Two year olds are crazy

  

“A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.” - Jerry Seinfeld

Evie definitely makes our life interesting these days.  I think I’ve mentioned before that she has definitely entered the two-year old stage.  I wouldn’t say that it’s terrible – most of the time.  We have our ‘bad’ moments – full on temper tantrums, crying fits, sobbing on the ground because she didn’t get her way, even hitting and pinching sometimes.  We let her know in no uncertain terms that these types of behaviors are unacceptable and that she will not get her way by throwing a tantrum.  But reasoning with a two year old is easier said than done.  We utilize ‘time out’ when needed (one minute per years old according to her dr.).  I don’t know that it helps her to understand that her behavior was wrong, but it does give her a second to chill out and refocus – definitely a good thing if she’s in tantrum mode! 

She’s not like this all the time though.  Most of the time, she a sweet little girl!  She says please, thank you and “I sorry”.  She loves to snuggle and give hugs and kisses.  She plays hard and laughs constantly.  She loves to be my little helper when I’m sweeping up the kitchen or cleaning up toys.  While she’s still learning how to share with her friends, she will often demonstrate that she does know how to share and empathize with others.  The other day, I was sitting on the couch and I said I was cold.  She heard me, grabbed her favorite blankie and covered me up with it say “Here you go Mama”.   What a sweetie!  She’s also so smart.  She’ll sing her “ABC’s”, she knows most of her colors and she loves to count things.  We are still working on getting all of the numbers right, but she’s doing great!

Like I said, she keeps it interesting.  Here are some recent ‘Evie-isms”:

Evie doesn’t say ‘hold me” when she wants up to pick her up.  She says “hold you”. 

Evie loves to play in her kitchen.  When you ask her what she in doing, she will tell you that she is making soup.  You haven’t lived until you’ve tried her egg-bologna-yogurt-corn soup.

She had to go to ‘timeout’ the other day.  I sat her down and I told her that I didn’t like it when she was a mean girl.  She glared at me and said “I not like you Mama!”  Seriously?!  Two years old and it starts already! 

We were in the grocery store and she decided that she did not want me to touch the grocery cart.  Every time I tried to push it, she would push my hands away, saying ‘Get away Mama!”  So I pushed the cart a little ahead of me and let it go, thinking that it would scare her a little and she’d let me push the cart.   My little daredevil did not get scared and wanted me to do it again.  Oi.

Evie has decided that she doesn’t want her food cubed anymore.  I was cutting up cheese for her lunch and she started saying “No no no!  Big Mama! Big!”  She would only eat the cheese if I cut it in slices and threw all of the cubed cheese to Crosby.

We have taught her not to wake people up by smacking them in the face.  Seems like commons sense, but I guess when you are two you need to be told them things!  Anyway, she still ends up sleeping in our bed a lot so we told her that if she need us to wake up, she should give us a kiss.  She loves doing this – and it’s much nice to wake up to a kiss from my little girl than a bop on the nose.

I was doing a prenatal fitness video the other day while she played with her toys.  I looked over and realized that she had started to do the video with me.  She was lifting her arms above her head and taking deep breaths.  She did downward facing dog and knee lifts.  Then, there was a movement where you are kind of moving your hips in a circle and, given that this a workout for pregnant woman, this means you are sticking our stomach out.  Evie stuck her little belly way out and then stopped, lifted up her shirt, stared at her belly, then grabbed it with both hands and squished it, almost like she was trying to make it stick out further.  Needless to say, I was cracking up!

As a special treat, Evie had orange juice with her breakfast while we were visiting Kiki and Pops.  The next day at dinner, I have her a cup of milk and she said “No Mama.  I want ‘ello (yellow) milk”. 

At breakfast one Saturday, she wouldn’t really eat anything.  I got her down from her highchair, turned on some cartoons and let her play.  Then I sat down to eat some oatmeal and have a cup of coffee.  As soon as I sat down, she came over and stood next to me with her mouth open.  I gave her a bite of my oatmeal (which, by the way was unsweetened with just some banana in it).   She proceeded to eat most of the bowl.  I’ve decided that maybe I shouldn’t even bother to give her a separate plate of food anymore – she only wants what’s on my plate anyway!

Life with Evie is never boring!