two point five!

My sweet infant baby is a full two and a half years old now! We had her thirty month check-up last week (much to many people's relief, I'm sure, I have personally finally stopped giving her age in terms of months...but apparently our pediatrician hasn't, haha!), so it seems like a good time to update the ol' blog and record the numbers and accomplishments for posterity! Plus...two point five is a really good age in terms of adorableness. So there are a few thousand pictures that are worth sharing with the world, in my opinion.

Aliases: Millie, Nuggie, Mill Mill, Mills, Millsie, Mims, and Mimsie. She calls herself Millie, but pronounces it "MEE-lee," which is obviously beyond adorable. She recognizes that Camilla is also her name, but when she tries to say it it she still puts the 'm' sound first, so it's like "ma-PEE-luh,"...no idea where the 'p' sound comes from, but otherwise I credit the emphasis on the middle syllable (and the "EEE" sound there) on the fact that her Spanish-speaking teachers pronounce her name the Spanish way, cuh-MEE-luh. Probably more than you wanted to know, but I find it all adorable and fascinating.

Also, she knows her (our) last name now and knows to throw it on the end of our names if she really means business. Which means that sometimes I wake from a dead sleep to hear her screaming "ECKUH BAAATES!!!" over the monitor. Adorable slash alarming.

Stats: She weighs in at a solid 32 lb 4 oz (I think that was 80ish percentile) and 35 5/8 inches tall (70ish percentile?). The most traumatizing part of her appointment this time, for me, was that they weighed her on a NORMAL HUMAN SCALE (like the kind you stand on and slide the bars back and forth to get weight...LIKE NOT A BABY SCALE) and took her height standing up, same as they would measure your height. Sad face sad face sad face. I mean, they didn't even prep me for it. They didn't inform me she was suddenly an adult and no longer a baby. It was terrible. But anyway. She's a consistent 3T in clothes and still rocking her size 6 shoes, which I must estimate is like the first percentile, haha. Sometimes if I want to really make myself laugh, I look at her feet and then look at all her other classmates' feet. They are all approximately the same size height-wise, but then ONE kid has teensy little hooves and the other kids all have giant skis, and I'll let you guess which one is my Nuggie.

Big Girl Skills: This section used to be called "eating," but that's hardly worth discussing now. She eats like a normal adult. She isn't picky at all, although she will always choose to eat her FAVORITE things first (generally fruit, quiche, and sausage...so in other words, she's a brunch gal). She even mostly drinks out of regular open cups now. I can't say I miss washing sippy cups, so it's a development I'm okay with!

Most importantly, my girl is potty trained!!! We really dedicated ourselves to the task at Christmas time, when I had quite a few consecutive days off of work, and when she went back to school in January, we were pullup-free (except at nap/bedtime)! She has done really well and rarely has accidents anymore, and honestly she usually stays dry during naps and overnight, too! As promised, we rewarded her with earrings (and ear holes, as she reminds us).

I miss that cloth diaper booty, but dino undies peeking up over her tights are pretty adorable, too. And I don't miss washing diapers. Or changing them. Or hauling around a giant diaper bag. So in conclusion, being potty trained isn't half bad. (The bad part: frantically sprinting across giant stores/other public locations the minute she grabs her crotch and says "POTTY, MAMA!!!" while praying fervently for both a) an open stall, and b) that you won't be calling for a clean-up on aisle 32. I could do without that happening every time we venture into public...)

Other Big Girl Skills include sometimes being legitimately helpful. She knows where the cleaning rags are located and will often go get one and wipe up spills/messes on the floor when she sees them. Last night, she saw me scratching my leg as I was laying on the couch. "What you do, Mommy?" and I told her that my leg just itched because my skin was dry. She disappeared for a moment and returned with the bottle of lotion from her bathroom. She then proceeded to pull up the leg of my pants and put lotion on my leg! "Feel all better, Mommy?" Actually...yes. And also, my heart melted. Can you clean up the puddle?

She went on her first plane ride(s) last week (we went to Texas for my grandfather's funeral) and she did a (mostly) great job! She was very enthusiastic about the whole thing (actually, Enthusiasm could be her middle name), and no one gave us mean glares on the plane, so I think we have to call it a win. 

She's quite a problem solver lately, especially if the problem involves not being able to reach something. Oh, you put your phone on top of the refrigerator, Mommy? And I asked for it and you said "no"? No worries, Ma! I got this one on my own!...and she proceeds to drag her bathroom stool into the kitchen, position it in front of a cabinet, climb on the stool, climb on the cabinet...you get the idea. This is a development I can do without.

Oh, and her final Big Girl Skill...no more paci. Can't say this one was her decision, though. One day a few weeks ago, the tip of the paci just got cut off! (She says that she bit it off, but I think Mama's scissors had more to do with it than her teeth did.) Then "it no work," and after a few tearful episodes, she's learned to live a paci-free existence. She still asks for it occasionally, but then she remembers and will say to herself (out loud) "oh. I no have paci. I BIG GIRL! I have EAWWINGS!"

Baby Skills: Hahaha, it's only fair. I need to keep track so that I don't think she's ENTIRELY grown up already! Her main baby skill is that she still sleeps in her crib. She hasn't realized she could climb out yet. Part of me wants to keep her in there forever, but part of me is super jazzed about getting a Big Girl Bed and some new decor for her room, so we'll see how long the crib lasts.

Communication: She's a very proficient talker. She talks all the time, and can generally be understood by most anyone without a parent needing to translate. She easily uses 7-8 word sentences and knows words for pretty much anything she needs to talk about- or knows how to describe something that she doesn't know a word for. I'm clinging to what remain of her "baby" words- like calling birds "tweet tweets" and bodies of water "wah-wah" (strangely, she calls drinking water, like in a cup, "wa-duh," but if we pass a lake/pond/river, it's "big wah-wah!"). I am fiercely anti-pronunciation-correction, haha. I know that eventually she will say everything the conventional (read: boring, not cute) way, so I'll savor every minute of "eawwings" and "fwiend" and "giwaffe" and backwards grammar like "dat no you mommy!" [that's not your mommy!--spoken emphatically to anyone, human or animal, between the ages of fetus and elderly, who looks at me in any way] while I can. 

Likes: She really, really, REALLY likes her mama right now. Like a lot. I can't say I hate it in the least! But she only likes Matt to be with her if she needs to go #2 in the potty. Not sure how that preference developed, but I am also certainly not going to fight him for that privilege! Other than being with "MY Mommy!" (me!), she likes being outside, "helping" in the kitchen, jumping on the couch or our bed, being nek-nek [naked], looking at "baby Mee-lee pictuhs" on our phones or in photo books, and playing all kinds of crazy games with her toys. She still loves looking at books and being read to, and she is really good at puzzles and sorting games. We are pretty stingy with screen time still (she maybe watches TV/videos an hour a week), but that doesn't stop her from begging to watch Daniel Tiger on the reg. She saw her first full-length movie, Finding Nemo, a few weeks ago, and she loved it. She still talks about the "fish no find he daddy!" I haven't informed her that there are probably about a billion other movies out there that she's also going to love...mainly because I don't feel like watching those movies, haha. She LOVES animals, particularly cows, horses, alligators, birds, and dinosaurs. 

Dislikes: Bugs, sharing anything, being told what to do...you know, normal toddler things! She gets like Code Red Level Ten hangry, so you gotta watch your step if she hasn't eaten recently. She is particularly scary if she happens to be holding one of our phones to look at pictures and then we dare to take it away from her. I recommend you never try that, unless you are prepared with a quiche or perhaps a cow to distract her.

There's nothing in this world I'd rather do than be than her mama. We never rocked her to sleep when she was a baby, because we felt like it was important that she be able to fall asleep on her own. She always did great with that (and is still a wonderful sleeper), but a few months ago she started asking me (and only me- no one else will do!) to rock her before bed. And I do it. Every night. Sometimes for two minutes, sometimes for half an hour. She doesn't need it to fall asleep, but I need it because she is my baby. Probably my only baby. And she wants me to hold her and rub her back and rock her, and there is literally nothing in the world I would rather do. She lays quiet and still, snuggled up underneath my chin, sometimes asleep, sometimes not, and she lets me kiss her and smell her delicious hair and whisper to her. I tell her how much I love her, how lucky I am to be her mama, how thankful I am God made us a family. Once I thought she was asleep, but out of nowhere she spoke up in a quiet, sleepy voice, saying "I happy, Mama. I yuv Dada. I yuv Mama. I happy."

I know that happiness isn't everything in this world, but it's a good thing. We are so happy. She is happy. I really can't ask for more.

Two Years

Sixteen Months

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Ten Months

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Six Months

Five Months

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Three Months

Two Months

One Month