We are still here!

Wow, I am not very good at keeping up with this! I suppose that is why all of my baby journals are only quarter complete. I really need to get better or we won't have anything for her when she is older. My cousin completed a whole first year journal for her daughter. I mean this thing is mac daddy! It even has a calendar page for each month that she filled out extensively, everyday, when Bee's cousin did something or they went somewhere. I mean to tell ya it can make me feel like a slacker! Guess maybe I should stop blogging and start scrap booking? Nah, I can barely keep up with the blogging as it is so maybe I should just stick to it. I am making note to blog more though so stay tuned!

Heading into Summer!

Well, it has been eventful the last month I must say. The potty training continues. It has been difficult but we are hanging in there. Little Bee is in regular underwear for most of the day and does fine, as long as we keep reminding her to go! If she gets to playing, and doesn't think about it, we have a problem. Luckily daycare reminds her as well so we are fending off most accidents. What has worked seems to be giving her a little control and power over the situation. When we told her she was a big girl, and needed to go potty herself, she got in to it. Now we aren't aloud to be any part of it! We do stand there to make sure she goes and washes her hands (and we clean the potty) but other than she is in full control. Now if she could only be in control of WHEN to go we would have a home run!

She has also started to become a little parrot or magpie as Nana calls it. She repeats everything! Which means we really have to start watching what we say around her. Here are some favorites of ours:

1. When I ask her to do something she holds the sides of my face and says, "listen mommy, listen."
2. Looking at me speaking about her daddy she says, "what is his problem?"
3. From Bear and the Big Blue House she will get in your face, sniff and say, "what's that smell?" It's very, very funny, especially the sniffing part, but not meant in a mean way because, well, Bear is not mean!
4. "Focus" which is a word I use a lot with her because her attention is so easily set adrift. But, let's just say her "focus" sounds shockingly similar to a four letter word I won't write here. So, we have starting to not say that and we make sure to correct her pronunciation!
5. Lastly, our favorite, is when we ask her to do something and she turns and says to us, "few minutes" while holding up three fingers; meaning give me a few more minutes. Very cute that she tries to negotiate!

We are having so much fun with her right now. She is testing us daily to see what she can get away with but we are holding pretty firm, for the most part. I loved her as a baby and will always want her to be that but now she is lovey, she is affectionate, she is talkative, she sings, she screams and has all of the little characteristics that we saw before but she could never thoroughly get across. Now she can and it's a blast!

Hope your summer is a blast! I will update when I can because we have a lot going on in the two months. Including a road trip, Bee's first, to Omaha! That should make for some excellent posts! Ha!!

Craziness ensues!!!

Things have been pret-ty crazy around here lately. It constantly looks like a toy explosion in our living room and things have become completely unorganized. I am starting to feel like spring cleaning is in our very near future! Bee is doing wonderfully! She is talking so much and saying such funny things. I have found, though, that she does not like change and I mean does not like it. If there is a schedule, or something that we do regularly, she does not want to stray from it! Our morning routine is one of these things and just one example of what I am talking about.

Every morning she comes in at about 6:30 am, wakes me up and we get some cereal and turn a show on, I won't name it but to give you a hint it is a small explorer and sometimes her cousin or a curious little monkey! In any case, she has her breakfast and some milk and I get ready for work. We get in the car and I take her in to school. Once we get in to her class, she picks out the seat where she will eat her breakfast, yes breakfast again. Don't worry, she only gets a little bit of cereal to tie her over until breakfast at school. I don't need Jamie Oliver showing up at my door with a Food Revolution! Which, by the way, I caught the first episode and it was great. Anyway, I sit her down in the chair of her choosing and they give her breakfast. I give her a kiss and most of the time she then pushes me away and says, "go mommy or vamanos mommy." Thank you little explorer girl. The other morning, however, was a different story. We get to the school and there is a firetruck taking up most of the parking lot and parents with their kids out on the sidewalk. There are also teachers with the kids that had already been dropped off out on the playground. In their designated areas, of course, because every age group has their own fenced off section of playground. After waiting for about 25 minutes they decide to allow the parents that are waiting to drop the kids off to their respective teachers in the playground area assigned to their age group. So, I go in with Bee and give her to the teacher with her class, give her a kiss and start to leave. She freaked out! This is not the first time, that something has not gone normal or what she is used, that she has had a complete meltdown! So, I wonder, am I creating a schedule/planning/routine loving little girl? Have I been to strict on the schedule keeping since she was a baby? I myself am a planner and do not always handle spontaneity well. In fact it makes me itch, but, I do have to say that I am usually well organized when it comes to things happening during the week or bills needing to be paid. I keep a planner and an email calendar that alerts me when tasks are about to be due and it even emails me a schedule every morning at 5:00 am, like I am up that early but when I log in it is there and I know what is happening that day. I also have a backup online calendar in case my first one fails. Hmmm....looking back at what I just wrote am I a schedule monster? And worse yet, am I creating a smaller version schedule monster and is that bad of a thing??? I say, no way!! I say, schedule away mommas!! Teach your kids to schedule away!!!! Schedule power!!! Okay, maybe I am going a little over board but seriously, I would rather her meltdown every once in a while if things don't go perfectly than be completely lost.

P.S. There was no actual fire damage to the building and none of the kids were hurt. Whomever was making breakfast, the breakfast that Bee so expects to be ready when she sits at her seat, caught something on fire and burned it. Every thing was fine though and they were bringing in fans when I was leaving to get the smoke out. So, no worries there and yes I still completely trust them with my little Bee!

Checking in!

Boy, it's been a while since I have written! Needless to say potty training wasn't going that well so we put it on hold for a bit. Not sure if I have mentioned that at all. We have slowly started working with her on it again. The power of getting a sticker to place on a chart is truly amazing! Sunday was a pretty good potty training day! When she got up from her nap, and for the rest of the day, she stayed dry and only went to the bathroom on her potty and not in her disposable. This was a victory, small but a victory none the less. We are looking at this as a positive sign that she might be getting ready to really tackle this thing head on. We just need to get her to tell us she has to go instead of us always bringing it up to her. We will keep taking her in there and it will click soon enough. She's a pretty smart little girl. She counts to 20 and sings her ABC's and this, to me, means she is the smartest little girl ever!! Whether other kids are already doing it or not! Over the weekend she came up with a couple new little things:

The first is to give me a hug, rub or pat my shoulder and say, "It's otay Momma, I got you." And no I did not spell "okay" wrong, she really does say "otay." It brought tears to my eyes the first time she did it because I was exhausted and a little stressed out. It made me feel good to know that maybe she will have some of my compassion and empathy in her. Those little sparks of what kind of person she is going to be, or might be, are so awesome.

The second, and the funniest, is now her Curious George makes trips to time out. Why does he go to time out you ask? For none other than hitting! The one thing we have been combatting with her since she turned 18 months! It is funny though to see her. She puts him in time out, comes over, tells us he is in time out and that it's because he hit her. So, we tell her that is good and that he needs to say sorry. She goes over to the chair, picks him and says, "you say sorry," and he apparently does so she gives him a hug. It's really cute but also shows us that she is starting to understand more. That and the fact that the hitting has really dropped off since she turned two. Either way, another small victory!

There has been a lot going! I am hoping to be able to write more soon! Added an updated picture so you can see how big our Bee is getting!

Christmas!

Wow, Christmas has come and gone and now we are looking to the New Year! I looked back over some pictures from my work holiday party and compared from last year to this year. It is amazing to me how my little Bee has become a little girl! The changes in her are so apparent when I look at the photos side by side. (I felt I need to share what I was looking at so they are to the left!) While the face is not all that different, just a little less baby fat, the hair is really what stands out. She just looks like such a little girl now and it made me sad to think my little baby is gone! I know she is still my baby and still very young but it's somehow different. She's still gorgeous though!

It's been a great year with her! There have been some difficult times and some behavior problems but over the last couple of weeks she has been really good. I hate to say that ignoring something makes it go away, because usually that is not the case, but really when it came to not calling attention to the biting, hitting, tantrums and such that it seems to have really made a difference. I am so proud of her for being such a good little girl! So, because it's the end of the year I wanted to end on some good stuff!
Over the last few weeks we have had developments in:

Saying her ABC's - she can sing them, though she skips some letters and muddies the words at the end. She loves to sing them and is really trying. Every few days she gets one more distinctive letter in there. It's so cute and we caught it the other day on the camcorder. I can't wait to look back at that when she is older.

Saying her numbers - We have to get her started through three because she usually gets hung on saying "1, 2, 1" but once we help her get past it she can count to 10. She did it for everyone on Christmas Day and I felt so proud of her when they were all excited to hear her say them.

Saying "I Love You" - Now, this one we have been working on for a looonnggg time! I am proud to say that she now makes the words out, all three of them, instead of making it one long jumbled word.

Moving to her "big girl bed" - it is just a toddler day bed but she is doing very well. She does not get out and make a big deal out of not going to bed. I think this is because we changed the bed, said here is your big girl bed but we never made a big deal of her NOT getting out of it. So..my thinking is that it never really put the thought in her head that staying in her bed was a big deal drama thing. It has been working out well. She gets out of her bed in the morning and comes and gets us when she is up. She's doing good in it. (I hope I didn't just jinx us!)

With the new year comes.....potty training! This scares me to death! I bought her some training underwear. We are not going to keep going with the pull-ups because she refers to them as diapers and I think she needs to make the distinction between diapers and big girl underwear. I am sure there will be no shortage of things to blog about once we start this weekend. We decided that after the new year is when we would start since she just transitioned from her crib, to a new room at daycare and we were dealing with Christmas. So..wish us luck and I am sure you will be hearing about it soon!

Have a Happy New Year!!! Lots of love and well wishes to all of your families!

Bad Behavior, Tantrums and whining, Oh My!

Well, the last couple of weeks have been tough. Little Bee has developed split personalities! In one minute she is the sweetest, kindest, most loving little girl there is. She plays and strokes my hair, gives me hugs, tells me she loves me, all the little things that sugary sweet little girls do. The next minute, oh my, a little monster is standing in front of me telling me no, sassing while pointing her finger at me and hitting me! And a few times when I have asked her if she wanted to go to the naughty seat she said, "yes!!" Yesterday (and let me preface this by saying that a friend of mine, who has a little girl just a few weeks older than Bee, said her daughter did this and I thought in my head that there is no way MY child would ever do this, well boy was I wrong) little Bee was being a little monster and not picking up her toys. I told her she was going to go to the naughty seat, so what does she do? She said "okay" and walked over and sat herself in the naughty seat!!! I thought I was going to die! Everyone keeps saying "oh, she's only 2, she doesn't know what she's saying or doing" but I am sorry folks, that child is a lot smarter than you give her credit for! All of the parenting advice I read says to stay calm, don't react to it, don't engage. Don't engage? Don't engage while the child has thrown themselves on the ground screaming "No, mommy" while all of the windows are open! Or is screaming through the grocery store because I won't let her smash the bread! Yeah right! How am I supposed to remain sane and calm through all of that? And don't even get me started on the whining! She can not ask for anything with out whining! I do as all the reading says and say, "I can't understand whining, you need to use your big girl words" or "You need to ask mommy nicely and say please." When I try to talk to people about it I hear, yet again, "she's just a baby" or "she is still so young give her a break" Give ME a break! Sorry, but learning manners has no age limitation!!!! I just want this period to pass and to have back my sweet little helper who did anything I asked of her! Where did that child go???? I feel as though, since I have been venting, that I need to say that I love my child very much and she is frankly the reason for everything I do now! But, really, the two's is tough!! And please don't say, "You'll see, the three's are worse and so are the four's," blah, blah, blah, let me wallow in my own whining!!

Been a while...

Wow, sorry it has been so long since I have posted anything! It has been pretty busy around here. I had back surgery and that has set me back a bit. I am pretty good to go now though so that makes me very happy! Still can't pick Bee up which she does not like but we are working around it!

Things with Bee have been interesting. She is definitely becoming a little comedian! Once she finds out that you think something is funny she does it over and over!! We had her 2 year birthday party the weekend before Thanksgiving. Actually it was for both her and her sister. They share the same birthday, exactly ten years apart! Don't ask me how it happened, well, I know how it happened. Our little Bee needed to come early! So, here we are now with the girls sharing the same birthday. It has actually turned out to be really cool. They adore each other, which makes me happier than words can say, so I think it will always be great they share the birthday. 

It seems as though, ever since Bee turned two, that her vocabulary is on a fast track! Everyday she says new words and phrases! It's amazing! She now fumbles her way through the ABC's as well!! It is so cute to hear her sing the ABC's! The other day at the breakfast table at Nana and Papa's, she turned to her sister and said, "Hi sissy, how are you?" Clear as a bell! We were all so shocked no one said anything! Ha!! It was funny, she kind of looked around like, "what?" and just went back to eating like nothing even happened. 

She has been really good with the few exceptions of her acting out. It's all normal toddler stuff though and she does not throw tantrums as bad as I have seen other kids do. Although tonight she did pretty well in her tantrum throwing. Who knew that a saline spray bottle would be so enthralling?!? "No" still seems to be one of her favorite words but we are working on it. She started the "2's" room at school so as she spends more time with the older kids I am hoping for a more articulate way of communication. I do not hold any crazy notion that the whining and "no" won't still be the main form but I am hoping for it to be cute down at least. Here's to hoping!

Sorry, I don't have any funny anecdotes today. This is really a check in and a promise to get back into it more. It might be tough with the holidays coming but I will try! I would love to hear from you so if you have something funny to share or just want to say hi, please do!