Addy turns 2.5 this month and can I just say I adore this age? Other than the fact that Little Miss is a total cling-on for much of the day, which can get old, and can’t figure out if she needs a nap or not she is just keeping us in stitches. She has totally developed the ‘tude and I know I won’t always love it but I love it now.

When she’s doing something wrong - or PLANS to do something wrong - she will preemptively say “don’t follow me” and when we call her on it, she’ll say “Don’t talk to me!”. Always good for a laugh.

The other day she was in her carseat and because it’s still rear-facing, we couldn’t see what she was doing other than her shoes were off. We asked her what was up and she said “Just nothing.”. When we got home and went to get her out, she was COVERED in crushed cereal bits all in her hair and all over her body. I said “That doesn’t look like just nothing!!!” and she said “Yep. It’s nothing.”  When i brought Daddy over to see what she had done, she got more and more adamant that it was “JUST NOTHING!”. That girl will stick to a story!

My poor dog HAS to be in the center of all the people which means she’s always laying or sleeping smack dab in the middle of the livingroom. Addy sees this is an invitation to hurdle her body over various parts of my huge Golden Retriver. She knows she’s not supposed to even try to jump over our dog. If I catch her thinking about it, she’ll very deliberately step over the dog and look me in the eyes and say “It’s ok mama. I just STEPPED over, I didn’t JUMP over.” She is the queen of finding the loophole.

She isn’t all Sass. She’s a lover, that girl. Right now what she loves more than anything is Birthdays. Whenever a birthday comes up (and this is birthday season in our home), she always has to jump into the conversation and say “I LOVE birthdays!”. Usually she’ll then go on and on with all the things she LOVSE about birthdays….the cake, blowing out the candles, opening presents, and PARTY HATS. She’s never actually worn a party hat but she LOVES the idea of them. I think she was almost as excited about Teegan’s birthday last week as he was. I’m just sad she won’t get to celebrate her own until Spring!

Lately she’s really boomed in her ability to refer to and talk about past, present and future. She’ll talk about “tonight” or “tomorrow” or “later on”.  It has made life so much easier! She’s also getting good at logical reasoning. Today I asked her if she was going to show her dance instructor how she can do front rolls all by herself and she said “Oh no!! It will hurt my head! The floor at Miss Ellen’s class is too slippery!” - which is totally true except that at the end of each class they have “tumble time” on big fluffy gym mats. When she says or does something wrong she’ll often say “Oh yeah! I’m so silly!!!”

One big 2.5 thing is that she absolutely can NOT handle us repeating what she said after she does. Maybe everyone else doesn’t do that but we have always sort of repeated back to her  or echoed what she’s said to a) help clarify what she’s saying when we weren’t sure and b) clarify for others what she said. It’s just always been our way to validate what she said so she knows we are listening. We’ve just always done it - I don’t even think about it. But now she gets so offended and says “No *I* am saying it. I don’t want YOU to say it.”.

One thing that we still have to work on is relationships. She just doens’t get the terms we use to define relationships. We went to Michigan and saw a sister and brothers she didn’t even know she had and grandparents she only sees a few times a year and an uncle she hadn’t seen since we moved and they were “family” and she doesn’t get the distinction at all. How are these people any different than all the friends we also met and visited on our trip? We had a meeting with a lawyer this past week and she kept calling the lawyer her “family”. It was, um, embarassing! She still calls everyone she likes even a little her “best friend” including her actual family or people she has literally just met. I can tell becuase she keeps talking about it that she’s trying to figure out these terms but we just can’t quite explain to her the social differences.

Another term she totally does not get is “favorite”. She uses it a LOT, too! She likes to talk about your “favorite color” but what she means is “the color you are wearing right now”. She doesn’t actually care if you like it or not.

Two big words she still really mispronounced, but that we adore, are fingers and think. She says “finners” and “stink”. And she talks about thinking a LOT. It always cracks me up - she’ll tap on her little chin with her “finner” and say “stink, stink, stink - oh! I know!” hahahah.

And finally a new “fun” thing she does is randomly ask to see people’s nipples! haha. She doesn’t ask strangers but will ask me frequently and sometimes her Dad or brothers. She’s really into nipples.  We are teaching her modesty which is confusing since she still spends a lot of her time “Naked and Nude” , as she says. I tell her I keep mine in my shirt Which almost always prompts her to ask “Do you have on a bra? What color is it? Is it new? Can I see it?” because if there is something she lovse almost as much as birthdays and nipples, it’s bras! Just fyi, that probably won’t make it into our annual commitment report!

Ah yes, 2.5, one of my favorite ages that brings forth the age I dislike most. I am trying to enjoy and appreciate every second of it before it’s gone for good.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 12:15 pm and is filed under All The Rest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.