I’ve been postponing finishing this post because I felt like there was no way I could really capture Adelaide’s spunky little personality in a post. But here’s my best attempt at describing our sweet Adelaide at two years old (and one month.)
The photos in this post were taken a couple weeks ago by my incredibly talented friend Marci. I absolutely adore them. I feel like she accurately captured what Addie is like right now.
- Addie doesn’t say “yes.” If you ask her a question and her answer is yes, she claps her hands and cries, “Yay!!”
- Our girl still loves Sesame Street. She calls it, “Ses” and her favorite characters are “Gro” and “Ehwo!”
- Her favorite word is, “No!” She even says it when she’s playing by herself. She’s just got to keep everyone (including her toys) in line.
- She still sleeps in a sleep sack because 1- she likes it 2- it keeps her warm and 3- it deters her from climbing out of her crib. She can unzip it though and sometimes takes it off and throws it out of her crib. This morning I woke up to her screaming in her crib. I went in to discover she’d thrown her sleep sack out of the crib but the binky was attached to it and she needed her, “bee!”
- Yes, she still loves her binkies. We try to restrict it to sleeping and sometimes in the car or church. She gets SO excited when she gets one. If we take it away and she still wants it she cries and cries for, “bee, bee, bee!”
- Her favorite game ever is pretending to sleep. She does it EVERYWHERE. The game consists of her finding some kind of fabric to “seep” under. She lays down, pulls the blanket (or towel or rug or scarf…) on top of her and pretends to snore. Then she yells, “Wake!” and sits up. She also tells everybody nearby that they need to, “seep!” too. She could play this game for ages and does it several times a day. Yesterday she did it in Gymboree class with her carpet square.
- She knows almost all her capital letters and some of the lowercase letters. We had no idea she knew them until a couple months ago when she started pointing them out! Now she can find any of the capital letters if we ask her to and she usually identifies them correctly by name. She has a Melissa and Doug alphabet puzzle that she puts back together by herself. She loves the alphabet song and sings it to herself all the time. But she sings it differently every time. “A b dee cee….. lllll mnnnooo PPP… tttt uuu vvv….” but always gets the ending, “Y and Zzzzzzzz. Now I know myyyy…” and then it usually turns to jibberish. I’m still so surprised she can do this. I never made any real attempt to teach her the letters. I think she picked it up from books, Sesame Street, and the foam letters in the bath tub.
- She also knows most of the numbers 1-10 but gets mixed up sometimes. My favorite is 3 which she pronounces as “fee.”
- She still doesn’t love it when I brush her teeth but she LOVES to do it herself. She signs and says, “Teef!” a couple times a day and I always let her do it. She’s not as thorough with the brushing as I’d like though. :)
- She loves music. She keeps a pretty good beat and loves instruments. She breaks into dance any time she hears a beat and tries to sing a long. I hear her singing all the time. It’s usually the alphabet song or sometimes I can identify a song from Gymboree. She loves the wheels on the bus, especially the Mama verse. She sings, “Mamas…. shhh shhh shhh….ahhhhh ooooohhh tow” (all over town.) She picks up new songs easily. I swear the other day I heard her singing Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” after I’d had it on.
- She gets overwhelmed by too much chaos. She doesn’t like when we’re in a large, loud group of kids. She tends to hang back when we go to a new Gymboree class until she’s used to the routine and the people. Even still, she often doesn’t want to do what the other kids are doing.
- She loves to jump and spin in circles. She’s pretty crazy. She still climbs on EVERYTHING. Now that it’s shorts weather her knees are getting covered in scrapes and bruises.
- She used to vehemently despise the swing but now it’s her favorite thing ever. She asks to, “wing!” as soon as we get the park and often will stay in there for ages, as long as we’re willing to push her!
- She still gives kisses although she’s more stingy about it now. But she loves to get Jacob and I to kiss and then she giggles and giggles. If we’re all sitting close enough she’ll grab one of our faces and push it towards the other one. It’s pretty funny.
- She makes an awesome growling noise for a lot of animals (dog, lion, bear) but also does it sometimes just to be funny. She’ll run into a room I’m in and growl, then run back out laughing.
- She loves pouring water from a water bottle or cup into something else. She does it in the bathtub all the time (and usually ends up pouring it outside of the tub too.) If she gets her hands on my water bottle I’ll usually end up with a big puddle on the carpet.
- She loves bubbles and asks for them all the time. The funny part is it doesn’t make her run around like crazy, popping all the bubbles. Instead she usually watches it pretty quietly and only pops the ones that come near her. She recently learned how to blow bubbles using our Gymboree bubble pipe and she is so proud of herself when she does it.
- She really chatters all day long and I know she says more than we realize. She was saying, “ihhss tuuuck” for ages before my sister pointed out she was saying, “It’s stuck.” And she says that at least 10 times a day- when she can’t get the chair out at her table, when she can’t get the cap off my water bottle, when she can’t get a sticker off the sheet, etc. It makes me wonder what other things she says that we don’t notice. The only other 2 word phrases I’ve noticed recently are, “Owww dere” (out there) and “Daddy no” (hahaha). I know she probably has said some more. But her vocabulary is definitely expanding like crazy. She mimics almost everything I say.
- Her favorite gibberish phrase is, “ha-bee-day” and she goes around saying it in a sing-song voice. We have absolutely no idea what she’s saying.
- She takes a bath every night and usually loves it unless she’s getting a scrub down or her hair washed. She loves to drink water out of the faucet (or the bath water, yuck) and laying down to “swim.”
- She’s shy when we’re around new people, especially if they try and engage her. She usually covers her face and tries to hide when someone says hi to her at the grocery store. The other day our neighbor was standing at the edge of his patio (smoking) right by our door when we got home. When she noticed him she covered her face with both hands and then stumbled all the way inside with her face still covered. I had to laugh! She doesn’t like being the center of attention, like when we sang happy birthday at her party.
- When she gets comfortable with a new person, she warms right up to them. She hopped right up in our doctor’s lap at her appointment the other day. We had some people from church visiting a few days ago and she sat with them and showed them her books. She’s done really well with babysitters recently.
- She’s crazy about Jacob. She runs super speed to the gate when he gets home. They are so sweet (and silly) together.
- She loves to color. She’s always getting hold of a pen, marker, crayon, and colored pencil. She’s definitely done some damage to walls and furniture already. And she’s still crazy for stickers. It’s one of the best quiet activities for church but I have to watch that she doesn’t stick them to the floor or chairs! I always find stickers around the house (and sometimes on my clothes.)
- She loves “Gra” (Grandma and Grandpa) and sometimes asks for them when she’s playing for the ipad. She even knows how to open FaceTime so we can call them. But her attention span for video chatting is very short! She always blows them kisses though.
- She loves books and whenever we have a new visitor she brings them every book from her shelf. She hasn’t had the attention span for very long books but is starting to be more interested. My parents got her the, “Duckling Gets a Cookie” book for Easter and she LOVES it. She thinks it’s so funny. After a week of reading it she started pulling it out and reading it to herself while she turned the pages, “Oh no! Cookie! Why why why??? Nom nom nom.” It kills me.
- She still isn’t very interested in eating. She loves to drink (milk, watered down juice, or water.) She sometimes will eat yogurt pouches or fruit pouches. She loves cheese, pizza, pasta, macaroni and cheese, cheddar bunnies, and tortilla chips (“kips!”). She will definitely eat other things but it’s hit and miss. Usually it’s not so much about what she will eat but whether or not she will eat at all. She doesn’t get many sweets and honestly doesn’t care that much about them when she does. Her only real treat love is m&ms, which she hoards in her fists and makes a big mess.
- I don’t think she’s ready for potty training because she needs to get more verbal first. But she has started telling me sometimes when she has a poopy diaper.
- She loves shoes and takes them on and off all day. Usually two different shoes, both on the wrong feet.
- She loves her babies and always has a couple in her crib. She isn’t too interested yet in dressing and undressing them but does it occasionally.
- She likes to play dress up herself and put clothes on, or at least she attempts to. She puts on our shoes and tries to walk around. She asks to put on her fairy wings. She loves “pretties” (bracelets or necklaces) but insists on being able to take them on and off herself so I have to make sure they don’t have clasps. Sometimes “pretties” refers to my chapstick (which she usually dabs on her cheeks) or makeup (she takes a brush and pats her face.)
- She likes to play with older little girls at the park. She follows them around and is happy as can be when they’re around. She loves to hold hands and give hugs. It’s not uncommon for her to make friends with a little girl we don’t know and walk around the park holding hands with her.
- She’s tall and skinny. 90% for height, 85% for head (ha!) and 30% for weight. She never has much problem outgrowing her clothes in size, they just get too short. She had a pretty big growth spurt between 18-24 months.
Addie is such a ham but also a sweetheart. We just adore her and our lives are so much fuller because of her. We can’t wait to see what new things she will be doing every day!
And let’s just take a look at how far she’s come (and how much hair she has!!)
(first photo by Melynda, second by me, third by Marci.)
