Dear Nora - Eighteen months old

My little firecracker,

How time flies when you are having fun, and boy you are just full of fun lately!

You are still a huge fan of your pacifier (we are working on keeping it just for bedtime, but its a challenge) You call it "Paefier". Adorable.
Your vocabulary is increasing day by day and it's so fun to hear you naming the objects in your life and trying to express yourself. You have the following words down; toast, chocolate, mama, dada, muk (milk), E-i (Levi) buba (baby), book,"per" (up) as well as a wide range of animal noises which are super cute. I know there are more words, i am sure since I started typing you have probably added at least one more new one too, but those are the ones I can hear you say in my mind.

You are such a great little mama. You love to play with your baby dolls, putting them to bed in the crib and covering them with blankets, feeding them, pushing them in strollers or the shopping cart, often with your little purse hooked over your arm or a pretend cell phone in hand. You are a busy lady already!

You have been so eager to be like your brother and try sitting on the toilet to pee or poop and yesterday, you managed to pee on the toilet after trying hard! I am not ready to potty train you yet, but you are very aware of your body and might be ready to train yourself. Oi Vey!

You continue to be a great little eater, not really fussy at all but certainly going through a phase of having favorites one week that you turn your nose up at the next! Its a guessing game for my shopping but if you are refusing blueberries but now consuming copious amounts if snap peas I'm not really in a place to complain. You eat well through the day but STOCK UP at dinner like its your last meal! Your fine motor skills are well developed and you manipulate food with your spoon and fork easily and with little mess. You still drink milk 4 times a day and water with meals, you are a good little hydrator. You want to be grown up, and are eager to transition from the high chair to the little table and chairs. You have a had time sitting still but you just love to be a big girl. Your favourite breakfast is granola and yogurt (this week).

We are trying to help you drop your first nap of the day or at least limit it to a cat nap. If we head out in the morning you often get a 5-10 minute snooze around 9.30am and that is just fine. You still fall asleep hard for about 2 hours around 1pm.You are obsessed with your fleece blanket and even through the crazy heat wave we have seen this summer, you want it over you to settle to sleep -  although, I do peel it off after you are asleep! You often fall asleep with one pacifier in your moth and one on each index finder, ha ha, it looks so funny but it doesn't seem to stop you sleeping.

We read to you before bed and naps and you are starting to love picture books where you point and name so many objects. However, your very favourite book is called, Toot. It's about tooting and you think it's hilarious. You laugh out loud even though we read it multiple times a day. You also enjoy, Dear Zoo and the Ladybug Girl board books, as well as, Where is baby's belly button. We have a few books in the car and you always choose the Baby Giggles and point to the page where the baby is picking her nose.

You are your father's daughter in your love of all things tidy and neat. If you step on something on the floor you go straight to the closet and get the broom to sweep. You think it's a treat to throw rubbish in the bin and are so proud of yourself when you do, you often come and take me by the hand to show me, with a huge smile on your face! I look forward to these skills becoming more helpful in the years to come :)

You are a joy and a delight sweet one, we are loving watching you grow up before our eyes. You have a keen sense of adventure and a fun loving spirit which makes us smile all the time.

Love Mama x

On the eve of 3

This time three years ago I was huge and pregnant and so done with waiting, this post makes me laugh every time I read it and it takes me back to everything about this sweet and wonderful and painfully impatient time. I just couldn't wait another minute, I wanted to meet you so very much and now here we are.

Tomorrow you will wake up as a three year old. I am not sure where the time has gone, and yet I feel like I have known you my whole life, maybe in some ways I have?

We celebrated your birthday this weekend and you were so excited to have all your favourite people together to play and consume copious amounts of sugar. It was a Thomas the Tank engine theme, but your presents were mostly 'Planes' characters and Fire truck/station things. Your friends know you so well.

You continue to love to play sports and it feels like you are constantly asking me to go out and play hockey with you on the sport court. I am sure that with football season right around the corner, that will soon turn to asking me to throw the football and even "ooff" you, which is what you think tackling is called.

You mastered starting your peddle bike without help a couple of weeks ago and it fills my heart with joy to see you master something you have been so eager to do for so long. Your face just glows with the biggest smile as you set of peddling all by yourself and swing that little orange bike all around, often having to navigate an excited little sister who likes to run after you. Now you just have to figure out the break and you will be golden :)

You have been wearing underwear for about a month now and have made huge progress. You are very good at getting to the bathroom in time to pee but something about pooping still feels scary or uncomfortable to you and we are having accidents most days. I am praying and hoping that we will see breakthrough very, very soon. You are supposed to start preschool in just a couple of weeks and we need to be better before that!! We are also training you to pull up pants and underwear independently, another skill which will means you will be truly pre school ready. I can just imagine you leaving your bottoms on the bathroom floor and running half naked back to the classroom eager to keep playing with no time to be embarrassed about your nakedness. You have so many ways you seem older than the average three year old, but in ways like that you are still such a little one. You don't understand about modestly or socially acceptable behaviour. I know you will love being at school but I do worry about how you will navigate some things without me. I know it's an important step to give you time to figure some things out and create relationships with other adults who you will love and trust but it's still hard to let go. I think I am much more anxious about you starting than you are!

You are starting to play much more imaginatively these days. You love your little figures and people and I really enjoy listening in to your games as you role play. You have a great imagination!

You still have your loveys and even though they are looking a little worse for wear, you dote on them and treat them like your little babies. They still have to go everywhere we do and provide comfort for you in times when you are feeling anxious. I am sure there will be one in your backpack on your first day of school :)

You are certainly pushing boundaries in new and ever more exhausting ways recently and the tantrums and emotional outbursts are hard to handle sometimes but I can only imagine how crazy it is to be having so many emotions and feelings in your little body without the words or understanding of the world that we as adults do. I hope your dad and I are equipping you to process the world in a way that means this season will be easier to handle for all of us as the months go on. I hope thatt soon, our consistent correction will help you understand that when we say teh word "no in regards to somethig you are doing you will understand that we are in fact talking to you and what you are doing is not aceptable, same with the word, "stop" which seems to illicit you doing what you are already doing, only faster, or the request to "come here" which you seem to interpret as run away as fast as you can. We are working on it, but it feels like toddlerhood has well and truly taken hold of you on some days!

You also have moments of pure sweetness when you fetch a toy or find a pacifier fro Nora when she is sad (especially when you haven't been the cause of her sadness) or when you just make sweet comments, say, "I love you" or thank me for making your dinner and telling me how yummy it is -  without any prompting. Your heart is so wonderful, and in between the tantrums and the sometimes aggressive behaviour, you let us see glimpses of your softer side.

You are starting to show interest in letters and sounding out words too, another new skill you want to master. Sesame street has something to do with that for sure. It's how your Dad learned to read and it seems to be inspiring you too. You can confidently write "L" and "E" and "i" we are working on the V. You are starting to sound out words and ask about what they start with. It's amazing to me to think about you already starting to learn those kinds of things. 

You are currently a huge fan of the Planes movies and can sit and watch a whole movie without much distracting you, but so far these are the only movies you have watched and I'm ok with that, though, I can quote both of those with ease at this point so we might have to mix it up for my sake soon. You are still a fan of Caillou and have become more interested in SuperWhy and a new show about the countries of the world and flying robots, called Superwings. They are all pretty tame and have a good message so I am ok with you watching them, we try not to do too much TV during the day but I am certainly not ashamed to use it to my advantage sometimes, especially as it frees me up to make dinner without having to police you and your sister because by 4pm you seem incapable of leaving her alone and just playing. Not that she is totally innocent, but she's smaller and so usually ends up getting hurt if there is a struggle, which there usually is. You are the best of friends and the worst of enemies all at the same time. I pray your love for each other grows into something really special in the years ahead as you become closer in ability. 

You are still one of the funniest people I know and make us all laugh daily. Your sense of humor is amazing and I truly enjoy you. We laugh a lot together about the silliest of things and I hope we always will.

You are the cutest kid and use that to your advantage as you pleed, "Pleeeeease, just one more (fill in the blank)". It works on most people. The world is your playground and your energy level lets you play from morning until night without a second thought. You still nap on occasion, maybe 2 or 3 times a week, usually when you have fallen asleep on the way home from a playdate or park, but you can;t seem to drop the nap for a long string of days without becoming a omplete disaster but you are working on not napping for sure. I enjoy some time for just the two of us if Nora is sleeping, and you enjoy having all the toys to yourself ;)

Happy 3rd birthday for tomorrow little man. I can't believe you have given me your final 2 year old smooches. I love you so much.

Mama x

Glad you liked your cake