From 2009-10-20

We are still dealing with major mood swings over here! From absolutely adorable to absolutely frustrating in 0.2 seconds flat. Must be the Terrible Twos? Last Wednesday we dropped her off at Grandma and Grandpa’s for a sleepover because they were going to watch her while we were at work on Thursday. Well, the work project ended up taking much longer than anticipated (we worked almost 22 hours - 7:30am-5am Friday), so she ended up spending an unexpected 2nd night there as well. She had a great time and even got to hang out with her cousins, but when we came to get her on Friday she was SO. MAD. AT. US. She threw nonstop tantrums until she finally fell asleep that night, and even tried to order me out of the car to walk home. Ever since then, it seems like it’s really kicked off an unbelievable streak of bossiness and we have at LEAST one major tantrum a day. I’m not liking this trend so far!

From 2009-10-20

Lily has been doing some nice things as a part of this age as well, so I don’t want to give the impression that it’s all bad. She has been doing a really good job of sharing and taking turns, both of which are important skills to learn. In the picture above, Gibson was sleeping on the couch so Lily decided that he need to have her lamby (lovey) to sleep, so she brought it to him. Then she decided that she was tired as well so she went and got her blanket and set up on the couch by the cat. It was pretty cute! Also, today she ran up to the front door and said “Bye bye!”. Jason and I asked here where she was going and she replied, “I go to the moon. Be right back.”

From 2009-10-20

Last weekend we FINALLY had some decent weather - no rain and upper 50s - so we managed to spend a lot of time outside and even went to a few apple orchards and pumpkin patches! Both of the places we went had little petting zoos, so Lily got to see and feed a bunch of little animals, and one of the places even had PONIES! It wasn’t quite as exciting as Grandma Gayle’s house and Jesse pony, but Lily did get a small ride on one of those ponies, which she really, really enjoyed.

From 2009-10-20

From 2009-10-20

Have I told you yet about Lily’s addiction to the show Word World?. She LOVES that show! It’s not a bad show, it teaches letter recognition and spelling and basic beginning reading skills. Grandma and Grandpa have a DVD of 4 episodes and we she has them all memorized and we hear about them ALL the time. The memorable part of that show is that they make things out of the word for what they are. Like, the Dog looks like a dog but is also made out of the letters DOG, if that makes sense (click the link if you don’t understand what I’m saying!). The thing I’ve noticed with Lily is that it seems to be helping her recognize the shapes of words already, even if she can’t put the letter sounds together yet. So, the other day we were playing one of their online games and they had the letters for the word HAT scrambled on the ground so you could pick them in order to spell HAT. The letters were arranged as “AHT” and Lily pointed to them and said “ant!”. I was pretty amazed!

From 2009-10-20

Other than that, there hasn’t been a lot of excitement going on. Lily is getting very excited about Halloween and has been practicing knocking on doors and saying “Trick or Treat!”. Tomorrow I have the day off at home with her so I’m hoping we can spend some quality time together since I think she’s been missing me a lot lately, and I’ve missed her. I’m not sure yet what we’re going to do yet - it looks rainy and cold so it’ll be an inside day for sure.

From 2009-10-20

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

The thing I’ve really noticed about this age is that Lily seems to alternate between absolutely, incredibly, indescribably adorable and insanely frustrating, with very little in between. She is very insistent about doing everything herself, which is good and can be cute, but at times can be so frustrating! Like when we’re in a hurry and need to get out of the house, but Lily insists on putting on her own shoes for 10 minutes. Or brushing her teeth for half an hour before bed.

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

But the adorable times completely make up for it. Like when she sits down and pulls off her shoes, then grunts and struggles for five whole minutes to get her socks off, and when she finally succeeds she announces “My sock FELL OFF!”. Or pointing out animals in some of her books where there is a Mommy animal and baby animal, and she points to each one and says “Mommy bear. Lily bear. Mommy sheep. Lily sheep.” and on and on like that. Today Jason was carrying her through the doorway that has his pull-up bar on it and she grabbed onto the handles and shouted “I do HANG-UPS!”.

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

She is getting to be such a big girl - I can hardly believe it. In just over 2 months, my baby girl will be two years old! It makes me teary even thinking about it. I don’t know how it’s possible the time has gone that fast. This past week Lily has graduated from sleeping in a pack-and-play at daycare, to sleeping on a cot. Jen says she has done REALLY well with the transition, and doesn’t even get off the cot when she wakes up - she just sits up and does her normal babbling. This is encouraging for when she makes her switch to a big girl bed, but I am nowhere near ready to make that change yet! As a reward for doing so well with the cot, she’s also graduated to a big girl chair (no booster or anything) at daycare so she can sit right at the table with all the other kids. She LOVES this! Now at dinner she climbs up on my chair and I have to fight her for it, so she might be making a similar transition at home soon.

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

(Lily proudly showing off the shoes she picked out and put on herself)

The other day she wanted to play with our digital camera, and take some pictures (all by herself, of course). She was very, very closely supervised - mainly because I was worried about something happening to the camera - but she did a good job. And now, Internet, I present to you one of Lily’s first solo pictures -

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

Backing up a little bit, let me talk about what’s been happening lately! A few weeks ago Lily and I met up with an old high school (and college!) friend named Becky, and her two kids - Alexandra (3), and Noah (1). It was fun to see her again and catch up, and Lily and Alexandra really seemed to hit it off! At one point, after watching Becky struggle to carry Alexandra (who didn’t want to walk anymore), and push a sleeping Noah in his stroller, I came up with the suggestion of improvising a double stroller out of mine. Alexandra sat in the stroller and Lily sat on her lap! They got a kick out of it long enough to get us most of the way back to the entrance, and I just chuckled listening to their little conversation on the way there! We also got to feed goats, and see two bears fighting - click the link for more pics!

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

Finally, last weekend we took a trip into the past and went to Winona for the first time in close to 10 years! We went to see a couple of college friends (Blaze and Kelly) get married, and it was a lot of fun! We saw a ton of old friends we haven’t seen in a long time, some who have moved as far away as Pennsylvania. It’s interesting to see how much people have changed, and how much some people haven’t changed!

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009

This weekend is our first weekend in close to two months where we have NO MAJOR PLANS and I have been really looking forward to it! Lily, Jason, and Uncle Greggy might go to a Twins game tomorrow (and I will have 3 hours to myself! in the middle of the afternoon!), and other than that I’m just hoping to catch up with some stuff around the house - a little cleaning, laundry, sorting out fall clothes, etc. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

From Lily Sept-Oct 2009