is “poh” but Granny, Granddaddy and Nanny all seem interchangeable with a vague “gaga” word. She has said “nana” but actually uses that as another version of “mama” most of the time rather than for Nanny. She knows Uncle Paul as “uh po” and Uncle Mark as “uh ma” though she’s not there with any of the aunties or Uncle Andy, and Uncle Simon is also referred to as “uh ma” lol.

Some of her other favourite sayings are related to an activity she loves. She adores climbing onto a step “deh” to “push a buhuh” (switch the light switch.) She absolutely loves doing that, so we have a lot of side lights on to avoid being plunged into darkness whenever it takes her fancy!

She also has a couple of games that she loves. One where we pretend to be asleep and she kisses us (or jumps on us) to wake us up. Hearing her fake snoring as an instruction for us to start playing is so cute, as is her kissing us and saying a version of time to get up “ah geh uh.”

She also adores hide and seek and loves covering her eyes (though sometimes she forgets and covers her mouth instead haha) and counting “ee, bah, duh, two” while we hide. She does actually know and says a version of all the numbers 1-10 but so far not when counting for hide and seek lol. She also likes it when we cover ourselves in a blanket and pretend to be a ghost “a go!” she loves that game and telling anyone else in the room about the ghost. As you can see here.

For all that she seems to be growing up, she’s still very much a toddler and is just so clumsy. I love this video of her playing the sleep game with daddy. I’d watched it for a bit and it was so cute but as soon as I started filming she started to get distracted and kept falling over, which is just amusing in itself! (after this I managed to capture it on film properly, in one of the videos above.)

She also loves spinning round endlessly until she is massively dizzy (don’t all kids though?) and has recently begun to love her Daddy’s old cuddle dog Dougal “Dougah wuh wuh” (wuh wuh being what she calls all dogs, as in woof woof) much to Monkey’s disgust as he normally lives on his bed. A few arguments about that as a result but that’s siblings for you isn’t it!? She does adore her brother though especially bossing him around! PhotoGrid_1485108816155

I’ve stuck to mostly positives so far but she is a toddler so obviously has a lot of tantrums. When she’s hungry or tired and cranky and is easily frustrated, and ooh she can be a diva when she doesn’t get her own way. She eat well but only with things she knows she likes. Try and get her to eat something new and she will just scream until you let her down from the table, and even then sometimes. Sometimes she gets upset and even though we have a lot of words she doesn’t always know how to use them so we have screaming and we don’t know why no matter how much we ask… Which is frustrating all round I think. We are getting there though which is a positive and at least we have yes and no which helps a lot of situations.

Back to some positives, she has started to like having her photo taken and shouting “cheese” with a smile which I adore,and helps us when taking family piccies :). I also love the fake laugh she has developed when she tries to join in with the rest of us laughing, even though she hasn’t got a clue what is actually going on! PhotoGrid_1485109113755

She naps most days though not every day. A while ago I thought she was done with naps but if anything she seems to need them more again at the moment. She has a day with no naps then 2 days with naps and I basically play it by ear as to what we are doing and how she is acting.

She loves a bit of painting (though can drive me mad when she gets frustrated by it and I can’t work out why) and loves playing with lentils and cloud dough. I’m not always great at messy play but I do think it is important so try to do that for her. She’s brilliant with duplo and lego actually and does some great building as well as playing imaginatively with them. She really loves the duplo animals we have, especially the “girar” (giraffe), she adores him. She also loves playing with her babies, putting them to bed and giving them a bath. She doesn’t like any toys to wear clothes for some reason…. . She likes feeding all of her animals and toys and loves the little teaset her Granny has at her house and feeding all her dollies and all of us with the tea and biscuits there.PhotoGrid_1485109613140

She loves her pyjamas at the moment and really hates getting dressed in the morning – she would definitely rather be in her pjs all day!

She hates being cold so I have to layer her up a lot when we go out. She’s getting better at wearing her mittens outside, sometimes she still takes them off but we haven’t lost any for a while which makes a nice change as earlier in the winter I was losing them all the time as she would just take them off and discard them without me realising.

She loved seeing the brief flurry of snow we had and the wonder on her face when we went out in coats and pj’s was really magical 🙂PhotoGrid_1485112010018

This may not be the most well written of posts but I love sharing all their current likes and dislikes as a little update as my memory is useless and no doubt I would forget all her little idiosyncrasies otherwise! She drives me crazy at times but she is also just such a lovely little girl and of course I just absolutely adore her.

Our Little Toddler – 11 mths

So a little while ago I wrote that our baby girl had taken her first steps, and she has been wanting to walk more and more since then but she hadn’t quite had the confidence to really go for it – preferring to hold on to Mummy or Daddy. Suddenly though this week that has completely changed.

In one day she went from doing maybe 7 unaided steps at a time to literally walking around the whole house. I text hubs at work as I knew he wouldn’t believe the difference in the space of 1 day! So now she is everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I turn around and there are literally moments of “where is she?” and  run off to find her in the showerroom standing banging on the glass, or in the new utility room trying to eat a receipt.

toddler

So childproofing has become uber important again as she really does want to explore every inch of the world now that she can, and at this point in time she currently wants to put EVERYTHING in her mouth. So the floor is being swept multiple times a day to prevent her eating any bits of stickers or dirt that has been walked in, stairgates and doorgates are being shut and I need eyes in the back of my head!! Letting her roam around outside is interesting as she loves it but she makes a beeline for stones and dirt and wants to put them straight in her mouth.

toddling outside

We say no but she is so cheeky that she just finds it funny and gives a big grin and carries on doing it anyway, grrr. So I sound like a broken record, no don’t eat that, no not in your mouth, over and over and over again!

I love seeing her toddle about though it just shows how much she is growing up and becoming less and less of a baby now. Her brother is adoring her newfound skill and is so proud of her for “walking all by herself!” For the first time ever they played together in his playhouse, playing peepo through the windows and they both loved it. Monkey enjoyed it so much that he ran up to her and shouted ” can I give you a cuddle?” and then squeezed her so tightly. Melted my heart I can tell you! They are going to be such lovely playmates for each other and I already love seeing them have fun together.

playhouse

I remember feeling that walking was such a game changer when Monkey started walking properly, and it is a game changer again now but a new phase that I am so looking forward to – though it certainly brings challenges of his own!

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LM’s first steps at 10 mths

Yep our little lady is walking! She has been walking holding on to our hands for a while and has clearly been desperate to walk… and now she has started. She took a couple of steps a few days ago to a bed upstairs but it was sort of a “did she?” moment between Daddy and I. Then this weekend she has really been going for it.

She walked to me first and then spent ages getting way too excited about her achievement and throwing herself forwards instead, lol! Then she took a couple of steps to Daddy, then to her Uncle Simon and then she was on a roll. If we try and stand her up she doesn’t get her balance right and she just flies as she tries to run rather than walk. But if she stand herself up and gets her balance she can do it. Here is a little clip of her (you may have seen some of it on social media) during her first attempts.

The most she has managed so far is 6 steps but I know that this will soon be expanding. I have just been reading back to when Monkey really took off walking at 11 months. It was April 27th, 2013 when I wrote that he was starting to walk, then on May 14th 2013 that I said he was walking pretty independently (I love having this record of the kiddies!) So I know this really is the start of toddlerdom.

It is qute a bitter sweet moment really. I am so proud of her and am looking forward to all of the fun that toddlerhood brings… but I am a tiny bit sad too. We have decided to not to have any more babies… for many, many reasons and I am 100% happy with that. But this means she is our last baby, and walking means she’s not really a baby anymore… she is becoming a toddler.

So I am drinking in her gorgeous, perfect, chubby baby thighs, and loving watching her little botty wobble as she crawls across the floor and trying to enjoy and memorise every moment.

LM end of baby days

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