Emma at 23 months

Just over a week ago, Emma turned 23 months old.  That means that her 2nd birthday is just around the corner!  She is growing up so fast!

Firsts: 

• First watermelon (and she loves it!)
• First time sitting in a booster seat at the dining table instead of her high chair
• First air show
• First piñata
• First time washing car

Scrunched-nose cheese at the air show (while watching the F-16)!

Growth and Development

Emma speaks so well!  Everyone who interacts with her is impressed with her language. She speaks full (and sometimes long) sentences, like: "I don't want you to change my diaper." or "I am cold"(distinctly saying am) or "it is soft"  (describing a new stuffed bear she was given).  I would like to emphasize the "I don't want to..." phrase, which seems to be just as common as "no" these days.  I must say, I guess it's nice that she can explain her "no" now by following it with "I don't want to", but since there isn't a reason given nor does she give us much  any lee way in order to get whatever it is we need to do with her done (i.e. get her dressed, change her diaper, etc), it's definitely not my favorite of her phrases.  Yet, at the same time, she still sounds so cute when she says it.  

She is wearing size 24 month/2T clothes.  I really need to clean out her dresser and closet to rid it of anything 18 months, because those clothes really don't fit her anymore.   She is definitely up to a size 6(w) in shoes, if not a 6.5 in some brands.  She is still wearing size 4 diapers, but I ordered the next box as size 5 so we'll be putting those on her soon.

Her hair is getting so long, and I am ready to get her first "official" haircut (more than just the bang trims I do).  I don't know how she'll handle it.  I am worried she will not like it.  She doesn't like me to touch her hair much at all.  She hates it when I brush out her tangles (I mean real tears flow!).  However, she let our daycare provider put it in a nice pony tail the other day.  I was so surprised to pick her up and see her hair in the pony tail.  She kept it in the whole night until I took it out at bedtime!  It was super cute!  

Emma can sing almost all of her ABCs (of course she doesn't get all the letters right and does best when singing along with someone else, but she definitely is learning letters).  She loves to sing and can sing along to a lot of songs.  She sings along to songs from movies we watch a lot (like "Feel the light" from the movie Home), and other kids songs like Itsy Bitsy Spider (she does the movements too), London Bridge, Rockabye Baby, Twinkle Twinkle, Row Row Your Boat, etc.  She is learning to count to 10 as well (she can recite sequences of a few numbers at a time).

Sleep time

Emma sleeps great at nap and bedtime.  She naps once in the afternoon from about 2-4pm still.  Some days she can sleep for around 3 hours if she's really tired.  At bedtime, which has been closer to 9pm over this past summer (it being light until later hasn't helped) she sometimes puts up a little fight, but I think we have a pretty good routine with her and she's been going down pretty good lately.  And then she's been sleeping through the night most nights until 7-8am.  When she has an occasional wake up and cry out, I think it may be due to a bad dream, and sometimes she goes back to sleep on her own pretty quickly.

Meal time
 
Emma is such a good eater.  I always say that she's got to do something to keep her cute cheeks! :)  She just moved up from her high chair into the booster seat that Evan stopped using recently (so he could just sit in a regular chair).  She can make quite a mess in some meals, but in general she's learning to eat quite well.  She uses the spoon and fork to eat foods and learned to eat corn on the cob and watermelon slices, as well as sandwiches, tacos, and burgers without them always falling apart.  She also drinks milk with her meals now, which is a relief for me!

Favorite foods: pouches (she'll open the pantry on her own to pick one out whenever she wants one), bananas, yogurt, watermelon, fruit of most any kind (especially berries), pasta, candy/chocolate, Eggo nutrigrain waffles.

Foods she won't typically eat/doesn't like: some meats (probably because they take so long for her to chew), mint flavored things (she really doesn't like this at all), some veggies (she rarely touches the grilled zucchini and yellow squash on her plate).

Emma drinks milk now...not always a lot, but she doesn't flat out refuse it at least! :)

Play time

Emma plays so independently, but she also likes to play with Evan (and usually rough house play with him).  She can grab one of her toys and just sit in the living room on her own and start playing with it.  Favorites lately have been her picnic basket shape sorter, stacking rings, piggy bank toy, chunky puzzle, and the doctor kit.  She is also learning to do other board puzzles.  Just the other night I gave her a new one and she figured it out very quickly.  She struggled with one piece, but she repeated the whole puzzle so many times that she figured them all out and could eventually do it very quickly on her own. 

Emma likes to wear sunglasses and try on shoes (hers, mine, it doesn't matter).  She doesn't care for shoes/sandals that have a strap between her toes though.  I've gotten her to wear that style a few times (as in the photo below), but she usually doesn't like it and can only sometimes be persuaded to try it if she sees my sandals also go between my toes.

Putting on Evan's shades...upside down! :)

She still loves shoes!

She has been enjoying water play a lot this summer.  She still doesn't like being splashed in the face, but she loves water slides and playing with water in general.  She likes our water table and could just pour water out in the table over and over, feeling it pour over her hand.  She likes to play with Evan's new stomp rocket too.  She can't really jump on it, so she pounds one foot on it and it usually just gives a little puff to get the rocket up, but not very high.  It's really pretty cute to see her little stomps and the little launches it results in.  We also have started taking family bike rides now that Evan can ride his own bike and we got the bike trailer hooked up to John's bike for Emma to ride in.  I hope that as Evan starts to learn the rules of the "road"/bikepath, we can venture out for longer rides together.

Water play fun!

Emma goes down this kid water slide all by herself

New bike helmet and rides in the bike trailer! 

Emma is finally starting to hold still (a little bit) and smile for some photos.  On occasion, both kids will look at the camera at the same time!  We still often have to take several shots to get a good one, but at least we're getting some good ones.  Some of my recent favorites were when we took photos of us with a lit candle for SMA awareness.  My sweet babies look so grown up holding hands and smiling for the camera!

We lit a candle for SMA

Brother and sister pics...I love them! :)