2.5

The day after Thanksgiving, our baby girl officially turned 2 and 1/2 years old. It has been an amazing ride, and I feel like we have had the time of our lives.

For memory’s sake, here are some things she’s up to right now…

• At bedtime, she says, “Bye bye! Sleep tight! Bugs bite!”
• She broke her first piece of McCarty pottery- a bunny.
• She will now break out into spontaneous song, and the best part is that I can usually tell what song it is!
• She can somewhat dress herself- shoes are easy, and she’s getting really good at pants and jackets. Socks and shirts are still tricky. (Although she’d much rather be naked.)
• She gets her left and right correct more than 50% of the time, although not perfect.
• She has done great in her big girl bed. I like that she will usually come on downstairs in the morning when she wakes up, although I typically have to wake her up on mornings that I work. She’s only gotten out of bed in the middle of the night twice, and she’s just fallen off once. She had fallen asleep in the car and was one of the 1 out of 10 times that she wakes up when I lay her in her bed. She rolled away from me toward the edge and was kicking at  me and fell asleep in mid fight. I wasn’t going to try to touch her again, so I put pillows on the floor below her. My dad was here watching her that afternoon, and when he went in to check on her, she was asleep on the pillows on the floor!
• The phrases “Don’t do dat, Daddy!” and “Whaaahht?” are used quite often.
• Now when you ask Helen Grace her name, she’ll say her whole name. It started as Helen Toohig (in the video below), but now, she says Helen Grace Toohig. I must admit, I was floored when I heard Toohig come out of her mouth. The realization hit me all at once that 1. my name is now Toohig and is no longer Moore, 2. we have named her this name, and 3. now she considers it her own. Crazy grown-up moment.
• Hearing her echo (or ‘gecko’ according to her) is a new favorite activity. She loves to yell, “Gecko, Gecko, Gecko!,” and then gets tickled pink when it comes back to her.
• The child can’t get enough parmesan cheese, and apparently, that’s an inherited trait. Grandma said she would turn her back in the grocery cart for a second and John would have eaten half of a wedge of parmesan straight through the paper.
• She thinks it’s hilarious to pull a stool up to the light switch and turn the lights off on you in the shower.
• When I ask her, “How much do I love you?,” her response is, “A lot,” or “Soooo much.”
• She likes to help me by opening the fridge for me, so I asked if she’d get the milk out for me. Her response- “Sure, I’d be glad to.”
• Her somersault has gotten really good and straight, and she’ll gladly do it anywhere you ask her to in order to demonstrate this point.
• So far this Christmas, she hasn’t shown much interest in the Christmas tree or the Elf on the Shelf, but she LOVES looking at outside Christmas lights as we drive through our neighborhood.
• She’s still a light eater and would rather snack throughout the day than sit down and eat a big meal.
• She takes a long afternoon nap (2-3 hours)- thank goodness! She wakes up between 6-7 a.m. and goes to bed around 9 p.m.
• She shows no interest in potty training. She’ll act interested for a day or two and we’ll get excited, and then she’ll totally regress and cry if you even mention that she sit on the potty.
• She is really getting into early reading games- either the ones where you hold the pen over your answer and the pen tells you if you’re correct or iPhone games with ABCs, matching, or puzzles.
• She can pick out at least half of her letters. We have these blocks that spell out ‘Merry Christmas,’ and she carries around the H for her name and hands me the S for Mommy’s name.
• Her imagination is out of this world, but she’s started seeing things like monsters. She thinks it’s hilarious if I karate kick them, so I’m very grateful that there aren’t hidden cameras in our house. I gotta do whatever I’ve got to do to keep my baby girl happy and laughing!
• Her level of vocabulary is out of this world. She carries on complete conversations, and she leaves me shaking my head that she’s still a little girl but comes up with these words and thoughts!

Daddy caught me snoozing one night I had started working on decorating the Christmas tree, but then this little blondie curled up in my lap. The tree can wait!You know Mocha is desperate for attention when he curls up next to Helen Grace and lets her hang her hand on him for a long piece of time. During one of her on-again-off-again excited-about-potty-training moments, I got big girl panties on her. Modeling her first pair of jeans Playing after Daddy’s soccer game"What’s your name?”