2.5

February 10, 2014  //  JULIETTE TAYLOR at 2 years, 6 months

This girl! Oh my. She loves to DANCE! Just about her favorite thing to do is to watch Feist's 1234 video and do her interpretation of the dance moves. It is hilarious. She doesn't love to watch TV, but she does love watching music videos, which ties into her next love--singing! She is constantly coming out with bits of songs she learns at school that we had no idea she knew, one of them being "snowman, snowman, wears a funny hat" (see above). Ha! I realize I am her mother and biased, but the girl seems to be able to carry a tune pretty well.

Besides dancing and singing, she loves to "play blocks." She loves any activity that includes amassing collections of items to move around from basket to bag to bucket. She likes to color and she loves loves loves reading and "reading" books. But she doesn't like to start reading books until she's collected a large stack of them. "Reading" involves the exact same gibberish sentence over and over, I wish I could transcribe it accurately, but it goes something like "and whoa-wuh and wa-wuh." As soon as she gets home or arrives at either grandparents' house, she immediately removes her socks and shoes, no matter how cold it is. (She got that from her dad, who likes being barefoot. Her mother, on the other hand...never.) Another big hit in life is her "makeups" (chapstick tubes) -- her greatest trophies.

Juliette looooves her little sister. And we have made great strides in the gentle department over the past 6 months. She still defaults to a choke hold-type hug, but has overall been lots gentler with Molly. (Thank goodness!) They have the sweetest greeting first thing in the morning, which includes a little light wrestling, giggling, and leg kicking (from excitement). Jules also loves to play peekaboo with Molly while M is sitting in her high chair during breakfast.

For being so active and gregarious, she gets spooked easily. There's a puppet show at church on Sunday mornings that we have had some trouble with (right now we're in a good patch). She's not crazy about costumes or random things like that either. Example: Uncle T showed her the "peanut butter jelly time" video thinking she would like it, and it terrified her and gave her bad dreams that night. ???? I don't know.

Her favorite foods are hummus, animal crackers, smoothies, turkey bacon, egg-in-a-hole, macaroni and cheese, and she loves to drink almond milk. She is mostly potty-trained at this point (!).

2.5 can be exasperating sometimes (stubbornness is in her gene pool, ha). But it can also be so awesome! Bedtime stall tactic yes, but when your little girl puts her arm around your neck and says, "Mommy, can I keep you?" ...your heart just melts. I love my firstborn something fierce.