Playing dress up

Teresa has taken to playing dress up recently.  We definitely need to expand our collection of dress up clothes and accessories...but she's made do with too-small costumes and random items, and gotten her brother in on the fun, too.

Teresa's first haircut

I finally took Teresa to Doolittle's for her first haircut on July 14th (I got a LivingSocial deal for one kid's haircut last fall). She chose to sit in the airplane and she enjoyed watching TV while the stylist gave her a little trim. It was done quickly and you can't see much difference...maybe I'll be brave enough to trim it myself next time.

Before

After

Teresa said

Perhaps Teresa has partaken of too much media and not enough outdoor time lately?

Papa, planning the day's activities: Okay, let's hike the stroller-friendly trail at McDowell at 10. Leaving here at 9:45. Go team!
Teresa: Alright! Let's watch some trailers!

------

I've been talking with Teresa about eating "growing food" and the difference between children and adults.

Papa: Can you make me breakfast, Teresa? Can you make me pancakes?
Teresa: No.
P: Eggs?
T: No.
P: Orange rolls?
T: No.
P: Biscuits?
T: No.
P: Toast with cinnamon?
T: No! I'm not bigger. I'm growing up! {pause} You're grown ups. You can make orange rolls yourself.

Comparing Cyprian and Teresa at 6 months

My mom requested I post some pictures side by side. I'm not sure how to do that in Blogger. But here are two sets to compare our children:






What do you think? Certainly a few similarities, but their coloring and head shapes are so different, in our opinion.

6 months old & 2 and a half

We took both Cyprian and Teresa in to the doctor's office for well-child visits this week. Here are their stats:

Teresa (2 and 3/4 years old)
Weighs 25 lbs 2 oz (6th percentile)
37 in. tall (62nd percentile)
Long and lean :)

We are so pleased that Teresa is back on the charts, weight-wise (she had dropped to 1st percentile a year ago). Our nurse practitioner encouraged us to continue using bribery (small treats like 2 pieces of candy corn or a few marshmallows) to get her to eat meals.

Cyprian (6 months old!)
Weighs 17lbs 3 oz (45th percentile)
28 in. tall (92nd percentile)
Big boy :)

Our little man is growing well. As you can see in the video, he sits unsupported for minutes at a time. He gets excited to eat a couple teaspoons of sweet potatoes each day. He spins around on his tummy, pushes up high on his arms, and scooches backwards. He loves to "eat" ribbons, straps, and strings. He rewards Teresa for entertaining him endlessly by pulling out her hair (ouch!). He gives David the biggest grins and excited arm flaps when Papa comes home after being away for a while.

Mouths of Babes Monday

Yes, we have a rubber chicken toy. He (yes, our chicken is a he) squawks when you squeeze his tummy, so we dubbed him Squawky Chicken. Teresa has been playing with him daily recently. Her musings from bed one night:

"Squawky Chicken has a vitamin on his head!"

Why, yes. His comb does kind of look like one of her vitamins!

___

Scene: Teresa is sitting at the dinner table, picking at her toes.

Mama to Teresa: "Don't play with your feet at the table."

Teresa to Mama: "Eat your bread. You'll feel better."

Reminded me of her earlier "calm down" - just more sophisticated now. This observant child knows I am easily bothered when I'm hungry.

Cutting practice

I did it. I gave my 2-year-old scissors!

When I want to keep Teresa occupied help Teresa build skills, I let her do one or more of the following tasks at the kitchen table:

1) Color with crayons (on blank scratch paper or in coloring books)
2) Play with playdough (she can choose from 3 colors and use a plastic knife with it)
3) Paint with water (she can do one page from a paint-with-water book each day)
4) Practice cutting with kid scissors (she can cut circulars from the recycling bin)

Having read and heard many stories of preschoolers (and even older kids!) using scissors to cut their own hair (or a siblings'), I was wary of letting my little one use them. But others believe it is a skill that children can work on from a young age, and I figured letting Teresa try cutting with supervision (and giving her plenty of instruction in what we do and do not cut) would be best.

After just a few practices, I'd say she's doing pretty well:

"From the Mouths of Babes" Monday

I'd figure I'd chime in a bit with some posts. Here are some good quotes from Teresa this week:

Teresa stood over the opened board game, Sequence for Kids, with over sixty multi-colored chips strewn about the guest bedroom floor. "I made a big, beautiful mess."

Frances, Teresa, and I were sitting at the table eating dinner, and I was holding Cyprian in my lap. After I finished, I moved my plate away so I could place Cyprian on the table. He has been holding up his own weight a bit better as he wobbles on his plump little legs while holding our hands.
The second his feet hit the table Teresa said, "No feet on the table."
I looked at her and said, "You're right Teresa, I'm sorry."
She smiled big. "It's okay, I forgive you."
She's catching on quick.

Dancing with Papa

She wears her emotions

While my mom was visiting last week she noted that Teresa readily displays what she's feeling. You never have to wonder. She has an extremely expressive face (she uses her eyebrows like her Papa) and she uses her vocabulary to tell us (sometimes over and over) what emotions she's experiencing.

"Teresa sad."

"Teresa crying." (As if we didn't know already from the wailing!)

But the best was this past Sunday, as we drove from our church to a baptism at another church. Teresa was desperate for a nap in her own bed (and she told us as much: "Naptime! Nap!"), but there was nothing we could do. I tried to placate her with bites of my sandwich. At one point I was handing back a piece and she cried out, "Fustated!"

David and I looked at each other and laughed. Yes, my daughter learned that one from me, as I am frequently frustrated and let my family know as much. Poor girl.

April Teresa pics

Teresa's latest favorite thing to do while she is in "time out" is to remove her socks, put them on her hands, and play with them:


When Teresa gets hot and sweaty, her hair curls up like crazy:


Easter egg hunting in front of our new Sacred Heart statue:

Potty training progress

All the hard work and consistency of practicing elimination communication from the time Teresa was about 3 months old has paid off: Teresa is now (mostly) potty trained! I'd say she's been doing very well since she turned 2. She's now 2 years and almost 2 months old and she wears panties all day long, even when we go out and about. She still has about 3 accidents per week. She has only had 2 deliberate pants wettings that I can remember - I hope potty usage never becomes a control/independence issue for her.

Teresa does wear a diaper at night, since she sleeps about 10 hours in her crib and thus can't get out if she needs to go. She has woken up in the middle of the night and called out to us to "go potty" maybe twice. Otherwise, she wakes up in the morning with a dry diaper (and keeps it dry while playing in her crib for a few minutes) about 50% of the time these days. I've only been washing diaper laundry every 6 or 7 days, but oh how soon that's going to change!

The only trouble we've been having with the potty training is Teresa's unwillingness to use some toilets away from home, even with the portable potty seat she had previously accepted. Lately she's refused to sit on it and go, even after she said she had to. David suggested we use it at home again to get her comfortable on it again.

One funny thing related to pottying: Teresa will sometimes ask to go potty when she's part way through a meal. That's not uncommon, but the interesting thing is that she usually takes one more bite or one more sip before she gets down from her chair to dash to the bathroom!

Teresa sings her ABCs...mostly

Teresa has been singing songs more completely (as in, whole verses rather than just one or two phrases) lately. I tried to get a couple on video (she can do "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "I'm a Little Teapot," and "Five Little Ducks," for example) but she only gave me a decent performance of the ABCs. And performance it is, complete with bobbing head. She rushes and skips a letter here and there, but she can sing the whole thing. Including the ending...even though this time she gets caught on a replay loop and launches right back into the ABCs. :)

Simple play: Teresa flips cups

A couple days ago Teresa found some silicone cupcake cups that I haven't used in a long time. I let her play with them and kept them out so she could play with them some more. She enjoys stacking and unstacking them, flipping them, sorting the colors, and talking into them. Here's a simple example:

At the end of the video Teresa instructs me to "turn [the camera] around, like this..." so she can watch herself. :)

Be 'kay, Mama

A month or two ago, Teresa started responding to my scolding with some new phrases. They sounded like a combination of my comforting words to her: "It's okay, Teresa. It'll be okay..." and David's frequent admonition to me: "Calm down."

If you can imagine:

Me: "No, Teresa, stop that. Don't X, Y, Z!"

Teresa: "Be 'kay now, Mama. Calm down. Be 'kay."

At first I was impressed that she knew the phrases and was using them (somewhat) appropriately. Teresa shows amazing glimmers of compassion and kindness, and I thank God for that. But I was also mildly irritated that she was trying to divert my attention from her misbehavior to my own demeanor. When David heard her say "calm down" with a raised voice, he responded strongly: "You don't tell Mama or me to 'calm down.' Obey Mama. Obey Papa."

Since she started, though, she has more often used the calming words when I truly am frustrated, and not necessarily at her. For instance, this morning I was impatiently struggling to get Teresa's pants on her. I told her I was having a tough time and she held her legs still to help, then added (in a sweet, gentle voice accented by stroking hand motions): "Be 'kay, Mama. Calm down." So I did calm down, got the pants on, and picked her up. She looked into my eyes, repeated her message, and stroked my face.

Amazing.

If I were a saint, I wouldn't get so uptight/cranky/frustrated/demanding and need my child to help diffuse me. But I'm not a saint (yet), so God sent me an excellent helper.

Recognizing letters in her own drawing

Yesterday I gave Teresa a pencil and paper. After drawing several long/sprawling squiggles across the page, she started making smaller marks and more controlled squiggles in one corner. I doubt she intended anything as she made each mark, and yet she told me what she saw in each one after she made it. I was very impressed that she recognized a number and some letters in her drawings.

Teresa can now recognize about 20 capital letters consistently. She still confuses V with Y, J with I, E with F, and X with K (but not vice versa on any of those pairs!) and just has difficulty remembering Q.

Sorting fruit

Teresa received the game Hi Ho, Cherry-O! as a birthday gift. Its age recommendation states 3 and up, and I wouldn't let a child who still puts small things in his/her mouth play with it unsupervised. But Teresa doesn't do that anymore and, even though she does not yet understand all the concepts of the game itself (although David guides her in playing it once a week or so), she LOVES sorting the colored fruits into their baskets.

The old version had all red cherries; the updated one has cherries, oranges, blueberries, and green apples. Teresa has been asking to play "cherries" almost every day for weeks, and I usually let her. She dumps the bag of fruit on the carpet and proceeds to sort them into the colored baskets. Then she brings the full red basket to me and the full blue basket to David, because she has deemed them our colors.

We've had a few spills that are tedious to clean up, but Teresa is usually helpful in that. So I consider "sorting fruit" a great skill-building/practicing task for her right now.

Creativity and representation

We introduced Teresa to Playdoh just 1 week ago and she's already started "making things" upon request, in imitation of things we make, and, now, completely of her own volition. I do not believe David or I have made an airplane for her, so this came right out of her head:

It had two little wings, which she described to me.

Her "drawing" with a pen is also becoming more purposeful; it looks more like tight squiggles than sprawling scratches. Yesterday she drew some big squiggles and little squiggles and called them mamas/papas and babies.

You know your kid is Catholic when...

Teresa loves to peruse the DVDs in our DVD tower. She examines the covers of the "children's" movies as if they were picture books. This morning she brought this one to me:

and said, "The Body of Christ!"

Why, yes, dear...that does look like a chasuble he's wearing and he is holding something glorious aloft over an altar-like stone! :D

Teresa's Bible

I try to read the daily reflection in The Word Among Us (and the day's scripture passages, when I can) while I eat my breakfast. Teresa often wanted to leaf through the booklet and/or my bible. While I've certainly let her see the booklet when I'm not actively reading it (although it's not very interesting for her, since it has few pictures), I do not want her to tear the delicate pages of my bible (or get her messy breakfast fingers on them!).

So I told her "no, it's Mama's bible," a time or two. Then she started demanding "Teresa's bible!" We have a few versions of children's bibles (mostly collections of stories with illustrations), and I remembered a particularly large one that would probably stay open when laid on the table. So I got it for her and told her she could look through it when she was done eating.

Much to my delight, this has become a regular request. Teresa enjoys browsing through the illustrations and telling me about them...especially the "singing angels!" in the nativity story, the bride and groom at the wedding at Cana, and the "hurt" man (the one helped by the Good Samaritan) who needs "mecimin" (as she pronounces "medicine").