Tiny Tots Update

The previous post notwithstanding, M has given us some real gems lately.

Tonight I was reading a card sent to us from the H family in New York. M asked me who it was from and I said mommy and daddy's friends. She said "My friend is Uncle N!" Even though she spent so much time with Tío & Tía lately, they still get trumped by Uncle N and his doggies.

Earlier tonight when we were on our walk in the older neighborhood nearby, she saw some reindeer and inflatable Santas. But they weren't moving. Apparently this is a bad thing. I guess she has higher standards than we do.

Tonight, after the walk and before the card, M and S were playing with the food toys from M's kitchen. Well, S had her eye on this lemon and was quite persistent about it. After she dropped it, M would scoop it up quickly and try to hide it between her legs. S would tire of whatever she had in her hand and would look for the lemon. Then she would seize it from M. I asked her if she was just holding it so S couldn't play with it and she agreed. After a few back and forths telling her she had one minute to play with it before it was S's turn, she, by herself, counted to 10 and gave it to her little sis. Praise the Lord! It's sinking in.

Eating has always been a battle with her. Typically, C would prepare a nice meal and M would take one look at it and say in her whiny voice "I don't liiike iiit." So, the last couple of weeks we've been telling her that she needs to eat 2 bites of several things on her plate since she's 2 years old. If she initially balks at the idea, we set a timer for 2 minutes to give her an audible signal that it's time to take a bite or else there will be consequences. After following through if she doesn't eat it at first, she will usually get back in the saddle again and obey. So that's been a great sense of victory for us. It's been hard, though, not to compare her to S, who eats pretty much everything we set before her.

S has been using her hippo walker lately to get around. She still crawls a majority of the time since she's faster. I thought for sure she'd be walking by Christmas, but, given her history of doing things later than M, it'll probably be well after the New Year. Don't you just love how, when they crawl, their little hineys shoomp back and forth. (As an aside, I wasn't sure how to spell hiney, so I checked on dictionary.com. It didn't have an entry, but suggested this link. Start with the Connotations section. I couldn't stop laughing for a good while. Beware of some vulgar uses.)

Her favorite thing to do lately is to bonk heads, especially with mommy. She slowly leans her head down and says khuh. After repeated bonks, she starts giggling and laughing. It's a lot of fun to watch. The only unfortunate thing is that she turns 1 next week. I can't believe she's already that old.