21 months and life

Blakely turned 21 months almost a month ago!  She is getting so big.  I went through a bunch of her clothes to sell in a children's consignment event, and came across the onesie we brought her home in.  Not much bigger than a 3x5 index card. 

She is so much fun these days, and also SO ornery.  She is definitely testing the limits of obedience and consequences.  She now has basically full understanding of what we ask her to and not to do, so she gets pretty frequent time outs.  ;)

She is talking an insane amount.  Saying full sentences that just blow me away.  We walked outside to get the mail a while ago and she said, "Wow, it's warm out here."  HA!  Who is this girl?!  Her ability to communicate with us is impressive to me.  She has a few phrases that are JUST my favorite.  I need to record them and let everyone experience them.  But for my memories sake, my favorite are, "MOOOOOMMY!  Come....HERE!", " "Bless you, Hankie!" (when Henry sneezes or makes any sound resembling a sneeze...), "Hankie is awake!", "MOOOVE PEASE!", "uphereuphereuphereuphere"-- I kid you not, when she wants up here she says it as fast as she can over and over.  It's hilarious and incredibly irritating all at the same time.  "I wubu." (I love you)

Anyway, those are just a few of my favs that I can think of at the moment. 

She is still all about going outside.  Her favorite thing right now is to go to the park down the street and swing.  She is obsessed.  She cracks up the whole time.  She also is obsessed with bugs.  I think that's my fault.  I have made it a little too big of a deal when I have seen a bug or spider, so she is become fascinated with them.  And she can spot them like nobody's business.  She'll say "BUG!  Fly around!"  And if she then can't find the bug or spider, she will say, "He eatin..." or "He walkin..." or "He sleepin..."  She saw a butterfly outside today and it flew up over the house.  She kept saying "Bug on top house!  Come HERE!"  Needless to say, he never came. 

Another current obsession is forts.  We make a fort a couple of times a day in her room.  She is also obsessed with Mickey and Elmo.  She would literally sit in front of the tv all day and watch them if she could.  She asks for each of them a minimum of 2-3 times an hour.  She loves to play with her kitchen in her room and cook us things, and get us "coffees."  We take one sip or bite and she says, "More?"  She loves to feed all her babies and animals.  She loves to read but she has to be in the mood for it, she loves to draw and will scribble and say, "circle!...triangle!...square!...star!...heart!.."

She is hit or miss with eating.  Some days she will eat so much that we are genuinely worried she'll throw up... and some days it seems like she doesn't eat a thing.  I think it really affects her sleeping too.  She is ALL over the place.  She goes to bed around 7:30 every night, and usually goes to sleep pretty quickly.  She is in an incredible mood all day if she sleeps past 6:30.  Like- totally noticeable- she's an angel all day.  She goes down for her nap at noon.  She is still in size 3 diapers and is all over the place with clothing sizes.  yesterday she had on a 3t long sleeve shirt and 6-12mo shorts.  Unless it is leggings, anything bigger than 12 months is too big in pants.

She is generally very obedient, but her big problem now is that we have to tell her 5 times before she obeys.  (not everything, but a LOT of things...) We really want her to learn to be obedient immediately.  An example of her attitude right now is she will be banging something on the coffee table.  I will ask her to stop, and she will, but then she will lightly tap the coffee table.  Should I discipline her?  She does this with lots of situations, and I know she is testing me- but I don't know if it's better to ignore her, or to send her to timeout.  Sometimes she puts herself in timeout- which leads me to wonder if it even does any good.  I'm not quite ready to spank though.  Maybe I am just being a softie.  She's not the best listener (as I'm sure most toddlers aren't...) and she has a bit of a temper.  The other day she was trying to get Stephen's shoe on her foot and she couldn't, and the next thing I knew, she was screaming and stomping on the shoe saying, "NO! NO! NO!"  It was kinda funny and freaky all at the same time. 

She still LOVES "Hankie."  She loves to kiss him and cuddle him, and she is so good at playing with him.  She will sit by him and talk to him.  She will try to calm him down when he is crying.  She will hold his hands and play with him- all of this unprompted by me.  She just genuinely loves him.  It is pretty sweet to watch.  A week or so ago some girls in the neighborhood gave her a disney princess sticker.  Tonight she was running around with it (yes, we still have it...) saying, "MINE! MINE! MINE!"  (another popular word in her vocab these days..." And Stephen casually reminded her that those girls gave it to her, and wasn't that so sweet, blah blah blah, it's good to give things to people to show them we love them...  Anyway, a little while later she was yelling for me and Henry: "MOOOOMMYYYYY!  HANKIEEEEEE!" :)  And when she found us, she brought her sticker and handed it to Henry and said, "Hankie have it."  And walked away.  Melt my heart.  She truly is such a sweet girl. 

We took our first "solo" trip without Stephen last weekend to my parents house.  My grandpa came with us- but definitely not the same as Stephen.  We had SO much fun.  The kids were angels on the way there, we had a blast on the farm with Pawpaw and Gigi while we were there, and Blakely missed her dad TERRIBLY.  BUT it was a huge milestone for us, and now that I know I can do it, we will be making the trip more!  Blakely got to play with chickens, watch the cows, collect the eggs, and go see the firetruck Pawpaw rides in. 

I'll upload pictures from my phone, and hopefully post 22 month update in a few days.  (yeah right!)