Erica, Charlie, and Addison: August 2009

Well, Addi had her first timeout today. She is usually an exceptionally well-behaved toddler and very mindful of what you're telling her but for some reason, today was an exception. She's just starting to push her limits and see how far she can go but usually if we tell her no firmly, she'll drop whatever she's doing and run up to us with a sad look and give us a hug (how's that for a guilt trip?). But, today at dinner she kept throwing her vegetables and I told her "no" multiple times. I looked at her straight in the face and said "don't you throw that again, mommy said no" in my best "'aren't I a big scary mommy?' voice." Well, don't you know she looked me right in the eye and dropped her green bean on the floor. So I picked her up sat her down in the corner and told her she was in timeout for throwing her food and not listening to mommy. She sat there for a second and stared at me then started to giggle and get up. I put her right back down, told her she was in timeout for a minute and then her waterworks started. She does NOT like it when mommy and daddy get mad at her. So she sat there for a whole 45 seconds until I told her she could get up and tell mommy that she was sorry. She hopped right up and ran to me and gave me a gigantic hug and cried :( Then she wouldn't let me put her down for 5 minutes. My sweet girl.

Since our girl will be 18 months old in 2 days (gasp!) I wanted to jot down a few things she's got going on! It is unbelievable how much has changed in just 2 or 3 months.

She really has a new word every day. We're up to 53 words right now. She's not really making 2 and 3 word sentences yet with the exception of "help please", "up please", and "thank you". (At least she's polite huh?) We're working on counting right now and she's got 1 and 2 down without any help. She's not really interested in getting past 2 though! Every time I say "three" she says "no." She's repeating letters of the alphabet right now and will say A, B, C, D, E, O, and G. She's just learned how to say her name too and it is so so cute. I'll ask her what her name is and she gets really coy and quietly says "addiiiii". Her favorite words right now are duck, uh oh, no, yeah, back pack, elmo, and ball. EVERYTHING is a duck. Thankfully she pronounces that word very well :) She's identifying people in pictures really well too. We're housesitting for my parents this weekend and they have a ton of pictures on the fridge and she ran up to it today and screamed "ABBY!". She just adores her cousin! She's getting really good at matching shapes too. She's got the shape sorter and a couple of puzzles that she really doesn't have a problem with any more. I think her favorite thing to do right now is stack things. She does it everywhere too. When we're at the grocery store she'll find the biggest thing she can find on the bottom shelf and pull as many out as she can and either stacks them or lines them up in a row. She also loves running right now. It's so cute because she'll crouch down and look at us and wait for us to say "1, 2, 3, GO!" and then she'll take off running and giggling. I'll have to video it and put it on here because it is adorable!

One of the big changes in our house is our naptimes and bedtimes. We've always held her to help her to fall sleep. We tried to change that 3 or 4 months ago in hopes that she'd be able to get herself to sleep without us just because "it's something they need to figure out how to do on their own". She wasn't really too thrilled about it. We gave it a good month or so but it just wasn't working and when we decided that Addi might be the only baby we ever have, we decided we want to get all the snuggles in while we can! Well, the past few weeks she's been really squiqqly and wormy just because she's getting too big for us to hold her the way she used to (sigh :( ) so she's really had a hard time falling asleep just because she's so uncomfortable. So mommy started taking over sleeptime duties and we may have just figured it out. Daddy still reads her her books right before bed and then I come in to put her down. I've been just snuggling her for a few minutes to get that last little bit of energy out of her and then when I think she's ready I'll ask her if she wants to go lay in bed. She usually replies with "no" and a big snuggly hug. Then I ask her if she wants to go lay in bed and mommy will sing her a song. "Yeah". (Don't ask me why my sweet little girl wants to hear my awful singing voice!) So I'll lay her down, snuggle Petey (her horse) up to her and sing her a song and rub her tummy. Then I tell her that it's time to go night night, I love her, and I'll see her in the morning. This immediately causes her to stand up and grab on to me. So instead of picking her up like I usually do I say "big hug night night" and give her a big hug and ask her to lay down for mommy. Works every time :). Then I tell her again that it's time for night night and I tell her how much I love her and that I'll be downstairs. Then I leave. Usually you would insert shrilling screams at this point but ever since we started that routine there has not been one. single. sound. I have no idea why this has worked. I did notice though that when I started telling her where I was going to be while she was sleeping things started to turn. So, other mommies of babies that love to be held to get to sleep, there is hope!!!

I apologize for how long winded this post has gotten. I don't really write in Addi's baby book so I'm planning on having this blog printed into a little book as a keepsake of our sweet little girl. She really is the biggest blessing and every single day, multiple times a day, I can't believe that she's mine.