2.5 Years Old

Our big girl is 2 and a half years old.  She is a full blown kid!  I would say she has no baby left in her....but that would not be true.......she has a few 'baby' things she is clinging on too!  She will of course always be my baby :)

Briana is a talker, no doubt about that!  Wonder where she gets that from....not like either of her parents talk a lot!  It is sometimes a little bit exhausting, if I am being honest, she talks nonstop.  And wants constant feedback from you.  By the time she is in bed at night I am just so exhausted.  Leah needs to start talking so Brie has someone else to talk too!  She talks very clearly; no one has a problem understanding anything she says typically.  Right now she is very into identifying names of things; whether it is a person's name, type of animal, name of a toy, she likes to have a label for everything.  Whenever she asks me what something's name is I just use an alliteration to create a name; like 'Frank the frog' or 'Megan the mermaid'.  She is so funny, loves doing this!  And she remembers all the names we give stuff!  Brie will ask me the day after I work, “So, how’s your work?”  Haha, where does she get this stuff from?!  So funny.  

Here is a list of some of the things Brie likes to do:

•   Having people over:  Almost every single day she asks ‘Who is coming over today?!’  We do have people over a lot; she loves when her Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and grandparents, and babysitters come over.  She is a social butterfly for sure!

• Play baby dolls: She loves playing with her babies!  She is so cute with them, she mirrors a lot of how I treat Leah.  She has a few different baby dolls, but her favorite one is 'naked baby'.  It is literally just a naked plastic baby; she doesn't want me to put clothes on it and just calls it naked baby.  She holds the baby up to her chest (over her shirt) and says she is munching the baby (munching is what we call breastfeeding), she always pats the baby while doing it and says "shhhhh, its ok baby, I love you" I just about die every time she does this, so so so adorable.  

 

• Playing outside: What kid doesn’t love playing outside?!  She loves riding in the stroller, playing with all the outside toys, and going on the swings.  We are very thankful when the weather is nice out!

• TV:  This is probably her most favorite thing in all of life.....she would watch it all day long if I let her.  She doesn't watch TV every day; and on days she does watch it I let her watch anywhere from 30-90min in a day.  Her favorite shows are Daniel Tiger, Bubble Guppies, Curious George, Wonder Pets, and loves the movie Frozen and Tangled!  We listen to the Frozen songs in the car sometimes, and she knows a lot of them!  

 

• Going places: She loves going to stores, people’s houses, and the library.  Loves to be out and about!  I think she likes going out and about because she always gets a snack :) She is a great car rider; she just looks out the window and listens to music with me.  

 

• Warm milk: Brie still prefers her milk warmed up, which is beyond gross to me.  We have limited this to only the morning time; so as soon as she wakes up she gets warm milk.  Otherwise during the day she just gets cold milk with meals.  

 

• Nigh-Nigh: Still loooooves her little lamp lovey.  I don’t foresee that thing going away anytime soon.  I have caught her hugging it and saying “I love you nigh-nigh”  She sucks her thumb often when holding it, but rarely has her thumb in her mouth if she doesn’t have nigh-nigh.  

Brie does NOT like being told what to do…..I try and make everything her idea first.  Things go much smoother if she thinks doing something is her idea.  I use a lot of bribing to get her to do stuff.  ‘You can have a candy if you clean up all the books’ and she will quickly clean them all up!  It is SO much better than constantly giving her direction; she needs that motivation to get the job done.  Not sure what the parenting experts would say about that method…..but I just view it as positive reinforcement instead of constantly punishing.  For punishment we have been doing a 2 minute time out, and on rare occasions a spanking on the back side.  Usually if we just ignore her bad behavior and not give it attention it is short lived.  It is certainly challenging to know what to do though; Alec and I hope and pray we handle all these situations ok!

At her doctor appointment he didn’t have any concerns, thank goodness.  He was very impressed with her speech.  We expressed some concern to him regarding her eating habits, but he said we are doing everything right by continuing to keep offering different foods and having her sit at the table with us during the entire meal.  She weighs 29lbs and is 35in tall.  She hasn’t gained any weight or height since her 2yr appointment!  I was shocked, and a little concerned.  The doctor wasn’t concerned at all. He said the longer he has been doing this he finds the kids that eat just enough to maintain at this age have little to no weight issues through being older kids and adulthood. Food is just not important to Brie, and he said that is totally fine! He assured us that since she is clearly meeting her milestones there is no concern.  

The parenting journey continues to change as she gets older and older!  Sometimes I just look at her and can’t believe she started as a ‘little’ (9lbs….not very little!) baby and is now this full functioning kid that tells me about her day!  Love her to pieces!

 

4 Months Old

Leah, slow down!  You are growing up too fast little baby!

Each month that Leah enters into, I am reminded of how they are constantly growing and developing.  Her world continues to expand around her.

Leah weighs 14lbs (48th percentile) and is 24.5in long (57th percentile).  

We have zero schedule; which is more than fine with me.  She goes to bed at night usually around 9/10pm; wakes up 1-2 times during the night to eat, and then is up for the morning around 6:30am.  The early morning wake up call is the worst right now, Brie sleeps until 7/7:30 most mornings, and Leah used too!  But she has decided to be an early bird recently.  She naps sporadically throughout the day.  Sometimes she takes a long nap in the morning, other times it is in the afternoon.  A long nap for her is anywhere from 2-3hrs.  Some of her naps are around 30-45min.  Like I said.....sporadic! She takes most of her naps in the swing.  And at night I wrap her up, rock her for a little bit and put her in the pack n play with her pipe in.  She takes the pacifier still, not really going for her thumb as much anymore. 

For the most part she follows the eat, play, sleep routine.  But sometimes she likes to eat a little before she goes down for a nap.  When I am at work it is more structured with the bottles; but when I am home she likes to have a 'snack' here and there :)  She has been taking the bottle great, no more problems at all.

She loves to chew on her hands, or anything else she can get into her mouth!  She will be such a happy little camper when she can figure out how to consistently put toys in her mouth.  Just not quite there yet though.  Just recently though she has been much more interested in toys!  Leah loves to lay on the play mat, she bats at the hanging toys and coos and talks.  She isn't so great at sitting in the bumbo seat for some reason; tends to slouch to one side, or tries to bend in half so she can suck on the side of it.  By far the swing is her favorite thing to sit in and sleep in!

Leah loves to stand up; she loves standing on your lap facing you while you talk to her.  She could do that for such a long time before her legs get tired.  Her little talking is so adorable; lots of coos, gurgles, and practicing different sounds with her voice.  She has started laughing now too recently; it is more of a chuckle at this point, which just makes it all that much cuter!  She has watched Praise Baby a few times, and of course loves it.  I don't think she likes it as much as Briana did at that age though; I just remember Brie being so engrossed in it!  The couple times she has watched the Praise Baby DVD Brie has sat right along side of her and watched it too.

A few times now Leah has had some stranger-danger with people that aren't Alec or myself.  I don't remember Brie ever going through the 'stranger-danger' phase, so this is a little new for us!  She would cry when someone else picked her up, and wouldn't calm down until she was by me.  It is nice to feel loved though :)

At her 4mon appointment the doctor had no concerns.  She got more vaccines, and handled it well!  They did make her really fussy and have a low grade fever the next day though. She still has a blocked tear duct on her left eye; we call it her goopy eye since there is always goop on it!  We are just hoping it resolves on its own as she grows, don't want to have to go to an eye doctor for her and do the procedure to open it up.

Alec and I are just loving each stage Leah goes through, she is getting so old so fast it seems.