Things to Remember

This post is really for me. After yesterday's post, I was thinking about all the things my Sweetie does - good and bad. Following are some things I don't want to forget. Granted, most of it is identical to every other 2 1/2 year old, but she's mine and I'm not taking any chances on forgetting.

She calls me "Honey Bunny". As in, "I want to sit with my Honey Bunny". Sometimes she'll call me Sweetie too, but usually that's my name for her. She'll call her Dad "Sweetie Daddy".

In the last two months or so, she has started complying with requests for hugs and kisses. She used to say "no" when we asked for a kiss. Or she would give you her cheek. Now she puckers her lips and it looks so cute!

She LOVES cars, trucks, trains, helicopters, motorcycles, bicycles, skateboards, and anything else with wheels that go. I don't think I will forget this, but she loves them so much that it's worth mentioning.

We've seen a number of trains carrying double stacked shipping containers . The other day she put her train cars on top of each other to make a double stacked train of her own.

When she's playing in her playroom alone and hears the train whistle outside, she runs out of the playroom to be next to Hubs or me.

When she was learning the alphabet she used to yell "A, B, C, D" and we had to yell back "E, F, G". Sometimes she would dictate whose turn it was to respond ... "Mommy's turn, A,B,C,D" and I would have to yell back. If someone went out of turn we had to do it again.

She loves to sing and dance and do forward rolls around the house. The forward rolls make me a little nervous that she's going to break her neck!

She likes the show Wonder Pets. She'll sing "What's gonna work" and we'll sing "Teamwork" like the pets do in the show. She'll vary the pitch and tone and we sing it back in the same way.

When it's time for a new diaper we sing the diaper song... "Diaper, diaper for you!". Sometimes it's more of a howl than singing, but it's fun. For both of us!

She'll make up words to a song to fit whatever we are doing at the time. For example, "This is the way we go to school, go to school, go to school" Or, "The fork takes the hot dog, the fork takes the hot dog, hi-ho the derry-0, the fork takes the hot dog." Lately she's been trying to sing Frere Jacques but loses it after "Dormez-vous", so she'll begin again in English (Brother John).

She likes to help in the kitchen. Shredded cheese is called "sprinkles" because she likes to sprinkle it on food. She learned how to crack eggs (with help) when her Auntie came to visit. She is very good at pouring liquids for me and can also cut some things with her own cutting knife.

She has a big sweet tooth (just like her Mom - oh no!). If she sees us eating ice cream or hears a wrapper that sounds like a candy wrapper, she'll say "I want some". The other day I was opening a new dish sponge and the wrapper sounded like candy. She was disappointed when she realized it was only a sponge.

She knows her alphabet and sometimes she can count to 20.

She loves the library, the playground, the pool (but only if the water is heated), the beach, carousels, ferris-wheels, and all other "fun" spots. She also loves bubbles. Crayons are good but "big people" pens and markers are better.

Puzzles, mega-blocks, tea sets, lift-tab books, Little People, Rody, finger-paints, watercolors, and my exercise ball are all fun. In fact, almost anything can be made into entertainment. Empty paper towel tubes are telescopes, a single empty toilet paper roll can be a camera, two empty toilet paper rolls together are binoculars.

The maracas, whistle, kazoo, drum sticks, and electric keyboard are fun for making music, but anything that makes a repetitive sound is now called music. For example, the sound of her winter boot hitting the middle console in my car is now called music (until I take the boots off because I can't stand it when she "thumps" the car!).

Thomas videos and dvds are loved and she can now put them in and take them out of both the player and the cases.

She won't go to bed at night unless Hubs or I lay down with her. She hates to think she's missing something, so the whole house has to settle down at bedtime. If we don't sleep with her, it's a crap shoot as to whether or not she'll sleep through the night. If she wakes up and she's alone, she'll come to our room, climb into bed and fall right back to sleep.

When she gets tired she makes a sucking motion as if she's sucking on a pacifier or the inside of her cheek. She's always done this and she's never had a pacifier. She also likes to rub things when she's tired... the mattress, the blanket. If she's sitting on my lap and getting tired, she'll rub my arm. I think it's the repetitive motion that she likes.

She calls the "footie" pajamas the "slippery ones" because she slides a little on the hard wood floors at home.

She's adorably groggy when she first wakes up. As a baby she was most alert and the most fun in the mornings, but now she might be showing signs of being a night owl rather than a morning person.

She loves bath time and plays with her frogs, ducks, boots, and her kiwi bird cup. She'll put the washcloth in the cup and have it hanging out the top a little so it looks like an ice cream cone and she'll make believe she's licking it. She'll put the rubber ducks on top of the shampoo bottles and call it a space ship. She likes to wash the frogs. Two ducks will fit in the kiwi cup and it will become the ducks' pool.

Her all time favorite bedtime books right now are the Thomas books (she has 4). She also likes Curious George Takes a Job, Kat Kong and the Corduroy books (she also has 4). When we read Corduroy Goes To The Doctor she loves when we give her a make believe shot followed by a band-aid, a button and a balloon. She'll take the imaginary balloon from me and sometimes it will pop, other times she'll let go and it will float to the ceiling. It has a long string, so if she stands up in bed, she can reach it and grab it again. She'll also do the deep breath and wants her eyes and ears examined like Corduroy. She has most of the books memorized and if I try to skip a few words here or there, she'll make me go back and re-read the entire page. Sometimes we play "fill in the blank" where I will stop reading and ask her to finish the sentence or fill in a word. Most of the time she gets it exactly.

Lately she's been saying she wants to be a fire-fighter when she grows up so she can drive the fire truck. Today an ambulance and police car drove by us with their lights on, so today she wanted to be a police officer.

Every once in a while she lets someone play with her hair to put barrettes or ponytails in. We have dragonfly barrettes that are her favorite. They don't usually last long because she would rather pull them out of her hair and play with them.

When I pick her up at the end of the day, she'll run up to me and give me a hug and say "Mummy". And I love it.