Friday, June 24, 2016

millie-isms: part III

THIS GIRL.


She is just beyond hilarious to me these days. Her language development and opinions?? TOO MUCH. I never want to forget this stuff.

1. She is a lover of all plants, animals, and nature...except bugs. And bees. When she's outside (which is 100% of the time if she has it her way), she likes to inspect every flower, touch every tree, and pet every animal. When she sees spent flower petals on the grass, she frantically cries "OH NO!!!" and picks them up and tries to replace them on the flower/tree they fell from. 


But when she sees any type of bug...or a speck of dirt or bark that vaguely resembles a bug...she sneers her nose and yells "WAY, BUG!!" while frantically waving her arms...go away, bug. If the bug doesn't immediately obey, she summons the nearest parent to go take care of the situation for her. "Mama!!! Bug!! Way!!"

Kitty cats do not need to "way." 

2. She loves her grandparents almost as much as flowers and animals, and possibly even more than her mommy and daddy. 


I know this because when my parents were here last weekend, my mom and I were giving Millie a bath. And after a few minutes of noticing that both Mommy AND Nannie were in the bathroom with her, she narrowed her eyes at me and decisively said "Mama. WAY."

And then she shooed me.

And I said "what?? Mills, you want Mommy to go away? You want Nannie to give you your bath?"

She nods.

"Mama. Way. Bye-bye."

Okay then. (P.S. I don't think my mom was nearly as broken up over this turn of events as I was. Ha!)

3. We had a birthday celebration for my dad while he was here, and we've had a little "Happy Birthday" sign thingy and the leftover party blowers sitting in our dining room ever since. Ever since then, approximately 3,928 times per meal, Millie will suddenly exclaim "Happy, happy!!" and make this big smile and move her head from side to side (which generally means she is "singing"). If Matt and I don't immediately begin singing the Happy Birthday song, she will yell "HAPPY!! HAPPY!!!" even more frantically while signing "more"...so we better snap to and start singing!

Happy girl.
4. I started rubbing Millie's back when I lay her down to sleep recently, and she immediately decided it was an integral part of her evening (or nap) routine. As soon as we finish saying our prayers, she says "back? back?" until I promise that I'll rub her back when she lays down. I rub it for a minute, and then she's calm and/or asleep, and I leave her room. If she happens to wake up in the middle of the night (once every week or 2), she will now accept a rubbed back in lieu of being held and/or insisting on sleeping in Mommy & Daddy's bed. So it's pretty nice.

But the other night, she was not tired (or way too tired) and just couldn't settle down at bedtime. I rubbed her back, she'd lay quietly for 2 minutes and then pop up and start screaming...I'd return and rub her back again, she'd repeat the whole thing again. We did a few rotations of this, and then I told her that this was the last time and that Mama wasn't going to come back in until she was asleep. I stuck to my word, but I was watching her on the video monitor as she stood in her crib yelling for me. After a few minutes of fruitless yelling, she laid back down...and then contorted her little arms backwards and attempted to rub her own back. YALLLLLLL. It was the sweetest, saddest thing I've ever seen. Poor Millsie, rubbing her own back. 

Luckily for her, it worked and she finally fell asleep. HA!


5. She can do three "chores" that are actually semi-helpful now! She unloads the silverware from the dishwasher, she feeds Lola (and screams "EAT EAT, NONAH!! EAT EAT, NONAH!!!" until the terrified dog finally gives in), and she can sort diaper laundry! She can separate the liners from the covers, which means all Matt and I have to do is stack the liners/covers before we put them away. I showed her how to do it a week or two ago, but a few nights ago I was surprised to find her doing it all by herself (without me asking/showing), AND she was stacking up the liners! 

Child labor for the win!
I think maybe she just really likes sorting things in general right now, because she also loves sorting all of her play dishes/silverware (putting all of the red ones together, the blue together, etc.) and also sorting her farm animals. It's precious.


But the cows cannot be sorted until she kisses their "boo boos"...aka udders. Ha. I told her that that is where the milk comes from, and she looked at me very seriously and then shook her head and said "BOO BOO" as she kissed it. So now I know.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

summer girls

My apologies for being a viable contender for the Most Neglectful Blogger of the Year award. Life is trucking along just beautifully, and it's hard to find (or make) time to stop to write it all down. It's the busiest time of year at my job, and most of my days there are so exhausting that I have no mental capacity left at night to want to write...so thank you, Netflix, for being there for me. :)

Millie is officially a Summer Girl. It makes me happy to say that, because I've always been a Summer Girl myself. In fact, that was my go-to screen name for chat rooms back in middle school (aka when the internet was invented, and we accessed it via America Online CDs that came in the mail, ha!). Also, all I did in those mid-90s chat rooms was lie. I thought that was like the whole point of chatting...to invent an identity. My go-to identity was that my name was Lyndsey Allyson (I really liked Ys, I think?) and I was a twin. That was pretty much my standard...all other details might change, but apparently the Ultimate Dream of middle-school-ish me was to be an identical twin named Lyndsey Allyson. DREAM BIG, LITTLE ONES. (PS Dream never came true, shockingly. But I survived.)

ANYWAY, back to things that aren't weird.

Millie is ALL ABOUT the summer. Homegirl has mastered the art of running into her room, opening her closet, and dragging out her bathing suits and/or swim diapers. We'll find her in random places around the house in various states of trying to put on her swim gear and it is just TOO cute. "Pool!! Pool!!" (except she doesn't really pronounce the l, so it's funnier. But I know what she means) Luckily she isn't picky- she's equally excited about the kiddie pool on our driveway and the lovely real pool at her grandparents' house.

We're working on her selfie skills. It seems like I have to pick whether I want her to have open eyes or a smile- rarely do both at the same time occur!

She is completely fearless (with her puddle jumper on...a little more hesitant without, which is good!) and loves being thrown in the air. She jumps off the side to Mommy or Daddy, and in about two days progressed from jumping while holding our hands to now jumping completely on her own! She also sprinted to the diving board and tried to jump off the end after witnessing her (4.5 year old) cousin doing it and getting lots of attention and praise!! Luckily I nabbed her before she did it, but she did proceed to "jump" off twice with my help (and Daddy catching her in the deep end).


When we're at home, she will go into the garage, pull (or attempt to pull) her kiddie pool out from behind our mower, and drag it to the front yard. She will then pull the hose out of the garden and put the end of it in the pool- homegirl knows exactly what she wants!


If we happen to not be in a body of water (rare but unfortunately happens occasionally), Millie entertains herself on our new couch and ottoman, aka best toddler jungle gym ever. We'd been planning to get a playscape for our back yard this summer, but upon further reflection, I might just put a sectional out there. Ha. But seriously. She runs herself ragged on it! And then Matt and I put her to bed and marathon How to Get Away with Murder on it, so really, it's been an extremely excellent purchase!


And that's pretty much been it. We spend as much time as possible outside, and then we crash. Lather, rinse, repeat.


She loves these eyelet lace sandals and she only gets to wear them on Sunday mornings (when there is almost no chance of ruining them, haha). That doesn't stop her from pulling them out and attempting to wear them around the house almost every day, though!


A smile AND open eyes- a true rarity!!

Despite the craziness at work, this summer is blissful. I sometimes just want to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. And thank you, God, for closing the door on those middle school dreams...because there's no way becoming Lyndsey Allyson (and her twin Elizabeth Rose) (and yes, we both went by our full double names!) would have been nearly this great.