children

Wow, why didn’t someone tell me to do this before!  OK, so apparently Emma took the job into her own hands this afternoon while the 3 of us stand in the kitchen getting ready to go to Grandma’s house…

Emma puts her hands on her hips and takes a teacher-type voice Lexi! You don’t need that paci anymore.  You’re a big girl.  You need to throw it in the trash. Emma puts her hand out

Lexi leans over and spits her paci out into Emma’s hand.  Emma walks to the trash and opens the lid and dangles the paci over it, looks at us and asks me in a much less authoritative voice if she should do it.  Lexi shakes her head yes.

Me: Sure! throw it away. 

Emma: OK! 

Me, with crossed fingers, toes, arms and legs: OK, paci is all gone, let’s go to Grandma’s!

So we all head out the door without a peep from Lexi.  We’re walking through the garage and Emma crosses her arms and says No more paci!  So of course Copy Cat crosses her arms and says No more paci!  We get in the van and Emma says Lexi, you want your paci? Lexi shakes her head yes and Emma says, Well, I threw it away!

She asked a couple more times for it including at bedtime and I told her Emma threw it away and it’s all gone and Lexi says, Ohhh… She seems sad and it seems to register.  All I want to do is grab it out of the trash and give it to her but I stay strong and take her to bed without it.  She currently is sleeping (well, actually coughing in bed right now) without it, so yay!

Lexi has added a few more phrases.  Now she says “Wait a minute!” and yesterday I was in the bathroom and puts her little finger up to her cheek and says “Hmm, let’s see.”

Emma NEVER takes naps anymore.  I think it ill-timely stopped when Lexi was born.  So when Emma got a low fever this morning, begged me to hold her all morning and then crawled on the couch on her own and went to sleep, I had no choice but to assume she is sick.  Blah.  MIL has had an upper resipatory infection all week, SIL had bronchitis and nephew had something too.  Plus she’s been at school this week.  So I’m not sure what other symptoms might pop up.  But PRAY HARD because there have been 2 cases of chicken pox at our chuch.  Like I said, blah.

I think Lexi and I just had a first conversation..you know, not several sentences of instructions by me or several words of demands by her or a one question/one answer exchange.  I had just gotten her something to drink.  She was sitting on the recliner and I’m on the sofa.  She points her cup and me…

L: What I got?

Me: Orange Juice

L: Where’s Daddy?

Me: At the gym

L: she mumbled something that I still do not understand but I’m still counting it as part of the conversation

Me: OK

I actually just listened to Emma’s story telling and wrote it down as she talked.  She was holding an alphabet K letter that had a Koala on it.  And the story goes:

And then they sleeped all morning.  And then the donkey came along and they couldn’t fool it because the wolf came along and fooled it and then the koala came along and socked it because he don’t know how to color it and he socked it because he has the letter K on his back and he’s never had a computer.

LOL, alrighty.

Lexi has really been talking more lately.  She still doesn’t say everything very clearly but it’s getting better and she seems to like phrases.  Like the latest one is “That’s right”.  The other night we were at my ILs and she was trying to say a word to tell me something that she saw in the closet and I finally understood her christmas tree phrase (more like smismus chee) and she said “That’s right”.  But it’s with this cute southern twang.  And she says stuff like

• Sowwy, Mommy. 
• Mommy, Look! 
• Wuv oo! 
• Don’t know. 
• Wha dat noise?
• Shh, baby seeping.
• Anoder one
• Hep me!–the other night I tried to take her from Scott to take her to bed and she said Hep me!  Not sure who she was talking to but we cracked up.

 And she’s started this snoring thing when she pretends she is asleep.  She will do the dramatic breath-in with a little snort–shooo.  It’s so cute.

Also I’ve realized she can be quite anal, for lack of a better word.  She obviously enjoys schedules as she is almost like a clock when it comes to napping and eating.  And I noticed when she eats she always fixes her stuff.  Like she always has to put her drink back in the same spot.  One time she got upset because I put the drink down on the right side of her plate when it had been on the left side of the plate.  She fixed it and then kept on eating.  And she insists she sit in her seat, even if it was just her seat for the day.  When we were in Maryland, she cried when my cousin sat in “her” seat.  It took us a few minutes to figure out what it was, but sure enough that’s what it was.  And she’s pretty adamant about what belongs to whom.  Even my drink and shoes and such.  She labels everything.  Daddy’s shoes.  Mommy’s shoes.  Mommy’s necklace.  Emma’s blanket.  My Dora.  My Paci.  My cup.  etc.  Anyway, it will be interesting to see how it plays out later in life.

 And she ALWAYS has to have something in her hands.  And she will even hold them for days.  Literally.  She has had this little Dora book and kitty I bought her at Target Tuesday night.  She took them to bed with her and Scott tried to take it out of her hand while she was sleeping and she clamped down on them when she felt them leaving her hands.  She took them to school today and still had them in her hands when she got back in the van.

But she is the one who always puts everyone in a good mood.  As long as she is not hungry or tired, she is always in a good mood.  She’s quite a character and makes everyone laugh.  J&W are her Sunday School teachers and they always say they could squeeze her and they make her laugh.

She still has her paci and blankie which I have no idea how we’re going to get that paci from her.  I tried taking it away about two weeks ago and it was not pretty.  I have heard all the tricks but bottom line when she realizes it’s gone, it’s not going to be fun.

But she is my baby.  She always makes me smile and I could squeeze her and kiss her until she couldn’t take it anymore.