My beautiful daughter…
I love my daughters spirit. Her loving nature. Her sense of adventure. Her quirks. She is one beautiful little girl. Oh and did I tell you she is starting to read? Well maybe. I suppose it depends on how you define reading. Word recognition? We have this jar in our dining room filled with chocolate chip cookies. And the jar just so happens to say COOKIES on it. Cookies she knows. She knows what ingredients go in them, what it looks like when I am making them, how to get them once they are baked and that if she quickly takes a big bite out of a stolen cookie and then offers mama the rest she might not get in as much trouble. Right, back to the reading bit. Lauren knows cookies. We recently ordered her some new PJs (two pieces to make evening trips to the potty easier), from Amazon, but through a store called Cookies. The boxes from numerous shipments were sitting next to the couch. This isn't important. Inside one of the boxes was the shipping invoice for the pajamas. This is important. Lauren was playing with said boxes, as you do at 2.5 years, and finds the invoice. I look to see what she has and can see through the paper and it looks like a Costco invoice for something, but I am not too concerned about it. Lauren is pretending to read the invoice. Then stops pretending and says. "Cookie mommy." Me, "No, you can't have a cookie." Lauren, "Cookie, cookie, cookie." Me, "No." Lauren shows me the invoice and says, "Cookie." Yes clear as day at the top of the invoice it says, "Cookies." I tell her to show me where the cookie is. She points right at the word and says, "Cookie." in her 'duh mom' voice. She did this a few weeks back with the word 'School' and something else, but I brushed it off. But now if we are reading a book and she sees the word cookie, she points right at it and says cookie. Is that reading…I guess not really, but I am pretty proud of her.
Other recent beautiful things. After nap yesterday as she often does, she came out and gave me a HUGE cuddly hug and a kiss. I was holding her while standing and gave her a huge hug back and told her "I am going to miss when you are too big to pick up and hug like this." She pulled back and looked at me, gave me another kiss and said, "Me too mommy." Ahhh, melt your heart doesn't it?
We are still in a pushing phase, but getting better maybe? She still pushes her brother over, but then sits him back up and hugs him and tells him its ok, and gives him a kiss. She still gets in trouble for the pushing though. She loves her little brother so very much. She likes to hold his hand, and when he pulls her hair she takes his hand and rubs it on her own head and says, "Soft, baby. Gentle, baby." But never gets mad.
Just in the past two weeks she has had a language explosion. It has been crazy, we went from being worried that she was delayed to being blown away by the new words phrases and expressions she has been using. It is so funny how kids do things in spurts like that.
Our biggest problem at the moment, she loves to cook. She knows how momma cook things. She can get the fridges open. She can get the flour and sugar open, she knows knives cut things. We've had a few small accidents, but I know it is only a matter of time before there is a HUGE mess in the kitchen. I like having a sous chef though. She helps me count ingredients, stir, break eggs, grease pans. She thinks it is great fun, which helps, most of the time.
Quirks? She is full of them. Soup must be smooth, not chunky, unless it has beans in it. The immersion blender is my friend on that one. Sandwiches still can't be assembled, the components must be separate. Cheese is a food group. Beans must be whole. She will not eat meat unless it is in tube form (sausages, hot dogs, etc) but they have to still be in the tube, no cooked sausage mince or cut into rounds, and bacon, girl loves bacon, which so does her mom.
I could go on for days about my baby girl. She is so amazing. Every day I see her learning, growing and growing up, my daughter, my beautiful daughter.