Yesterday Addy turned 26 months old. She is totally cracking us up lately and I wanted to get some of her silliness down before she moves on and I forget it. Her vocabulary has, yet again, really taken a leap. She’s talking in complex sentences and she pulls whole phrases out of thin air that she’s heard in the past and uses them right on cue. Even her brothers have noticed her crazy talking streak. I think some of her speech is getting clearer and easier to understand. She still mispronounced a lot of blends though so occasionally we are left scratching our chins at what she said but that’s rare now, at least for us.

She has started singing in her crib when she wakes up from a nap or in the morning. It is the sweetest thing EVER. We’ve made a really big deal out of it so now she’s very conscious about her singing so we’ll get a big response. And that reminds me, she is almost always waking up happy now! She used to be a rough waker, like me, but now she wakes up in a great mood ready to run off and play.

Usually Tony gets Addy up from her naps and in the morning. When I do it, its always a big surprise. Today was one such day and Addy cheered, thinking it was Daddy and then said “Hmm. I don’t THINK so!”

Another thing she loves to do right now is talk about her feelings. “I’m so happy!” or “I’m so sad” and she can fluctuate between the two in a heartbeat. “I’m so sad” is frequently accompanied by total body collapse into a sweet heap of baby sadness. For effect. Because when she is REALLY sad she doesn’t actually tell us. Its so sweet when she prances around the room singing “I’m so HAPPY, mama! I’m so HAPPY!” over such simple things. Another thing she says is “I’m so silly!” - that always cracks us up. Occasionally she’ll say “I’m a big girl!” or “I’m so cute!”. And she really REALLY likes to talk about how “cool” things are.

Today we went to see Wall.E and it was really great! Addy had been looking forward to it and she did really well. She watched almost all of it. At one point there was a scary part, to her, and she buried her face in me. When the crisis was averted she said, right on cue, “That was a close one!”

Also during the movie, Tony bought some Reese’s Pieces to share and whenever he would hand a few to Addy she said “What do you have for me, Dada? What do you have?”. Every single time. Even though the answer never changed.

Also she loved the pixar Short at the beginning of the movie today and cracked up through the whole thing occasionally throwing in a “That’s funny, Mama! That’s funny Dada!”. Whenever she hears people laugh she always tries to join in and fake-laugh and talk about how funny it is.

Addy is having so much fun swimming this summer. She is getting really fast in the water and can cruise across our pool in the blink of an eye. We don’t even have to be in the pool next to her anymore. We can sit in the hot tub while she plays around in the pool. It is BLISS! This past week she fell in love with a water slide at a local pool and went down that thing about 100 times. It was such fun! She also likes to stick her toes up out of the water so we can come tickle them which for some reason cracks me up every time.

She has a love-hate relationship with our pets. She frequently screams at the dog when she’s passed out asleep and not even remotely a threat to steal her food. She also loves Mrs. Amy Beasley (our hedgehog, don’t you remember?). She isn’t at all afraid of her or afraid to touch her despite the very sharp quills. And she’s very gentle with her. But she absolutely loves my cat, Anna. One time she told her “I love your tail, Anna!” Recently I realized she can tell my two big cats apart even though often WE can’t. Sometimes she will walk up to one and say “Oh you’re not Anna, you’re Smokey!”. I’d love to know what traits she uses to tell them apart. But her most bizarre relationship is with Teegan’s cat, Sticky Bubblegum. Addy calls him “Sticky Gummy” and she totally taunts that cat and that cat will slice right through her soft baby skin. Over and over Addison will be gentle, pet nice, leave Sticky alone and then out of nowhere she’ll do something to provoke that cat and he’ll stab her with his razor claws. And she does.not.learn. Actually I am sure she’s learned a long time ago but she’s decided at some point that its worth the pain to provoke that cat. And then there is much bandaids to be wasted and fussing to be done. And then it starts all over again!

I am happy to say that the whining has also more or less stopped. Of course it has been replaced with complete bedtime meltdowns. she will run, hide, make up every excuse in the book to avoid naps and bedtime. It takes some work to hook her in but once we find the hook she’s an easy sell. But the lengths she will go to to avoid being caught and carried up for her naps or bedtimes are quite humorous.

My girl is still in love with all things pink and purple. Now she will not even let me give her those great white sunglasses and instead insists on her pink ones. Blech. BUT there is hope. Recently when faced with the ice cream choices at 31 Flavors she spent quite a bit of time changing her mind back and forth and back again but she DID finally opt for the chocolate over the “pink” flavors!!!! That’s my girl!

And here’s the saddest thing ever. My girl is becoming picky. Its true. The 20 months of pure food bliss are changing. I offered her a piece of portobella mushroom recently and she tasted it and took it out of her mouth and said “Yuck.”. I told her to take a bite, like meat. She tried again and said “What IS that? Its EW!”. Ha. She is just not arbitrarily eating anything without even looking at it first anymore. It sucks but I know we had it easy for a long long time.

Last night Addison removed the bins on the two bottom shelves of a family room bookcase for the sole purpose of making room to scale said bookcase in an attempt to retrieve the bin three “stories” up. This, of course, almost resulted in the entire thing tipping over on her and made me about lose my dinner even though I was only a foot away. I realize many kids do the bookshelf scaling thing at a much earlier age and thank goodness Addison hadn’t considered it before last night. I stopped her in time and she was stunned by my very sudden reaction which I hope means she will not attempt it again.

She rubbed away her dejected tears and skipped off to go get a chair to push over instead. She never even considered asking me to get the bin for her because why would she ask for help when “Addy-Mai do it!”. Just another reminder that we might be done baby proofing but toddler proofing has only just begun. Medicine, heavy bookcases, outlets….these are all Addy’s playground. And the girl is full of some ingenuity and eager to prove me wrong.

A few weeks ago Addy took out a little toy mirror and looked at herself approvingly like only a totally self-centered 2 year old can do. Then she tried to see me by turning it around to face me. Stupidly, I told her “You can only see yourself in a mirror!” and that was the challenge she needed to prove me wrong.

Ever since, she has obsessively gone around from object to object carefully holding the mirror at just the right angle so that she could see other things in her mirror, sometimes contorting herself underneath objects but never EVER giving up on her endless plight to prove me wrong.

She will find the smallest tiny speck of dust and get a perfect reflection going before adamantly letting me know. I’m not sure how many times she has to do it before she figures she’s made her point. Apparently several days is not enough!! She’ll study the drops of water on the window, the body parts of her various dolls and stuffed animals, the pets, her various body parts and of course, me. She can find just the right angle to see them and prove me wrong. That girl is hard-headed and determined. I’m afraid of how she will be at age 3!

On another note, I just want to say that I am not intentionally trying to brag about my kid at every turn. I don’t actually feel like my posts are brags as much as that I am stunned so often by my own kid and want to note those things for when she’s bigger so she and I can both read back about them. I’m sorry if my ridiculous tirades about my girl are annoying. I think I’d be a little annoyed if I was a reader As a parent I tend to have naturally high expectations. Recently I realized that Addison consistently overshoots my expectations and I’m always amazed by her determination and abilities. I should know better by now but I can’t seem to align my own expectations of her in a way that meets her own abilities so she just keeps surprising me. I’m actually worried about this as a parent because what if I don’t challenge her enough? What if I don’t give her opportunities she could handle or deserves because they aren’t age-appropriate or I don’t think she’s ready? These are challenges I have never before faced as a parent and I’m not sure what to do with them at this point.

So what’s so exciting about watching a kid sit in line waiting for her turn? I was looking at these pictures that Tony took yesterday and aside from being frustrated by the lack of quality that taking pictures in bad lighting, far away and through glass produces (ha) I was also struck by how odd she was sitting. I thought it was funny and was going to do a whole faux-post about what a prodigy she is for doing seat presses while she waited her turn. Hahaha. Except as it turns out? She was totally doing seat presses while she waited her turn, pushing up, trying to hold it, balance, etc. Tony said that’s what she did every time she had to sit down, to pass the time. L-presses, straddle presses and the occasional handstand up the wall behind her. Crazy. Crazier is that I am quite certain she has never in her life seen such a thing, certainly has not been taught. She was just passing the time.

Lately she’s been obsessed with pushing up like that on everything. She will flip over her rocking chair and use the bottom rail to push and hold herself up (think parallel bars), she will use the side of the pool and even my stiffened arms to leverage herself up. I guess it was only a matter of time before, lacking any “equipment” she figured out all she needed was the floor.

{springing off the board}

And speaking of this sort of thing, very recently she noticed the cheerleaders practicing in another room during Teegan’s gymnastics class. She usually has no interest in their incessant chanting and lack of tumbling but this day was different. This day they were not chanting, they were MOUNTING. Apparently, by the look of absolute horror in the girls’ faces, for the first time! This was absolutely thrilling for Addy and she watched and watched and then very seriously turned to us and said, with typical Addy determination “Now it my turn”. We laughed, she remained steadfast. She was dead serious. She was ready. I think if we would have let her go into that room she would have agreed to be hoisted above the heads of all those girls. She had figured it out. So now sometimes we play cheerleader and hoist her up or she stands on our shoulders (my personal favorite - not) and she “falls” into the “catch” like the cheerleaders do. I have to admit this is one skill I hope she forgets soon.

I swear this girl of mine shocks me every day.

{swinging from the rope: not so much her strongest skill! ha}