I’m just glad her hair is finally long enough to do stuff like this.  She was pretty much bald / peach fuzzy her entire first year, then it just started growing out a little bit during her second year and by Halloween of that year we could *just* put in itty bitty piggy tails.  Those were so cute, but she wouldn’t leave them in.

Now her hair is long enough that most of it can go into piggy tails – but not quite all, some from the front and the very bottom of her head still isn’t long enough to reach.  I am hoping as she ages her hair will start growing faster, like mine.  I dyed my hair light red two weeks ago, (the color on the box is actually strawberry blonde, but my hair is dark so it doesn’t turn out like the color on the box), and already I have dark roots that are probably about 1/16″ long.  Suffice to say, Easter 2007 I had my hair cut to above my shoulders, and have not trimmed it since, and it is already back half-way down my back again.

Anyway.  It seems like it has taken forever but we can actually start doing stuff with her hair, and thankfully she is also wanting to let me do stuff with her hair, whereas before she’d have any pony or pig tails or barrettes out within an hour.  This is one part of her growing up that I like!  Now I just have to hope that she got at least a little bit of body, wave or slight curl to her hair from her dad, because my hair is stick straight and I hate it.  Right now her hair is mostly straight but flips up at the ends, so I can still have some hope…

When we first got there, the birthday girl’s family wasn’t there yet so we walked around looking at all the games and rides and such (it was at chuck e cheese), and she kept trying to get on the cars to ride them. I told her they needed coins to work and that we would need to go get some tokens, and she started to FREAK out, I think she thought we were leaving.  She wanted so badly to go get on one of the “rides”, finally I was able to get it through to her that we weren’t leaving, but if she wanted to ride the cars and play the games, we needed to go get some “money”, and that we’d be right back for her to play.

After that she calmed down enough for me to break a $20 and then get $5 in tokens so we could go play while we waited for the rest of the people in the party to arrive.  Once they showed up we got more tokens from the birthday girl’s mom, and eventually started seeing more of her little friends from preschool.  When it was time to eat I had a difficult time getting her to part with the games, and I think the only reason she went quietly is because we were following one of her friends from school.

After a few bites of pizza and then the cake and watching the chuck e party parade from afar (she didn’t want to participate), we watched the birthday girl open her presents and then went to play a few more games.  It was getting close to 3p so I decided it was time to head home so she could still get some semblance of a nap, so we went back to thank the birthday girl’s mom for inviting us (and to get a goodie bag), then stopped to count out how many tickets we had to see if we could get any of the cheap little prizes.  We had 73 tickets – most that we earned, but a few had either been left still attached to a game with no one in site to claim them or fallen to the ground.   So she got a little bracelet and two rings.  We still had like seven tokens left and the three tickets, so on my way out I was looking for someone to give them to so they wouldn’t go unused, and saw a kid of probably like 10 yrs old putting $1s into the token machine.  I held out the token cup with the tickets to him and offered them to him, saying we were leaving and that he could have them as we wouldn’t be using them.  He kind of hesitated for a moment (geeze, you’d think I was offering him drugs or something) but quietly took the cup and the Kiddo and I went on our way.

Once we were home it took her some time to wind down, I think she fell asleep finally sometime just before 4p.  And since I didn’t want her staying up all hours I had my husband wake her up while I was making dinner just after 5p (and boy was she cranky! definitely not long enough of a nap).

It was fun overall but I am not sure we’ll go to anymore parties like that unless it’s later in the day (as in, AFTER her nap), at least until she is no longer taking naps.  Except for her cousins’ birthday parties and her own, of course.  But for school friends, I think we may politely decline unless, like I said, it’s later in the day or she is old enough that she does not still NEED a nap during the day.

At about 3:15 I started nodding off at my desk, so told my husband I was going to go lay down on the floor of the Kiddo’s room in case she woke up while he was gone on his errand, so I would be right there.

Well, she slept until 5 like I said, when we both just kind of sat up and decided it was enough of naptime.

Although I don’t feel refreshed, I feel like something the cat dragged in.  I feel like a walking zombie, and could probably have slept for much longer had it actually been comfortable on the floor.  Ugh.  This is what I get for having a small bout of insomnia last night and didn’t actually get tired until almost 4am and then getting up again at 9am.  On the bright side, at least the Kiddo slept in today rather than waking up at 7am.  I don’t know what I would’ve done if she’d woken up that early.

So off to ToysRUs we go, and we bought a Dora themed fun-factory, the food making set, and a package with smaller tubs of playdough and oodles of little extras – playdough scissors, letter stamps, etc.

And of course, she could hardly wait to open them when we got home.  Heck, my husband was even excited to open them up. LOL

We probably sat and played with the playdough for about 30 minutes before it was time to get her ready for bed, at which point we would get an emphatic, “NOoOooooo! Pay pay-dough!”  We were finally able to convince her that she’d be able to play with the playdough the following day.

Which she did.  In addition to watching Lilo and Stitch several times.

I’m sure I’ll be picking bits of playdough out of the carpet for while to come.

We’ve moved on to Lilo & Stitch.  I expect that one to play over and over.  And over and over.  And over.

I swear I start dreaming about these movies after hearing them so many times.

Today was different – she was sitting watching Toy Story II, and decided to pause it and proceed to tell me “I tired, I want to nap.”

O.o

You won’t get any argument from me on that, girlie.

So I followed her out of my office, asked her to go give her daddy a kiss and then she went straight into her room to her bed.  All I had to do was change her into a diaper in case she wet while she sleeps, give her a kiss and put her blanket on her, and walked out and closed the door.  If I had to guess, I’d say she was probably out within minutes of me leaving.

Wow.  Some days she just amazes me.

Well, then she started preschool, and my husband and I figured it would probably be a good idea to see if Grandma would be OK with moving the Kiddo’s night to the weekend, too, on the same pretense as the oldest grandchild – who is in preschool, and the idea is to avoid having them miss school.  Grandma agreed to the change.

Ordinarily, the Kiddo would’ve stayed at Grandma’s last night.  Now it will be this Saturday.  After she got up this morning and I got her dressed, and we were laying on my bed waiting for my husband to finish getting ready for work, she asked about seeing papa and grandma.  ”See Papa? See Grandma” she asked.  I told her we’d see them again on Saturday.  ”Noooooo!  See Papa! See Grandma!”  I just kind of let it go rather than pick a pointless arguement with my toddler.  She also let it drop since I didn’t continue to remind her that she was going to have to wait until Saturday.  I’ll have to remember that tactic for future reference.  Heh.

I didn’t expect that she’d notice she hasn’t stayed over at her grandmother’s since before our vacation in the middle of August.  But it’s apparent that she does remember.  I think she also wants to go over there because they just got a new puppy, that we had visited on Monday night and she wants to see it again.

On Saturday, sweetie.

So, I decided I’d try to give her a bath first thing in the morning.  My husband usually showers in the hall bath, so he said he’d just use the stall shower in our master bathroom, and I could use the hall bathtub for the Kiddo at the same time.

First of all, she’s cranky in the mornings.  Kind of like both me and my husband.  Usually she likes taking baths.  But first thing in the morning? Not so much.  When I woke her up and asked her if she wanted to take a bath, she pouted and said “no!”, and threw herself back down into her pillow, complete with thumb-in-mouth.  A clear signal – go away mommy, I’m going back to sleep!

I said “Fine,” and walked into the bathroom and shut off the water, and started getting dressed.  Being cranky myself, I also told her she can go to school stinky and with her hair gross if she wanted, no skin off my back.  Not my finest moment, for sure.

Finally with a little more coaxing and some tears on her part, I got her into the bathtub.  Then she didn’t want to get wet (any more than just her legs).  *sigh*  More coaxing, more whining and tears, and we got her quickly soaped up and rinsed off.  She likes to help wash so that helped change her mood a little, which made washing her hair (which was the entire goal, since it was quite icky from running around and sweating yesterday) much easier.

I think that will be the last morning bath for her for a while.  Next time I’ll just wet her hair down and comb it out, and save bath time for night like usual as long as there aren’t any storms.  Lesson learned.  

Cranky toddler + morning bath = even more cranky toddler + a cranky mom

Pictures from the Kiddo’s second birthday, second Christmas, the first time she met my sister’s youngest daughter, and then her second Easter.  Her first birthday, then her first Christmas.  Her first bout with the flu, which she caught after her first holiday pictures with her other cousin (my husband’s brother’s daughter).  Her first Thanksgiving.

And then the pictures I took of her after I got home from one of the most upsetting days of my life – the day I had to drive my mom, brother & his girlfriend up north after receiving a phone call from my grief-stricken father that my sister’s son had died during the night.  He was only 9.5 months old, and the only explanation the coroner could give was SIDS.  My daughter was born about two and a half weeks after he was, so I was definitely paranoid after that.  I think that night I checked on her at least a handful of times as she slept just to make sure I could still hear her breathing.  At the funeral, she was an absolute angel, and even though my husband and I were a little uncertain about whether to take her or not, both my sister & my mom said it would be fine, and that she would most likely help bring some light to an otherwise dark day.  And they were right.

Then loads and loads of other pictures preceding that, most of the Kiddo, but a few here and there of her cousins (him and his older sister), taken on my mom’s camera, which I had uploaded to my computer after his death, to make a picture DVD with.

To her first Easter, and then to her birth.  The monthly belly shots preceding her birth.  And then finally the roses I had been looking for.

It seems hard to believe that she’ll be three years old in a few months.  Every now and then when she’s doing mundane things like brushing her teeth, or standing next to the t.v. tray in the living room, I’ll think back to how, not too long ago, I had to hold her over the sink so she could spit water out of her mouth after I brusehd her teeth.  Or how she used to bonk her head on the t.v. tray because her head barely came up to its height.  And now she can lean over the sink without help.  And she practically towers over the t.v. tray now.

And she’s maybe only one inch shorter than my brother-in-law’s oldest daughter who is eleven months older than the Kiddo.

She’s growing up fast.  Slow down there, girl!

Seriously, I used to take pictures practically every day.  But over the last year, I’ve really been slacking.

I think it originated when she started getting “camera shy” and would try to hide her face rather than smile. She’s back to smiling and hamming it up now, so I should just keep the camera handy and start taking lots of pictures again.