Gracie Stores and Growing Flowers

Two other Amelia-isms:

Whenever we need something, or she thinks we need something, she tells us we'll go to the grocery store. Except it comes out "gracie" store. And apparently she thinks you can get anything there. She was playing with her Thomas Imaginetics book and the station master was beheaded due to over-use. (He's rather small and had gotten bent recently, so his head was not going to last too long.) Amelia says from the backseat, "Station master's head is broke. Go to gracie store tomorrow and get another one." Yeah, sure. We'll do that.

Amelia is growing and she knows it. She'll tell you, in fact, just in case you hadn't noticed. She'll say, "Amelia is growing. She's growing like a flower!" And she gets a huge smile on her face as she throws her hands up in the air. I love it - it's such a cute expression and has a much prettier connotation than the more typical growing like a weed. She's my beautiful girl who will continue to blossom into a beautiful flower.

Right now she is sleeping - her day finally caught up with her. She refused a nap earlier and then we took Nana out for her birthday. (Her 76th! Daddy decided we had to put some trombones on her cake and we found some trombone stickers at the craft store this morning. Along with some Pooh stickers for Amelia, of course.) On the way home Amelia was reading Very Hungry Caterpillar to herself, complete with all the foods the caterpillar ate on his binge - a lollipop and cherry pie, etc. and then she promptly fell asleep. We were surprised because she hadn't acted or looked particularly tired at dinner. We tried to wake her up when we got home, but she's snoozing on her rabbit in the middle of the floor.

[picture dated 8/30/08]

Pre-School Open House

We went to Amelia's pre-school open house yesterday. We passed the classroom before we got to where the teachers were set-up and so we looked around first. Amelia went straight to the Little People toys and had to be dragged out. Then she found the playground out back. She's sold. This morning when the school bus went by our house Amelia said, "Go to school and play with teacher!"

She's said some other cute things recently.

Yesterday when I picked Amelia up at Nana's Bethany was there without Hailey. Nana told Amelia to ask Bethany where Hailey was and Bethany said, "She's at daycare." Without missing a beat and in a very sympathetic voice Amelia replied, "I'm sorry."

When I was dealing with my three-week spell of poison ivy I had three really ugly blisters inside my upper arm. Whenever Amelia saw them she'd say in a very southern way, "Momma's got bug bah-eh-ts".

Last week she would randomly say her hair needed a trim. We took care of that this morning. (Her bangs, anyway.)

She is really into asking what things are. "What that?" or something similar was her first "sentence" way back when her vocabularly otherwise consisted of duck, dad and ball (all the essentials, no?) Now she is truly curious about knowing what things are that she notices but doesn't recognize. For the past week and again this morning it was the plasma ball displaying static electricity on her Baby Bach video. (She is still addicted to the Baby Einstein series - she even turned down Kai-Lan for it earlier this week.) The plasma ball was a real test for me - I was pretty sure it was static electricity but I wasn't completely sure so when she asked again this morning, I emailed a former co-worker, explaining that my not-quite-3 year-old is now becoming smarter than me. I thought I had a little time left on that one, like maybe until she was 8? Apparently not.

6 a.m.

... appears to be her new wake-up time. Three mornings in a row now. Previously, it had been a somewhat respectable 6:30-6:45 a.m.

When the time changes, if she's still doing this, it will be 5 a.m.

Lord, have mercy. (And yes, that's a prayer. It is Sunday after all.)

2 Years, 11 Months

I almost can't believe that a month from today I will have a 3 year-old. It's amazing.

Her imagination has just exploded - or at least I should say that her ability to express and use it has really exploded. She continually amazes me. I was doing laundry and had a bunch of her socks unmatched. She randomly grabbed two white ones, tried to put them on her feet and wasn't having much luck. Rather than giving up or even getting frustrated, she just put them on her hands and said, "Amelia has sock puppets!" Then she went out to the sun room and proceeded to play with her trains. How cute was that?

She is still a voracious "reader" and I caught her one night reading after I had put her to bed. She had gotten out of bed with her little Toby book and was stretched out in her doorway so she could catch the hallway light and see her book! (She is going to be just like me - using a flashlight, street light or whatever to read after lights out as a child.)

Amelia starts pre-school a week from Tuesday and she'll go two afternoons a week from noon to 3 pm. She doesn't have a point of reference for it, but we have an open house a week from tonight and after that she will - and I'm sure she'll be very excited about it. We're still having a few potty accidents, but I think once she is around other kids who are potty trained, she will finally catch on that last little bit of understanding the connection of urges and going. (The teachers are fine with the 3 year-olds not being completely potty trained as long as they're close.)

We had a handyman (finally) put a swing up under our deck and she swung tonight for the first time. She was SO excited and kept saying, "Amelia is swinging in her yard! I have my own swing." Too cute. I didn't get a picture because I didn't want to leave her alone to run in the house for the camera (and her daddy is at a high school football game).

Speaking of Daddy, she really likes to see him first thing in the morning. If she sleeps past his departure she is disappointed that he's not home. This morning she woke up at 6 am and it was still dark (baby dark as she likes to say, although it was darker than just a little dark) and she whispered, "He is home?" When I told her he was she scrambled out of bed and since he was still in bed, we both climbed in and she announced happily, "All three of us are here together!" She was a whole lot more awake than we were ...

She loves sitting on his lap when he eats his cereal and will sometimes ask for her own bowl of Daddy's cereal - which I give to her dry so she can snack on it. They're so cute in the morning and I've taken periodic pictures of them that are now starting to really show how much she's grown since they first started sitting together at breakfast.

Amelia's latest 3 year-old milestone is to have the cutest pouting expression as soon as something doesn't go quite her way. I am going to have to start carrying the camera with me at all times to try to capture it since it doesn't last long. She does it if another child is going down the slide first, if an animal is momentarily stuck inside Noah's ark, if the snack she wants hasn't materialized the same second she asked for it, etc. It's not a full out pout, no tears - it's just a fleeting facial expression and SO cute.

She still can't be bothered with dolls, but that's okay. She is starting to pay some attention to small beanie-baby sized animals - carrying them around, giving them names. Her blue bear one is called Mr. Floppy or something like that.

She adores jumping and I've trained her to wait until the last step to do it. Since our basement steps have a landing, she gets to jump twice which thrills her. She'll say, "That's a BIIIIG jump!" And I'll agree with her.

The other day I pulled out her Halloween costume from last year and she wanted to be a giraffe, so I let her wear it that evening, including on our nightly walk. The neighbors got a kick out of it. It's a little small which wasn't a problem until we tried to take it off.

Her hair is long enough to put in a ponytail or two on a regular basis and that's been fun. It doesn't make her too girly, though, since she also adores playing in dirt!

[pictures dated 8/08]

Contest: Free Parents Magazine Subscription

So I'm on the phone checking in with Grandma down in FL to make sure she isn't floating away. Amelia starts leafing through my current issue of Parents magazine and starts dancing around excitedly because she found a full page ad featuring Kai-lan (sp?). It was very cute. It also gives me a good segue into my little contest.

I have an offer to renew and get one free subscription. Anyone reading want to enter into a little hat drawing for the free subscription? I've debated a little over the past few months as to whether I would really continue reading the magazine for another year, but I think that the $12 a year would be worth it, so what the hey. Plus, I get to do like Clementine and share, seeing as how I won this subscription from her last year in much the same way as you can now win yours!

Just leave a comment, email me at mommy_of_amelia at yahoo.com or my real email if you know it. For the sake of a deadline, we'll say that the drawing will take place a week from today, Thursday August 28, 2008 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time. You have until then ... good luck!

Jelly Crackers

One of Amelia's favorite treats right now is jelly crackers. And boy are they messy.

[picture dated 8/19/08]

No Oscar

Some of our neighbors use those municipality-issued garbage cans that are green and the lid is attached on the back. We passed a house the other day that had so much garbage, the lid was somewhat raised. As we walked by, Amelia said in a sad, sing-songy voice: "No Oscar," as in the Grouch. Her only real exposure to him is through the felt Elmo book she has, so I was pretty impressed that she made that connection.

Amelia has learned her entire name, but she sometimes does First Last Middle which is funny. We're working on her knowing where she lives but, no matter how many times we tell her the name of our town, whenever we ask her where she lives she says, "My home." Smarty-pants.

Completely random: we found re-runs of Mork & Mindy tonight. Loved that show when I was younger and I still find it hiliariously funny. Seriously, my sides hurt.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

[picture dated 6/15/08]

Fascinated with Soap

Amelia has discovered bar soap and she adores it. One time last week I put her on the potty in the basement bathroom since we'd just gotten home and were coming through the basement. She found the heart shaped glycerin soap Grandma has used when she's been here, and life at the sink has not been the same since. She has the cleanest hands around, folks. I've also given her a small sample bar of Dove soap as a new bath toy. Oh, the expense of keeping her amused, I'm not sure we can keep up with the cost!

She had corn on the cob for the first time last night. We tried last summer but she was at a loss for what she was supposed to do with it, even though her friend Livia had no problem chowing down. Last night, she did just fine, taking bites as she narrated the process of eating the "polka dots" off the corn. (It wasn't uniform in color, there were some whiter kernels mixed in with the yellow.) She was sitting in a regular chair (we don't always do the high chair anymore, depending on her level of wiggly-ness) right across from her daddy and I was really tempted to take a picture of them eating their corn together with her being a mini-me mirror image of him. I opted for the memory instead, partly out of exhaustion (it had been a no-nap afternoon) and partly from cynicism (getting up to get the camera usually spoils the moment).

Toilet Training Update

It's going pretty good. A week ago Sunday I decided enough was enough with pull-ups that she was content to pee in all day long. There have been many puddles - which I anticipated, but within a week she was doing really well. She was still starting to pee, but would catch herself and we'd finish in the potty. Nine days later I am still doing a lot of watching and listening for her cues - she isn't running to the potty just yet, but as soon as she starts talking about the potty or her panties (as in "Amelia is still wearing panties") I know it's time to get her to the potty. We've been able to run errands, go to the park and have playdates - all in panties. She only does pull-ups for naptime and bedtime.

I am really proud of her progress and our ability to both work at this in a productive way. There hasn't been any harsh disciplining, just me telling her firmly for the first five days or so that big girls don't pee in their panties. And she doesn't resist going to the bathroom like she had begun doing before we started on the all-panties project. She also doesn't sit there for long most of the time - she does her business and gets her sticker. We did add a mini-marshmallow as an added incentive, but she doesn't always ask for it. The sticker - she always asks for it.

She starts pre-school next month and there's supposed to be an Open House sometime this month. I haven't heard anything yet, but I feel a lot more prepared now that she is so far along with her potty training.

My poison ivy is almost all gone. Yippee! Seriously.

Amelia will randomly recite sentences from her various books. This morning while climbing up the rope ladder at the park she suddenly says, "No, no, said Rabbit. That's for bessert!" I tried to tell her she meant dessert with a "d" but she insisted it was bessert. I thought it was cute.

During breakfast we were reading one of her books and she was insisting that something started with a wrong letter. (We've been working a little with her to notice how letters and sounds correlate as in B, buh buh, is for baby, D, duh duh, is for daddy.) I don't remember the specific issue this morning but she was, as usual, insistent about her take on things. I suddenly heard my father's voice in my head saying, "See, she's just like you already. She thinks she knows everything."

But she does catch on. She has a good friend named Livia and last week we visited a new baby named Lydia. I explained to her that the baby was Lydia with a 'd', duh duh, not like Livia with a 'v', vuh vuh. Halfway through the visit she suddenly started calling the baby by the right name and as we left she said, "Had fun with baby Lydia."

We've spent a good amount of time lately playing in the driveway, blowing bubbles and drawing with chalk. She also likes to walk along the dividing lines in the pavement like she's on a balance beam.

[pictures dated 8/11 and 8/10/08]

Normal

For the past couple or three weeks Amelia has been a little more needy which is unusual. Normally you give her about 5 minutes of attention and she entertains herself for 30 minutes or more.

I began to think I was doing something wrong and last week I googled things like "3 years old behavior" and got all kinds of things that talked mostly about extreme behavior issues like shyness or constantly being active. She falls in the middle and so those weren't my concerns, although I read a little bit on the active stuff. Then there were sites that were aimed at parents who were concerned about developmental issues. Again, not my issue. Then I googled "ages and stages 3 years old" and got this from Iowa State University and it was like someone had written all about exactly what she's been doing. It turns out that she is at a point in her life where she wants more attention, loves hide and seek (NO KIDDING ... Picking her up from Nana's is at least three rounds of "Where's my baby girl?") and mimicking us.

Now that I understand that it's all normal, I've really enjoyed her. That may sound silly, but sometimes knowing something is normal allows us to accept it and then embrace it. It's certainly true for me. She has become so much more interactive and playing along with her has become so rewarding. It's really taken away the last vestiges of babyhood, though.

It's not all sweetness and light (as a friend of mine would say). I struggle with instructing her and how forceful I should be on things like "You must hold Mommy's hand in the parking lot." I tell her this all the time, but she still tries so hard to wriggle away. When will she understand and comply? Or will she never be compliant and always assert her own desires? I wouldn't label her as a willful child - although she has demonstrated some defiance. I think she's just an active girl who is exploring her boundaries.

Oh, and the toilet training is still so far from complete. I think I will just put panties on her and deal with accidents until she understands (except for sleeping and traveling). I mean, it's been a year (I think) since we introduced the toilet. Ugh.

We live near the state line and the welcome center was having an anniversary open house yesterday. We took Amelia and she was fascinated by the string trio (banjo, violin and guitar) on the porch playing bluegrass/folk music. They played Pop Goes the Weasel for her and she kept saying that the rest of the day. At one point, after a different song, she said, "Sounds like Dragon Tales!" She's so funny.

Thanks to her new favorite phrase (Pop Goes the Weasel), we sang various songs on the way home and I noticed that her "singing" is sounding a little like a tune now and less like recitation, so I was encouraged by that.

Gotta go grab the squash casserole out of the oven. Amelia had fun supervising me as I put it together!