Lila is 2.5 years old! She is a delight and a terror rolled up in one adorable blonde little package. Love this child but the terrible twos are very much alive. We still get hugs and cuddles and "I love yous" but Neil and I both have been slapped and/or hit with a Barbie in the last few months. We are working on it! Her sticker chart (totally her caregiver Amanda's idea) is working pretty well to correct the worst of her bad habits.
Just as far as size updates, which I usually do on posts like these... Lila is still a pretty tiny thing. She is wearing mainly 2T in everything, but can still wear some pants and bottoms in 18-24 months. Some 3T tops are fine though. No clue on height but the last time I weighed her she was getting closer to 27 lbs. I think she was 26.7?
She is fiercely independent and brave! She loves to do everything by herself, including buckling her carseat (we always check it), going to the potty on her own without telling me (of course she needs help wiping and flushing) and she thinks she can swim on her own too! She is graduating to "parent-free" swim class for this next session. How is this happening? She is doing really well in the water and loves to swim. I hope this means she'll stick with swim classes and be a swimmer for life! Love it.
We are thinking about signing her up for dance class, I haven't fully decided yet! I think it'd be adorable and that she'd enjoy it, so I'm leaning toward doing it. It's for 2.5-4 yr old beginners.
Lila loves to read! She can recite a lot of books and corrects us when we skip words here and there. She is very patient listener and I read her beginner chapter books often. Her current favorite books are Curious George (good thing we have like 30 different stories at our disposal) and anything to do with ghosts and witches. She reads many books on her own and recites what she remembers and makes up the rest. She also loves for us to make up stories and her requests are very specific. "I want a Lila is a girl Newsie story" or "I want a Brooklyn and Lainey go to school story" (those are her 7 year old idols).
She also loves to listen to music and LOVES to sing. She knows the lyrics to a lot of songs and is pretty comical when you listen closely... Our personal favorite is her rendition of Baa Baa Black Sheep: "One for the monster and one for my dame..."
It goes without saying that she is really bright and has some insane verbal abilities! She probably has the vocabulary of a 3 or 4 year old, easy. She speaks in pretty articulate long sentences. People are always confused at her age because she is so small but talks so well. She asks great, pertinent questions, is super curious and wants to know everything. We were at her friend Sam's first birthday on Saturday. And she was constantly trying to learn people's names and know who they are. We are trying to correct grammar now and she is doing pretty well. She always says, "Can us go to the park today?" and we remind her it's "We"!
She also knows her first and middle names and she knows our names. She also never stops talking and is constantly narrating what she is doing and thinking!
Some funny things she's said lately...
On the way to Mamaw and Papaw's house on route back from the beach... "Do they have a sandbox at their house? Do they have a kitchen at their house? Do they have an outside pool at their house?" She feels the need to do an inventory before visiting anywhere. Funny child.
I was cooking pancakes the other day and was trying to get her to go in the living room with Neil while I was working on them. She came back in and said, "I can't mommy. I'm just so nervous about these pancakes." I told her she never needs to be nervous!!! How did she learn this word?
This is more sad than funny, but when Neil is gone when she wakes up, she says... "Is daddy gone? Is he at the bank?" When I said yes one morning, she said, "Oh no. Not again!"
She's also getting into potty humor. We talk about her baby sister often and I was just chatting about what to name her earlier today. Lila says, what about Rosie Poop? And then laughs hysterically.
When asking her what she wants to be when she grows up, we get various answers. Some recent ones: "I want to be a doctor when I grow up, a mommy doctor and a big girl doctor" or "I want to be a teacher and a grandma."
Her responses to questions sound remarkably adult. I ask her: "Does Parky's Farm have a playground?" She says, "I don't know. Maybe. I think so."
She tried a sip of Sprite and said, "This is NOT my favorite!"
She's fake crying in the car, so I ask her, "Are you okay, what's wrong?" And she says, "Mom, actually, it's Rosie (her doll)." My 2 year old uses "actually" correctly!
Of course my child is nowhere near perfect and I'm no closer to being a perfect parent. We are trying to teach her to be polite and not to hit us or yell at us and to listen when we ask her to do something. She is a great kid, but she is also 2, and is learning how to behave and to control herself in this crazy world. I'm so proud of her and so thrilled and lucky to be her mom!
