My Sweet Girl

I'm sitting here planning Felicity's 2nd birthday, and getting all weepy and wistful! It's such a cliche to talk about how fast time goes, but it really does and it's shocking even if it shouldn't be. It seems like both yesterday and forever ago that we brought home this tiny little baby girl of our dreams, and now next month she will be 2! And in a little over 2 months, she will be a big sister. How is she big enough to be a big sister??? I'm trying to focus more on one-on-one quality time with her and, especially since she recently stopped coming to our bed around 4am, increase our cuddles during the day. My love language is physical touch, but it's got NOTHING on this girl. She could be touching me all day long and it still wouldn't be enough. Sometimes I think I might crawl right out of my skin, but suddenly her constant cuddles and requests for "huggie!" are sweeter because I know I will be sharing my time with someone else soon. 

I know everyone thinks their kid is a genius, and I didn't want to be one of those parents, but here I am. I also am well aware that smart children often "even out" around school age, but I'm really enjoying watching her learn, and she blows me away daily with what she knows and understands. This is definitely a favorite age of mine and I don't want to lose these memories (if I haven't mentioned before, I have a pretty bad memory for important things, which is part of why I blog!). Felicity is currently very into her ABC's. She can recognize about 90% of them and sing about 50% of the song. She can count to 11 and recognize those numbers. She knows her basic colors (purple, red, green, blue, yellow, orange) and some shapes (star, rectangle, square, circle, heart). We went on a walk yesterday and she yelled "triangle!". I looked down and there was a perfect triangle made by a slab of sidewalk. Toddler brains are so amazing! She's enjoying learning names right now and has fun naming who is a daddy or mommy to which one of her friends. Some of her favorite things are "airplayins" (airplanes), kitties (real ones and her stuffed ones- Pepper and Snowflake who both have to sleep with her), babies, blankets, pretending to be a 'tiny baby'- what she calls Jellybean, coloring, playing with a tupperware of water on the kitchen floor, everything Daniel Tiger, listening to books, and helping me do just about anything. 

Felicity is such a busy girl! Though my child is so advanced in many ways, she still struggles to play independently. It's just not her cup of tea (by the way, she got a tea set for Christmas and loves tea parties :) ). All day we hear "mama play? dada play?" and we are still trying to find a good balance between playing with our sweet girl and encouraging her to play by herself some. Felicity might play alone in 5-10 minutes chunks, but that's about it. She is very, VERY into books though and spends a lot of the day snuggled beside me on the couch "reading" to herself and then asking me to read. When I get up to do chores, she is much better about playing by herself, so I usually spend her nap time relaxing or napping myself, and save chores for when she's awake. When I vacuum, she pushes her ball popper around the house behind me. When I do laundry, she likes to put things in the dryer for me. And when I cook, she either likes to watch or "cook" in her own kitchen. 

My girl is an early bird, just like I was when I was little. She goes to bed at 6:30 and is up between 5:45 and 6:15 usually. I'm kind of hoping Jellybean is an early bird, too, because Felicity slept until 8am for the first 6 months of her life, and it would be torture to have my newborn sleep in but still have to get up at the crack of dawn for my toddler! Maybe I'll regret saying that, though ;). I wish she would got to bed later so she could see Steven more often (he is usually not home from work by then and leaves before she wakes up in the morning), but any time we've tried a later bed time, even by a little bit, it's been a complete disaster. What can I say? Felicity knows what she wants. She spent 12m-18m only napping about 45 minutes a day, which was very hard on mommy! But thankfully now she naps at 11 for about 2 hours. Just enough time for me to nap and eat my lunch in peace. 

Felicity is such a joy. She's a ton of work and I am still working on my patience level and more fully appreciating my vocation as her mother, but I get such an immense amount of pleasure from conversations with her and watching her brain work. One of my favorite things is to hear her talking to herself and realize she's repeating a song/story she's heard, or see her "reading" a book and realize she's summarizing each page. I feel so fortunate to be her mom and understand her language because I know other people don't grasp half the words, let alone what she's actually doing. I love experiencing things through her eyes and having a toddler is a beautiful lesson in enjoying the little things. She helps me to slow down and enjoy life more. Being with her all day is the hardest thing and best thing I've ever done. I can't wait to see her be a big sister!

At the airport observation park to watch airplayins. This girl was IN LOVE!