"Just borned": Liliana is obsessed with all things "baby". We play baby a lot. We diaper, feed, and love her baby dolls and talk about babies and what makes them different than big girls/boys. She pretends that she is a baby and needs her pretend "pac-ee-fiya". Sometimes we even play that I am the baby (a game that I love because she wraps me up and kisses me all over). She has a lot of experience with babies because we have Ben and other babies in our house. She loves to hear stories about when she was, "just borned from Mommy's belly." She knows the story of how they took her out of Mommy's tummy and how everyone came to visit her. Her favorite part of the story is when Grandma came to see her and said she was, "so bee-you-tiful". She also likes hearing how everyone said she looked just like her Daddy.
A lot of new babies have been being born around us and she has become interested in breast feeding. The other day I told her that we wouldn't be able to play with her cousin Cannon and she asked, "oh, he is nursing?" Then last week we were laying in bed and talking about how tiny babies can't eat food because they only drink bo-bo milk. When Adam asked her if she used to drink my bo-bo milk she laughed, shook her head and said no. I told her that she nursed from me until she was over 1 year old. She paused, looked at me so seriously. Her eyes got big and she moved her face closer to mine and said incredulously, "WOW! THANK YOU MOMMY!!" My pleasure baby. :)
The other day Adam went to get her out of her car seat. He found her holding a naked Snow White doll to her mouth. When he asked her what she was doing she said, "I'm drinking Snow White's milks!"
Lila is a poet and we didn't even know it: She is always busting a rhyme and it is so funny. Her favorite thing to do is sing a version of the song, "Tracy, Tracy bo bacy, banana fana fo facy...""
She goes through her day singing this song for whatever/whoever she encounters: "mommy mommy bo bammy..."
She also points out rhyming words quite often. "I know! Bees, like knees!" she will say with pride. The other day she was eating hummus and she yelled, "I know!!! Thomas and h-ah-mus!" (The way that she says hummus actually does rhyme with Thomas.)
We play rhyming games and she is really good at it. I have a lot of oral rhyming word games that I used to play with my students to build their reading and phonics skills and Liliana is really good at them.
She also makes up words to go to familiar tunes and will sing a certain song to a different tune. For example, she will sing "Twinkle Twinkle" to the tune of "Jingle Bells". Or, she changes the tempo and puts her flair on familiar song. My favorite is when she makes up her own songs all together and sings them at the top of her lungs. She had a family in stitches this afternoon at the park over a song that had something to do with her going "up and down and all around" the slide. You have to see her facial expressions and how into it she gets to appreciate it fully.
Letters/Numbers: She is getting better at recognizing her letters. She knows about half of them. She relates every letter and letter sound to a person's name (not surprising given her social interest). Ex: 'T' for 'Tracy', 'D' for 'Daddy', 'P' for 'Paxton' and 'Peggy', etc. She can also count to 20 and recognize her numbers 1-6.
Birthdays: After celebrating her 2nd, she is now obsessed with people's birth dates. She knows mine, Adam's, my mom and dad's and her Uncle Colin's. This is one of her go to questions when she is making small talk with new people. "What's your happy birt-day?" If they say that theirs is in any of the months that her family members is in she gets very excited. "Oh! My Dad's happy birt-day is August too!"
"Mom, I love you. You are beautiful." : She has been a little stinker lately and it almost seems to me that at times she is trying to pick fights with me and get in trouble. But, she also has a super sweet side. Throughout the day she will say to Adam and I randomly, "I LOVE YOU!" and "come here, give me a kiss." Sometimes she grabs my face and says, "mom, I love you. You are beautiful." It almost makes me forget all about that last tantrum.
MINE!: She is going through the "mine" phase hard-core. EVERYTHING is "MINE". Before we have people over she will talk for at least 10 minutes about the fact that they can only touch certain things, because she doesn't want to share other toys. "No Momma! Ben don't pway wit my special pwincesses. Dats MINE dollies!" And then she will practice what she is going to say to him about it, "NO NO BEN! DATS MY PWINCESSES! You can play with Elmo." Of course, I have long conversations with her about how we won't be able to have play dates if she says that to friends and she gets a lot of time outs for this right now. We are also working on saying "no thank you" when someone does try to take a toy that she is playing with. She is so crazy with the "mine" business that she even yelled at my mom for using her bathroom last time. And, sometimes we have to leave the park because she starts yelling at all of the kids (before she is even out of her stroller) "THAT'S MY SLIDE! NO BIG GIRL, THAT'S MY SWING!" She goes so far as to tell kids, "that's mine. Don't even look at it!"
Can't get anything past her: Even when she looks like she isn't paying attention, she is. She eavesdrops on conversations and butts in with questions like, "Are you talking about me?" "What is Beth talking about?" "What did Daddy do Mom?" "Why you laughing? What's funny?" And she will ask me about certain details of a conversation that I was having with someone the next day. She never wants to be left out of an adult conversation. She has been like this since she was less than 4 months old. She used to look around at the other tables at restaurants and if she saw a table laughing she would throw her head back and fake laugh and try to make eye contact with someone at the table. Lately, she has been getting mad if she is not part of the grown up conversation. When Adam and I are talking to each other at the dinner table she will say, "MOM!! Talk a me about it! Talk a me about work. What happened? Talk a bout it MOM!" This is funny because "talk a bout it" was one of my biggest sayings as a baby.
Memories: Like many kids, she has such a great memory and remembers things that even I don't remember. Simple things will jog he memory and I will have no idea what she is talking about. For example, she saw one of my tiered plates in the garage yesterday and asked, "is that Katie's from her party?" I didn't understand what she was talking about until I remember that Katie Tollack had a similar serving dish with treats at her New Year's party. Things like that happen every day.
People have said things to me about taking her so many places at a young age. "It's not like she will remember it anyway." I beg to differ. She talks about details from trips and events that were months ago. One of her favorite places to talk about is Pawis. She pretends that she goes to Paris with her dolls a lot. On days when I don't have to work I will ask her, "what do you want to do today?" Her first choice is almost always, "Pawis". Whenever I pull out my Mom's Maclaren stroller that has been at our house since Paris that we almost never use she says, "my Pawis stroller!"
I chose a certain doll house that Santa got for her when we were in Paris. My mom and I talked about which one to get her a lot while we were pushing her around the St. Germain in her stroller. Again, I forgot that she listens to everything. So, when I left her in the hotel room to sneak over to the toy store and pick it out, I thought she had no idea. When I got back she asked where her dollhouse was. My mom and I were blown away, but it gets funnier...she came down Christmas morning to her new doll house from SANTA. After playing with it for a while she went and sat by my mom who asked her if she liked what Santa brought her. She smiled and said, "Dat doll house from Pawis Grandma."
Daddy going to wurk: She loves playing with her Daddy and gets sad these days when he has to work. "No Daddy! Play with Lila!" On the weekends when he is still in bed and we all cuddle and watch cartoons, she gets so excited. "Daddy no go to wurk today?? Daddy stay home and play with Lila??" And then the sings, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy..." and squeezes his face in her hands. While she doesn't like him to go, she understands why he has to. When you ask her why Daddy leaves for work every day she says, "to pay for our house and nums (food)."
Little Negotiator: She tries to talk her way out of everything. Some of her peers that are the same age are starting to climb out of their cribs. I think that given Liliana's coordination (or lack thereof) this is a long way off. But, the joke was made by another mom at Stroller Strides that while she may not be crawling out of her crib anytime soon, she may be able to talk her way out of her crib. I can't argue with that. She is full of, "I know Mom--just FOUR more?!?" Or, "not now mom. How about in a couple laters?" Or, my personal favorite, "I can't even hear you Mom" (said in a super sarcastic tone).
Dress up and make-believe: I have mentioned before on the blog that this kid is crazy about dress up. She wakes up in the morning asking for lip stick, tutus and high heels, sometimes before I can even get her out of her crib. I would say that half of the daily tantrums are about me telling her that she can't wear gloss or that I am too busy to change her costume for the 3rd time in 10 minutes, or that I am tired of dressing and doing her Barbie's hair when she changes her mind every 5 minutes. She changes personas so often that she sometimes even has to remind me, "no Momma--I'm just Lila now," when I call her something different. The other day we were in a rush to get somewhere and I told her that I would not run back into the house to get her different heels and a tutu. She cried, "MOM--PRINCESSES ALWAYS LOOK THEIR BEST!"
Stranger Danger: We are definitely going to have to have a 'stranger' talk with Liliana. She has people cracking up all over town because she will approach them and confidently ask, "HI! What's your name? I'm Lila! Nice a meetchoo!" She usually goes on to ask, "What's your man's name? Where's he? What you doing? What's your birtday?"....
The girls sat on their potties for so long giggling and watching the waves:
