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!