Adventures with two...

Two & a Half!

Miss Em is officially 2.5 years old. She is growing up so fast it's making our heads spin! But do you know how fun it is to be the parent of a two and half year old? So much imagination, laughter and language. Everyday I have so many funny stories to share. I always mean to blog about them, but don't ever get it done. So for posterity sake, I want to write out what Em is up to these days.

*Reading. She still loves to read and probably has us read about 10 books MINIMUM per day. Her favorite as of late is Curious George and do you know that some of those books are around 80 pages long? Yeah, I tire easily of that dang monkey! We're checking out the shorter ones these days. She also loves for us to tell her stories orally, her favorites are Fairy Tales at the moment.

*Princesses: Speaking of Fairy Tales, the girl can spot a Disney Princess from a mile away in any given store. I'd hate to see what things would be like if we actually bought her all of those movies, stickers, costumes, etc. Just yesterday we were walking down the aisle at Target and she shouted, "There's the Little Mermaid!" Sure enough LM stickers, which she studied for a good 5 minutes. Luckily we haven't had tantrums about buying such items...yet.

*Singing: Em loves to sing and can sing many songs by herself these days. Her favorite songs are: The Alphabet Song; Twinkle, Twinkle;  Away in a Manger;  Baa Baa Black Sheep. The best part about this is that she insists I do sign language to the songs most times.  She likes to do the signs if she knows them. Then the other night in the car we're driving along and she tells me, "I doing sign language, Mama!" Tom was driving so I turned around to see what she was doing, she said, "No Mama, don't watch me do sign language." So I turned back around and watched her in the mirror. It was so funny! She was basically just flipping her hands around, but I loved that she was wanting to do it in sign language!

*Swinging: I'm not sure if she will ever tire of swinging. She's always loved it.

*Wrestling: She'll tell Tom, "Daddy, I want to wrestle." And then organize the pillows on the floor. It's not really wrestling, but she thinks it so funny to roughhouse a bit with Papa.

*Dancing: Em loves to dance around to music and tells me, "I'm doing ballet." She does this sweet, somewhat corny, slow dance that involves all sorts of hand swaying. We think it must be something that she does at school. The other night she did a "show" for us where she would go out of the room and Tom would introduce her and she would come in to sing songs and dance. When she'd get finished she take a HUGE bow and then would say, "You guys clap now!" Then we'd clap and cheer and she would start another act. We were rolling on the floor laughing by the end of it.

*Gymnastics: This girl is flexible and strong and loves flipping and tumbling. We're taking a Saturday morning tumbling class and she loves doing somersaults, jumping on the mini tramp and flipping on the bar.

*Language: Our girl is quite a chatterbox and her language amazes us. She is very expressive and pretty easy to understand for her age. She uses such descriptive language and is very precise in her word choices. The other morning she told Tom, "I'm so excited to see my teachers!" as she hopped out of the car and they walked in to school. Sunday night in the car she told us, "This one mine favorite song!"  I always imagine that some day she might be a writer as she continues to develop her gift of language. (I wish I could think of better examples...but I can't at the moment?!)

The most exciting thing for us is that she is also speaking lots of Mandarin Chinese at school and understands her teachers perfectly. We're so happy she is bilingual and hope this will remain true for the rest of her life.

So Two and a Half she is! And she will tell you quickly that she is a big girl now.

Two and a Half! And we are infinitely blessed to be her parents.

Sleep update!

I'm happy to report that our sleep issues are much improved. It was so nice to get so many comments from people, thank you for sharing your support and wisdom. We decided to talk Em through what it looks like to go to sleep and we actually made a poster of the things we do to get ready to sleep and hung it up in her room. She helped me decorate the poster. Now at bedtime we go through each of the items, and she loves to go over and pretend to read what's next on the list. After we get through the routine we turn down the lights, rub her back for a minute and go out. She didn't cry at all the first few nights! She has cried or whined a few times since we started this last week, but it only lasts 30 seconds to a minute and she calms down and goes to sleep.

Along with the list, we committed that both Tom and I would do the bedtime routine for the first week so that she knew we were both on board. Plus, she seemed to call down for the parent who didn't put her to bed, wanting them to come up to do things for her such as drinks, etc. This really helped. She knew that neither of us were going to come back since we had just gotten her settled with everything that she needed.

It's true what people wrote about imaginations running wild at this age. Just last night at about 3:00 am Em started crying really loud. Tom went in to see what happened and she was all curled up in the corner of her bed, scared and crying. Tom said, "What happened, Em?" She said, "There's a ladybug on my pillow!" There was no ladybug to be found and I'm sure she was just dreaming about it. Needless to say we had a snuggle bug in our bed for the rest of the night...great, I'll be blogging next week that she won't stay in her own bed now I suppose! hehe

At nap time today she told me again, "There's a ladybug on my pillow, I don't want my pillow." So she fell asleep sans pillow, but very calmly and without frustration. It's a beautiful thing to hear her chatting with herself while she waits to fall asleep. Plus her mood in the last two weeks has been greatly improved! Less whining, more silliness. I think the stress of falling asleep crabby was affecting her mood. Ahhh! Our delightful daughter is back!    

Finding stories

Tom forwarded me this article from the NY Times this morning. I've seen it in a few places, but wanted to post it here too. There are so many similarities in this story and the story of our girl. She too was born in Gansu province, was found by a police officer and "cried loudly" when she was found and brought to the orphanage. This story had me crying out loud this morning. (In truth, it always makes me cry to think of this day.)

We have the name of the police officer and I am very inspired to do a bit of research to see if we can find out some more information about that fateful day. I think we need to do this sooner rather than later so the information is still available. In fact, I wonder if it's too late already?

Either way, GO read the article already!!
(This picture is of Em when she was about 3 months old.)

Troubles falling asleep

I'm tempted to sign up for NaBloPoMo, but somehow I just can't do it. I want to start posting more as a way to get some advice from y'all out there, so if you're listening send some advice and then come back soon, I'll try to post much more often this month, maybe even daily?! With gratuitous kid pics!

First topic of the month: Sleep issues.

We've hit a bit of a snag around here. Since we got home last year Em has been SO easy to put to bed. She struggled a bit when we weaned her off her bottle, but still, nothing serious. We're now into some uncharted waters around here, as Em is really struggling when we put her in bed. She's crying and crying, and we're trying to help get her back on track without setting up bad habits.

Here's a common scenario of how it plays out:

1)We say we're going up to bed. Mood: Just fine.
2) We brush teeth and wash face. Mood: Still fine.
3) Get pj's on and read books. Mood: Yep, still fine.
4) Get in bed and sing songs. Mood: STILL fine.
5) Start lullaby music and try to leave the room. Mood: Horrid! Loud crying, sometimes kicking & trashing. The worst part is that she doesn't want her "lovies" (puppy or blanket) at this point. In fact she gets even more frustrated if we offer them, and she'll throw them off the bed.

We have tried to walk out for a few minutes to see if she'll calm down. We have tried to stay to calm her down, there seems to be no trick that will work. When we stay the distraction techniques rev into full force...you know, drinks, potty, rub my back, I want my blankie, I don't want my blankie. 

We haven't changed the routine or taken anything away and the hall light is on, and bright. In twelve days she will officially be two and a half years old, is this just her age?

Help! What else should we be doing? Is this just a normal phase or is there something deeper going on? Could this be some type of attachment issue that we haven't addressed? I welcome any and all advice.  THANKS!