The (not so) terrible twos

I think it's been almost a year since my last blog post, so what better time to update than a during a sick day from work? I feel like I have been sick a lot this school year, which is especially fun while pregnant, and with a two-year-old -- but between day care issues and Autumn's day care-related illnesses, I've had to take a few days for her, and have subsequently gone to work on days I shouldn't have. I like to think I'm helping people build stronger immune systems by gracing them with my presence.

October 2012

Pre-Halloween 2012

But anyway, Autumn turned two almost two months ago! And she has been non-stop ever since. Unfortunately, I don't have many great pics or videos to share as my phone is almost always full. I'll get the hang of this one day.

Current favorites:
--Spinning, while saying "I'm spinning around!", obviously.
--Wearing tutus -- sometimes I wonder if she was switched at birth
--Being "nakey". She recently started stripping and running wild around the house. I asked my mom if this is normal for a two-year-old. Her response was, "yeah I think so...and for my severe/profound special education kids." The video below is of Autumn looking like a muppet (haircut time), and being a naked elephant.

--Winnie the Pooh. Everything Pooh. She really likes to create stories with her little Pooh characters that live at my parents house. She's still terrible at playing by herself, but every once in a while we'll hear her occupied in a scenario with her Pooh toys ("No Tigger! Don't go up there, it's dangerous!"). Also, Autumn insists that Baby Brother's name will be Piglet.
--Speaking of dangerous, we have a safety-first Ned Flanders on our hands. Autumn loves talking about things that are dangerous ("don't go in the street, it's dangerous!", "don't climb the tree Big E, it's dangerous!", etc.). She usually exclaims these things right before jumping of the couch, bed, kitchen chair, etc., and/or running headfirst into a wall.
--Singing. She's starting to request that we sing the Jewish songs with her that she learns at pre-school (she goes to the JCC three days a week, our little Jewish girl). Time to catch up.

Rhino in a tutu - Halloween 2012

--Entertaining people. We were at a party a couple of weeks ago and there were four middle school aged girls sitting on a bed watching ICarly (whatever that show is). I walked in to find Autumn right in front of them leaping and prancing (and spinning, of course). When she saw me she ran over and exclaimed, "Mom! I'm dancing for my friends!" I didn't point out to her that her "friends" didn't even seem to realize she existed, she has plenty of time to learn those tough life lessons. For the next ten minutes Autumn crawled on and off the bed, staring admirably at her new friends...and making sure to yell out to me every few seconds, "Mom! These are my friends, see?!"
--Being a unicorn. That's what the teachers at her school/daycare have nicknamed her. They said it's because everything she says is with so much enthusiasm, i.e. "I pooped! A big one!", or "Oh! I fell down!". I have to wonder if the nickname comes from the once popular YouTube cartoon about Charlie the Unicorn. YouTube that if you haven't seen it. Then pray for us.

Milestones...in no particular order since I can't remember them all anyway.

Very focused on painting at the Children's Museum

--Warning: this paragraph will be really uninteresting for most people to read. I just want to be able to reflect on this when we go through it with Baby Brother in a few years. Autumn is potty trained! Well, nearly. Knock on wood, but we haven't had an accident in 4-5 days I think, so that counts for something right? The week before my winter break the JCC was closed, so my parents had 5 full, exhausting days with her. It was really cold out, so I (half) jokingly told my mom she was welcome to potty train her if they were planning on being inside a lot. By the end of that first day Autumn was telling everyone, "I don't wear diapers anymore". The next day my mom bravely took her to the store and playground without a diaper...and we all lived happily ever after. Well, sort of. We've had our share of "almost" making it to the potty in public. If you've ever potty trained a kid you know that "almost" in this sense is nowhere near as useful as an "almost" in horseshoes. But I'll take the occasional accident over any rigid potty routine or prolonged potty training regimen any day. I had actually planned to follow some sort of quick and dirty tried and true method, but thankfully this go-with-the-flow thing worked for us. If you haven't read about potty training methods before, it can be quite enlightening to hear what the "experts" recommend. Putting a potty in the living room? Really? I know my school psych credentials don't cross over specifically to this subject, but I can only imagine that doing this would teach a toddler (especially mine) to just pop a squat in the living room without ever having to leave her beloved Little Einsteins episode. There are also methods that recommend not leaving your house for days, and wearing diapers when you do go out. Ripping off the bandaid, so to speak, worked better for Autumn. While we did have to change her pants, undies and socks at the Botanic Gardens and at a restaurant once, at least we got to go to those places -- and she didn't become used to only using a potty at home. In the end, I think this success has been a reflection of Autumn just being ready, not of anything we did amazingly right. Remind me of this when we are back here in a few years.

--She's sleeping in a big girl bed, and loving it. In preparation for getting Baby Brother's room together (maybe he'll have a name soon), we took apart Autumn's crib and bought her a twin bed. She loves it, and over the winter break was sleeping until after 8am almost every morning! She yells for us in the morning ("Mommy!!! I'm all done sleeping!"), and doesn't get out of bed until we come in for her.

--She's able to have (nearly) functional conversations with us. When I pick her up from school she can usually tell me something specific that happened that day. My most recent favorite --
Autumn: "...and Aoife (pronounced 'Eefa')  was crying because I took her spoon away...and teacher said 'no'"
Me: "Your teacher said no to you, or to Aoife?"
Autumn: "To me, Autumn...because... I took her spoon away...and Aoife was sad. She was crying"
Me: "That's not very nice, why did you take her spoon away?"
Autumn: "I don't know!" (In Unicorn voice). "Aoife's my friend...she was crying..."

Very functional, as you can see. She also likes to say things like, "remember, last night? When we were walking on the street? And we go to the playground, and it was dark outside?" Um, no. That didn't happen, but we can talk about it like it did.

--Another favorite milestone is actually one of Brian's. About a month ago, Autumn walked in on Brian peeing. She walked up to him, patted him on the back and said, "good job peeing, Daddy! I'm so proud of you!" We're all really proud of him.

In other news...
--I am 33+ weeks pregnant, feeling like 53. This pregnancy has been so different than it was with Autumn. From about 15 weeks on, I have been pretty uncomfortable, and not due to any specific health issues or excessive weight gain either. It's frustrating. I attribute part of it to having a toddler and not having as much time to be active (she no longer tolerates a stroller for even short amounts of time). So I fell out of shape pretty early on. I also can't hide the fact that between Thanksgiving and New Years, not a single day went by where I didn't eat dessert after dinner, and I'm not talking about a single cookie or a few bites of ice cream. It was awesome, but I think I'm paying for that as well. As of my appointment at 32 weeks I had gained 20 pounds, which is totally fine -- but with Autumn I think I only gained 23 total, so it's no wonder I already feel like I did with her at the very end. 
--Baby Boy is doing well. He was still breech at my last appointment, but Autumn was too until about 34 weeks too, so that shouldn't be much of an issue. He also measures big, as did she. One day, he'll have a name. That day might be the day he is born, but maybe sooner. We are bad at this part, but that doesn't mean we don't love him already.

Bye Bye June!

Well, the day that Autumn doesn't know she has been dreading, has finally come. Our neighbors across the street, Kylee, Travis and their almost 2-year-old June, are moving back to Indiana. Since we leave for Hawaii and California tomorrow, this will be the last afternoon/evening that Autumn and "Junie!" get to engage in their near daily ritual of playing with water, running around half (or fully) naked, fighting over toys, and whacking each other with sticks. We've lived across from Travis and Kylee since we moved in over three years ago, and had always been friendly acquaintances. But over the past few months, since the weather has turned and the girls have developed a love-hate obsession with each other, we've found ourselves spending multiple hours a week with them. We've also found ourselves really sad that they are leaving, and have tried to convince Travis that doing a two year fellowship in infectious disease is for lazy people whose lives are going nowhere. Unfortunately, he doesn't agree. 

Autumn will be so confused when we get home. First of all the house will look totally different inside (more on the kitchen remodel to come). But more importantly, when we pull up to the house her cries of "Junie?! Junie?! Junie?!" will not be met by the possibility that June and Kylee are enjoying a summer afternoon in the front yard.

 We'll miss you guys!

 

For some reason they really enjoy sitting in the ivy

 

 

And in anything containing water

 

 

Sweet Juniper

 

 

 

"Come on, friend!"

On a final note, I know this is out of character, but I'll end with a fairly sappy quote from Dr. Seuss -- the guy who truly had everything figured out...

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

Wake Up Call

Summer is a glorious thing. 10+ weeks of not waking up to an alarm -- or at least, not waking up to a mechanical alarm. We have one of another sort around here. Recently, Autumn has started referring to Brian not as Daddy, but as "Brine". This morning when she woke up, rather than her usual whining and yelling nonsense from her crib, we hear over and over again from her room, "Brine! Brine! Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!!!! Morning!" Since Brine had to shower and get ready for the day, she got boring Mommy instead. It's hard to resent a wake up call when it's made by this face...

And this face...she hates the flash. "Mommy, sun! Eyes!"

Finally

Pardon the random entry with poorly formatted pictures below. The biggest reason I never blog anymore is because I am a lazy B (and by that I mean I don't have a good system for getting pictures to my computer from my phone or camera). Thank goodness for the geniuses and Blogger though, who created an app that lets you upload pics straight to your blog...only to then NOT allow you to write any text with them, or something like that. Maybe I'm just not smart enough. So anyway, those pictures were uploaded a couple of months ago (minus the one of Autumn and Sam, which was very recent). Random, sorry.

Anyway, I had to post an update before Autumn turns into a full-blown kid before our eyes. She has been so ridiculous lately, in that good ridiculous way that kids tend to be. Today in Target she wanted to get out of the cart when we were checking out. She found three miniature Barbies in boxes on the bottom shelf and lined them up on the ground. Then, while she pointed at each, she freaking counted them...and then said, "mommy three!" Say what? We do practice counting when we walk up and down the stairs, but it's very rote, and she usually skips numbers as she sees fit. I had no idea she actually knew that counting served a purpose.

I also had no idea how often I must say, "Oh my goodness!". Autumn says it like 20 times a day right now. "Oh my goodness" there's an ant on the ground (do all kids find it totally crucial to point out every single ant they come across?). There's also, "oh my goodness!" I just drew on both of my arms AND the couch with a pen, and "oh my goodness" I just pooped. Speaking of poop, Mrs. Rachel has been awarding Autumn with stickers for using her little potty at day care. She has earned a ton. Wanna know how many times Autumn has used her potty at home? Zero. We aren't really interested in the prolonged potty training thing. I'm totally holding out for the day (maybe around 2?) where she decides she's done with diapers. That really happens, right?

This one's my favorite -- a couple of weeks ago I was changing Autumn's diaper first thing in the morning, and out of nowhere she points to her chest and says, "mommy, me, Autumn". I about died. Now she really enjoys standing in the middle of a circle of adults (who are all talking about things unrelated to her) and pointing to herself while yelling, "Me, Autumn!!". She's also really into giving hugs and kisses to anyone who will take one...but only when it's time to leave. She'll hear us start to say bye and grab our belongings and then runs around saying "hug, knuckles" to everyone. Yes, knuckles too. Knuckles and high fives are the first and last thing Autumn asks for when she wakes up and goes to bed. Who can blame her, knuckles are pretty sweet. At the Botanic Gardens the other day, there was a baby crying. Autumn gravitates toward crying babies for some reason, so naturally she ran up to the baby saying, "baby sad". Once she approached and stuck her face within inches of the poor, "sad" baby, she says, "baby, knuckles?". Such a proud moment.

In other news, she's still really into climbing things (while saying "climb" over and over), running (while yelling "run! run!" obviously), and now the Micky Mouse Clubhouse. She likes to march around the house saying "Micky Mouse". We are going to Hawaii in a week and fully plan to allow her to watch every episode that exists on our iPhones, if that's what it takes to not make enemies with the other passengers or feel obligated to buy three rounds of drinks for everyone on the plane.Autumn also loves to draw right now (see the drawing on arms and couch episode above), "ride" her bike ("bika bika bike!!! -- who knows why she says that), eat avocados, and do sommersaults. This is definitely the most fun we've had with her yet!

Pics

15 months

Note: I wrote this on January 7th, but never finished it. Oh, and apparently, I have also started and not finished three other posts since then. I'll chalk it up to a sign of the times, which have been quite busy lately. Instead of attempting to finish all of these entries, which would likely take another 8 million years,, I'll just post them as-is. I'm also planning to do a huge photo update. I have a ton from 13 months on, that are just sitting in the abyss of the world wide webs. Enjoy.

In the time that's passed since I last posted a meaningful update, Autumn has become a real live kid! After a few months of subtle changes that were fun to watch, yet not quite eventful to warrant sitting down for 20-30 minutes to blog, she suddenly starting doing and learning so many new things that sitting down to blog became truly out of the question.
So where were we? Around her first birthday I believe she was still only saying 2-4 words...maybe? She went another couple of months without adding much to her vocabulary, and then over my winter break, while my parents were here to experience it, she just started talking. Not sentences, obviously, but so many new words. And such an interest in repeating everything we say. So here we go with what's new these days...

--New and improved list of words...
Ball, Dog, Nana, Pop Pop (Pa Pa), Mama (or Mommy, or Mom), Dada (daddy, dad), Wally (Wa-ee), Water (wah-er), Bath, Bye, Hi, Uh-oh, More, Door, Thank You, Snow,  Banana (well, nana), Bottle (Ba-toe), No (yikes). We also think she's been saying "mine", which she usually says when she's playing with someone else's toy, and that someone else comes to play too. Not cool.
--Still busy, but as she gets taller her ability to scale more dangerous objects becomes much too easy. Her high chair? Seriously, the other day she climbed into it by herself. It's not one of those travel ones that sit on the floor or a chair, either.Today she mastered a ladder at Monkey Bizness, and then she decided that sliding down the other side wouldn't be nearly as fun as slide-jumping off of the ladder. Thank goodness for soft, forgiving floors. She was totally unfazed. Which, I am starting to fear, could become a problem. Whenever we go to places like that, or the playground, mall play area, etc., older and bigger kids sometimes do mean things like push her out of the way or stop her from climbing up things by putting their foot on her head, for instance. Autumn is never fazed by these acts of unkindness, and more than half the time she'll laugh and go back for more. We were pretty happy about this at first, but lately she seems to be trying out these bully moves on other kids, bigger and smaller than herself. It's really hard to teach a 15-month-old empathy, especially when she doesn't mind when kids do it to her. Anyone?
--Wearing mostly 18 month clothes, and size 3 or 4 diapers. Still in size 4 shoes.
--Sleeping from anywhere between 6-7:30pm to 6:30-7:30am, and mostly taking two naps, but sometimes just one. 
--She has become a seriously picky eater, and I hate it. Even mac n' cheese is a crap shoot these days. Chicken nuggets? No way. Spaghetti? Yeah right. Meat of any sort? Try again. Any of these when there's ketchup to dip them in? Sure, if sucking the ketchup off and throwing the rest off her tray counts. She still loves mixed veggies, and most fruits, so at least there's that. And every once in a while she'll totally surprise us. Like yesterday when she ate half of a quesadilla I had made with spicy meat, peppers, onions, etc.
--Attention span is increasing ever so slightly. Since she always wakes up while we're getting ready for work in the mornings, we've been letting her watch this silly show called Super Why in the mornings while she drinks her milk and we finish getting ready. Don't hate -- it's a reading show, and I'm sure she'll be reading in a couple of months, so there. She loves it so much that the other day I found her with a full bottle of milk (yes, bottle -- she still uses them sometimes), drooling on herself. When the characters on the show would ask a question she'd point and say something that only she herself could understand. It's nice that we can have a little time in the mornings now, but I do fear that she likes the tv a little too much, already.

So Special

Ok, so I am long overdue for an update here, and I really and truly am going to try my best to get some current photos and happenings up here later this weekend. There has been so much going on over the past few months that I haven't had time to do a new blog post any justice. However, this little morsel should help tide you over. If the last post you looked at was the one of her dancing at nine months, then you probably won't think she has changed all that much. And in some ways maybe you'd be right. A new(ish) obsession of Autumn's is animals. All kinds of them. She can say a few animal names, and/or the sounds they make. A sheep, for instance, is a "baaa baaa". But mostly she likes to just point at them, and do whatever this is....