Oh, our Laurel. We just love her to pieces! She is a ball of spunk and energy! She is changing so much these days, that I've been wanting to document all of the fun things she is doing and all of the funny things she is saying!
-Her favorite things to do right now are read books, color, do puzzles, jump, and play outside! As much as she has to be busy and keep moving, she surprisingly will stay fairly still to do puzzles or to color. She loves going to different playgrounds and so glad that we have a few different options around here for her! She likes going to look at the animals.
-Laurel's speech is really starting to take off now! I can't even keep track of all the words she says anymore and she is putting words together and she gives us phrases and little sentences every now and then. Sometimes she'll say phrases that are as clear as day, and sometimes she gets close to me and is having a whole conversation with me and I have no clue what she's talking about. There are words that she doesn't say correctly and some of them are just too cute! My favorite is that right now she says "buck" instead of "milk." I try to get her to say milk and she just enunciates "buck" all the more! I also think it's so neat that there's a clear difference between the way she says "buck" and the way she says "book." "Cheese" is one of my favorite words that she says. She draws it out, it's usually in question form, and she has the most innocent little smile when she says it.
-It's been so neat as we're starting to have little conversations with her. I get so excited when I get something out of her about something that she did or saw when I wasn't around. Like this past Sunday, she told me that she had cookies and goldfish in Sunday School.
-She's always telling us to "sit." She wants us to sit down with her in certain spots in her room to play or often it's to tell us to sit by her when she wants to read a book or color.
-There's still some frustration with figuring out what it is that she wants sometime. She will say something so emphatically, but I'll have no idea what she's talking about.
-Laurel is so observant and just loves order just like her Daddy. Laurel likes things in a certain places and she likes things done a certain way. If I put something away somewhere (even something of mine or Peter's) and I didn't put it in the place that she's used to seeing it and thinks where it should go, she'll move it to what she thinks is it's proper place. I was in her Sunday School room one day and there was a a spatula with the play dough toys that kids could play with when they were playing with play dough. For Laurel, that is not where that spatula was supposed to go. She got up from the table and put it in the box on the shelf that she thought it should be in. She's so observant as to where things go and how things are done. She's always surprising me by putting something away without being asked and I had no clue as to how she knew where it went. Laurel is big about what items belong to whom and making sure it goes to the right person. Her Sunday School teacher tells me that she always knows when she brings something new into the room and she'll go up to her and say "play."
-Laurel is just a precious little imitator right now. It's really making me take notice of what I'm doing! She's likes hanging out in the bathroom with me while I'm getting ready and she pretends to put on my deodorant, put lotion on, brush her teeth, and brush her hair. One day, Peter was laying down and I rubbed his calf before I went out of the room with Laurel. She goes back to him rubs his calf and then comes out the door with me.
-Laurel loves giving hugs and kisses! If Peter and I hug, she comes up to us and says "hug" so she can hug too or she'll say "fug" for family hug. We started having a little bedtime ritual. After I put her in her crib, she'll want me to kiss each of her hands and feet through the bars of the crib. I did that one time and so now she thinks it's just part of her night time routine.
-Eating is always one of the more challenging areas with Laurel. She LOVES fruit and so she would eat that and not much else if we would let her. Grapes, strawberries, bananas, and mandarin oranges are her favorite. The past few months she's grown more picky and what she'll eat just depends on the day! We're working on it though. She's still not a big meat eater.
-Potty training hasn't officially started, but we've introduced Laurel to her potty seat and she loves sitting on it while we read her a book. She loves sitting on there and I have a hard time getting her to leave, but she has yet to use the potty. One day she told me "pee pee please" and so I took her to the potty, but she just enjoyed sitting there while we read a book. We'll get there though!
-Laurel is really social. Sometimes she needs a few minutes to warm up, but after that, you're her new friend. Laurel loves going to church and is often running to her Sunday School room. She just loves her teacher and she has some little friends in there. There is a little boy her age here and they are just little buddies. She just loves him and they have so much fun together.
-Her favorite songs are "Miss Patty Cake theme song," "Wheels on the Bus," "Mighty to Save," "ABC song," "6 little ducks," and "Itsy Bitsy Spider." She likes her Miss Patty Cake DVD (well we only get through the first two songs) and the Letter Factory DVD (we usually only get through letter C).
-We're starting to work on colors, counting, shapes, and occasionally letters, thanks to her bathtub letters and the Letter Factory DVD. Laurel knows more colors than she can name. If you ask her what color something is, she'll usually say blue. She'll usually just say number 2 or number 6. She seems to think every letter is the letter C, although she picked out the letter T the other day in the bathtub. She also surprised me the other day by drawing a circle and labeling it as she drew it.
-Laurel has definitely seemed to have grown up some and these "Terrible Twos" are a little less overwhelming for me than it was a couple months ago. She is definitely still a toddler and obeying right away seems to be the focus of a lot of our discipline right now.
That was really long, but I just can't get over about how much Laurel is changing these days. It seems like she's been growing like a weed, talking more and more all the time, and just doing so many new things!
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