Izzy is 2 1/2 years old

2 1/2 YEARS OLD

In her flower girl dress for my sister's wedding this past weekend

Height: unofficial 38"

Weight: ~35 lbs

Taking a walk in the woods

New Tricks: Man, this little girl is STRONG. Recently she has been wanting to do the wheelbarrow all the time (we hold her feet and she walks on her hands across the floor). She also wants to do the wheelbarrow UP THE STAIRS so she will put one elbow up the stair, then the other one and pull herself up while we hold her legs. She will do about half the stairs, rest for a minute and then do it again. Crazy girl thinks this is fun. The other night CP taught her how to do a somersault (head down, touch your toes, roll over!) and every time she does once she laughs hysterically afterwards. She quickly caught onto the balance bike that our neighbor gave us and is starting to learn how to ride her new-to-us tricycle.

Language: Her best mispronunciation is "suncream" instead of "sunscreen." She still has a lot of problems with her s words so she still says stuff like "pill" instead of "spill" and "cooter" instead of "scooter." Yesterday she heard "tunder" for the first time (thunder). We definitely still have moments where we have no idea what she is saying and she gets quite exasperated with us. It also seems like every day she comes home from daycare singing a new song and she loves to sing songs to herself as she puts herself to sleep. She started singing "ABCs" before her second birthday and loves to count various things (still gets messed up once we get past 12 which is hilarious).

Personality: Izzy is a shy girl when in a new situation. She tends to want to be picked up by one of us and is rendered mute until she feels comfortable and then will eventually start talking and interacting with the strangers. When she knows someone though, she gives lots of directions. "Daddy sit here. Mommy ober der (over there). Buster come." Etc. When we tell her things that will happen in the future, she wants them to happen now or else she gets sad. One day we passed a school bus on the way to daycare and I told her that in a few years she will ride the bus to school. For the next week or so she was upset that she couldn't ride the school bus TODAY. Like most kids, she is not a fan of being pulled away abruptly from something fun, so I try to give her a run down of what we are going to do and give her timers (i.e. 2 minutes until we go upstairs to read some books). The timers seem to work well. She is a pretty good sharer which I think is mainly a product of daycare, but when she does offer us something (food, sticker, etc.) we praise her for sharing and talk about Mommy and Daddy sharing a lot too.

Sometimes a fan of Buster, sometimes not a fan of Buster.

Teeth: All in. Now we just wait for them to fall out in a few years!

Favorite Toy: She is fairly obsessed with Playdoh, crayons, and her bubble machine. We try to do puzzles with her but I think that they are still a little old for her (at least the ones that have been handed down to us) as I try to explain about end pieces and that all Elmo pieces should go together....while she tries to shove whatever two pieces are closest together.

Favorite Book: She is all over the place in what she wants to read these days but all of the board books that we used to read are scoffed at so I may move them to the baby's room soon. There are a few books given to us by neighbors that I want to shoot myself after reading (like a Scooby Doo book and a Strawberry Shortcake book), but such is life. After we read her the 2-3 books before bed, she wants to keep them in her bed so that she can continue "reading" them after we turn the light off.

Helping Daddy with lawn care

Other Favorites: Jumping off curbs. Going out to dinner. Putting stickers on herself and/or Mommy and Daddy. Counting all of the school buses that we see on our ride to school. Brushing her teeth. Putting Mommy's lotion on her hands. Playing at the park.

Keeping busy with stickers during a car ride

Sleeping Habits: These days she goes to bed closer to 8pm than 7:30 and wakes up around 6:30-7. I have been able to preserve her weekend nap but sometimes it takes her almost an hour to put herself down. In the meantime she will sing to herself, "read" books, give orders to her stuffed animals, etc. She seriously loves her big girl bed and hasn't tried to get out once.

Eating:  *Knock on wood* Izzy has not hit a picky period. We slowly have moved her into eating more of what we are eating but sometimes give her a choice. Last night she didn't want the paella that CP made so her dinner was strawberries, sugar snap peas, cucumbers, carrots, cherry tomatoes and a few sunflower seeds. She isn't a big meat eater unless it is a hot dog or meatball. Izzy is still quite obsessed with milk, wanting it in the morning when she wakes up, and with every meal. Otherwise she drinks water.

Olive fingers

Potty: No more diapers during the day! Pampers Baby Dry size 6 for naps and at night. About half the time Izzy will say "I need to go potty!" but otherwise, CP and I are taking her to go to the bathroom about once an hour. Sometimes she is more willing to go than other times....mostly when she is in the middle of something so we will tell her either that she can take the toy into the bathroom, we can come right back to what she was doing, or we tell her "two minutes until we are going potty!" She is big into following rules as well so we instituted a rule that once we take off her diaper (after naps/ in the morning when she wakes up) we need to try going to the bathroom.

Clothes: I seriously am calling Izzy the human weed these days because this month she is moving into some 4T clothing. Her 3T pants are getting to be too short and some of her 3T shirts are tight. Izzy is wearing size 8 shoes and is very opinionated about what she wears these days. The cute animal socks that she LOVED this winter didn't come in a larger size, so she is now obsessed with My Little Pony socks that I bought her on Amazon (CP hates them). She wears size 4 Hello Kitty and Zootopia underwear (she picked them out despite having no concept of the characters). If she could wear pajamas ("jamas") everywhere she would.

Outfit by Izzy

People: Izzy is still obsessed with CP and when I tell her no, she often cries and asks for Daddy. Little does she know that we are a good team and he won't bow to her demands either! :-) She gets very excited when I tell her that she will be seeing "Grandma and Grandpa" (my parents) and surprisingly enough (because we don't see them that often), my sister and her fiance. We have had a few of her friends over from daycare and she LOVES that. She really looks up to older kids, especially older girls. One night we were over at a friend's house- they have a 6 year old daughter. They played great before dinner, ate dinner together at the kids table, and then we let them go upstairs by themselves. We heard crying so the other mother and I ran upstairs and the 6 year old had jumped from the top bunk onto the lower bunk and Izzy thought that she could do that as well. Luckily she was crying for a minute or two (mostly from being scared). On the one hand it worried me that she would blindly follow an older girl, on the other hand I was proud that she wasn't scared. I would NOT have felt this way had she hurt herself though.

Media: CP has relaxed our tv watching restrictions a bit. He wanted to institute movie night every Friday with Izzy and I said that it didn't need to be every week. So we end up having it about once a month and she really only makes it through half a movie before we put her to bed. CP has been playing "I Like to Move it" from Madagascar and "Hakuna Matada" from the Lion King on his phone for Izzy and she asks for the songs all the time so that she can dance to them. Two weeks ago he walked her to the library and they rented The Lion King. I had never seen it but in watching it with her, I was a little worried that it was a bit too scary for her. She would tell us when she was scared and got in our laps, but seemed to do okay. We haven't watched Sesame Street for a while, but she has been enjoying the Leap Frog Letter Factory shows on Netflix (30 minutes on shapes or the sounds that letters make, etc.). Mainly the only time that she gets tv time is a bit of time on the weekends and the Friday night movie.

Classes: Izzy finished up soccer in the beginning of March. Her attention span was hit or miss during the class, but at least she was running around a bunch. Right after that finished, she started a swim class. Last weekend was her last class because we bought outdoor pool passes that start this weekend, but she REALLY likes to go to swim class with Daddy. I foresee us starting back up again in the fall because we see her making progress (although she is a bit too confident and thinks that she can swim without any help).

Doing prenatal yoga with Mommy

Illness: In the past 6 months it has mainly been colds, an ear infection, and strep. 

Tantrums: Although all of this makes it seem like Izzy is a perfect kid, I can assure you she is not! :-) She hits me on occasion...that's when I get down on her level and we talk about "nice hands" and "hands are not for hitting", etc. She definitely throws herself on the ground fake crying when she is unhappy about something- generally when we do something that she wanted to do or if she asks for a nack ("snack") and we say no because it's almost time for dinner. We don't use time outs, but do our best to calm her down and let her know that we are here for her. After she calms down, we try to talk to her about using her words and why we said no.

Putting on her own "suncream"

Other highlights: Izzy still talks about our trip to Hawaii, the lava, the steam ("team"), etc. Her first show- Sesame Street Live! Every once in a while she will sing to "baby brother" or put her hand on my belly if I tell her that he is kicking.

Excited for her new role!

In short, Izzy is amazing, demanding, hilarious, and exhausting all at the same time. :-)