I won't go on and on about how I can't believe my little girl is 2. But to be fair, I really can't believe how big she is.
She's very grown up in so many ways. It's a lot of fun seeing the things she has learned. She is very observant, and is always surprising me with something I didn't know she knew.
One of her favorite things is drinking coffee or tea or cocoa. Of course we dilute them all with lots of milk, and she thinks it's the best thing in the world to get to drink out of a pretty ceramic mug or teacup. She's always very careful and dainty with her sipping, and makes sure to make lots of joyous slurping noises.
Chloë is usually very good at explaining herself. She's learned a lot in how to be polite. Sometimes she gets excited and forgets her manners and yells "this!" when she wants something. All I have to do is look at her with my "excuse me?" raised eyebrows, and she says "may I please have a cookie?!" I am careful to praise her for asking nicely, even when the answer is no. Usually she does well being denied a treat, but sometimes she will just burst into tears. I tell her it is okay to be disappointed, but that she may not be fussy or angry. The best way to avoid these situations is to not let her see me eating my cookie (or brownie or chocolate or coconut ice cream). Which means sometimes I have to hide in the pantry or wait until her nap.
She is also very good at asking for forgiveness when she disobeys. She was coloring on some paper after lunch yesterday, and touched her pen to her plate for just a second. She looked up to see me shaking my head. She quickly said "Mama, please forgive me for not obeying and drawing on paper." Of course she meant
not drawing on paper, but I knew that. When she says that many words together, her speech is very choppy, with abrupt breaks between each word: "Mama... Please. Forgive. Me. For. Not obeying... And drawing. On. Paper." A few weeks ago she drew on her arms.
Speaking of coloring, she is quite the little artist. Instead of crayons, she usually prefers to draw with a pen since it makes nice clean lines. She'll hunch over her paper, gripping her pen perfectly, and making little collections of marks. She happened to draw a perfect W the other day, and looked at it and exclaimed "dubba-yoo!"
She is becoming more and more indpendent, and wanting to do things by herself. We usually hear "I do it!" or "I got it!" when we offer to help. And of course we hear the word no a lot, although she is getting better at remembering to say "no thank you."
Chloë sings all the time. Her favorite song is definitely the ABC song, although she doesn't
quite have it down.
She calls them the "BBC"s, and my favorite part is "H, I, luh luh luh luh P." And she still can't say the F or V sound, so F is always S, and V is always Z. But that's okay.
Besides her ABCs, she also good at her basic colors. She even knows turquoise. But sometimes she still calls yellow "blue." I'm not sure if she has some sort of yellow-blue color problem (is that even a thing?), but she does really well besides that. She was playing with her ABC magnets the other day, and grouped them by color.
She loves her pockets. Even when she's sleeping.
She had her 2 year check-up last week. At least the first part of it, anyway. The nurse weighed her and measured her, and Chloë was very calm and patient (she weighs 25.5 pounds, and is 33" tall). Then the nurse left, and the doctor came into the room. Chloë burst into tears and was nearly hysterical trying to climb on my lap. I had never seen such a reaction from her, and I really couldn't make any sense of it. It had been 6 months since our last appointment with him, and she wasn't very fond of the stethoscope or the otoscope then, but I couldn't imagine she would have even remembered. So after a few unsuccessful minutes of trying to calm her down, I gave her my iPod to play with, and the shrieking subsided. So we had Elaina's brief appointment, and I thought maybe Chloë would be calm enough to at least let the doctor say hello, but she would have none of it. So we decided we wouldn't push it and have her traumatized, and re-scheduled her appointment for next month. I still can't quite figure it out. So I've been showing her pictures online of the doctor ("nice doctor!"), and I got out my stethoscope so she could see what it is. We'll see how next month goes.
She likes being outside, and getting wet is a major bonus. She gets really excited any time she gets to wear her "baby suit."
She still thrives in her role as big sister. She likes to run up to Elaina and yell "Hi Elaina hi Elaina hi Elaina!" and then make silly noises and faces. Elaina thinks it's great fun. Chloë is very eager to help me console Elaina if she is being fussy, and rushes to her side to offer her a binkie, or pat her tummy. Sometimes she just says "it's okay, Elaina. It's okay Elaina."
I have a 2-year-old.
