Celebrating 2 years of Georgie

Our Georgie Girl turned 2 (last month, but I didn't get this out then, so I'm publishing it now, so just pretend like it's September again) and oh, what a sweet girl she is. 

She talks. All day long. She listens, remembers, repeats, invents, associates, and surprises me everyday. 

She moves. She runs, jumps, dances, leaps, climbs, and stops for only the briefest of snuggles.

She loves music and songs, and my greatest delight is when she sings. The songs are all in her head, but she's still figuring out how to get them out of her mouth.

She loves stories, and my other greatest delight is listening to her read them to herself, her baby doll, her baby sister, or at all.

She loves her little sister (mostly) and my other other greatest delight is seeing Georgie love "Baby Fwosie" with hugs, kisses, and shared toys and watching Rosie light up at the attention from her adored older sister.

Georgie loves bath time and going outside and coloring and being chased. More than anything or anyone else, she loves her special blanket.

She begs for candy and watching shows and playing on the phone/tablet/iPod. Thanks to her insistence, I have 101 Dalmatians, Frozen, the first forty minutes of Chicken Little, and Toy Story 1, 2, and 3 completely memorized.

She parrots everything she hears and sees, both good and bad. She very tenderly consoles her baby doll ("Ohhh, is okay Baby Doll!") and then pinches my arm when I take off the outlet covers. (I tried to teach her not to touch the outlets by pinching her arm to demonstrate what a shock would feel like. Wrong way to teach that lesson.) 

Georgie is a sensitive spirit. She's very tuned in to emotions and gets concerned when other people are upset. It's very sweet. She's also very aware of other people (to an extent; I mean, she is only 2) and checks in a lot: "Mama okay?" "Daddy need food?" "Baby sad?"

She loves people and routinely goes down her list of family members, from grandparents to aunts and uncles to cousins to dogs.

She is still shy in new situations, with new people, or as of recently, just whenever anyone comes over, but it doesn't take long for her to warm up and start showing off.

She loves going to Nursery on Sundays. She loves playing with other kids. She also loves playing by herself. At home, she often loads up a bag/bucket/baby doll stroller with books and toys, says "Bye!", and goes to her room to play.

She has all her teeth, minus the back molars. Her hair is still very curly (see pictures below). She takes an afternoon nap (most) everyday, though sleeping is still an occasional challenge. Eating is still hit and miss. She's ready to potty train but I am not, so for now, we buy the diapers. She says prayers, recognizes all pictures of Jesus, and gets excited to point out temples anytime she sees one.

Georgie usually loves to help: vacuum, do laundry, put things in the trash, turn lights on and off (and on and off), get toys for Rosie.

She usually loves to test her boundaries: running across the parking lot instead of into the house; chewing up or ripping apart her books; coloring on the walls; dumping water out of the bathtub by the bucketful. On hard days, she gives new meaning to the phrase, "Hell hath no fury like a toddler. Period."

Our hardest days are the ones when she sleeps in too late and doesn't take a nap. Our second hardest days are the ones when she's hungry but won't eat what I have. Our third hardest days are generally Wednesdays. 

Our best days are all the other days.

She is learning about happy choices and sad choices. She is learning how to play with Rosie. She is learning about consequences. She is perfecting how to stall at bedtime. She is learning how to ask for what she wants without crying so that I can help her. She is learning that her body is amazing and capable and strong. She knows that she is loved and adored and needed to make our family complete.

Happy birthday, Georgie Girl. What a beautiful, exhausting, fantastic, trying, delightful two years it's been. We can't wait for all the rest of the years to come.

She won't stand still for photos anymore, so I have to take what I can get!

Some days, she's Shirley Temple. Other days, she's much more Farrah Fawcett.

New birthday outfit from Grandma Mel and Grandpa Bob, and new post birthday bruises on her face from tripping face-first onto a hardwood floor.

Loves loves loves her blanket.

She wouldn't stop moving so this is the best picture I could get of a Shirley Temple hair day.

7 months old, or The One with Physical Therapy

This is for Lisa, because she reminded me that it's been a month since I published my last post (which is not to say that I haven't been composing new posts, they just don't make it up here!), and that means Rosie is 7 months old and it's time for an update.

Ah, 7 months. I forgot how much fun this age is. For weeks I've been worrying about not engaging Rosie enough, and then all of a sudden it got easier, not because I got better at it, but because Rosie is so much more interactive! Her personality is getting easier to see and experience and she's responding to us so much more. I love it!

The biggest change in the last month is that Rosie started physical therapy to strengthen her neck (she has torticollis). We go to see the pediatric physical therapist once a week for now, and then there are exercises I have to do with her everyday, multiple times a day. It's been just over a week and I think I've run almost the full gamut of emotions already: guilt (why didn't I do something sooner?), anxiety (what if there's already permanent damage?), reassurance (it's really minor compared to what it could be), determination (it'll take time but we'll fix this!), elation (we did it without anyone crying!), patience (I know you hate this, sweetie, but it'll be over soon), uncertainty (is this the way I'm supposed to hold her?), frustration (just. hold. still!), resignation (fine, we'll stop), back to guilt (I only did her stretches twice today and now she'll never get better), and exhaustion (we have to do this for how many more months?).

Really, her neck is not bad at all, and developmentally she's right on track. And I can see a difference in just a week, and we're finding ways to get through the stretches more easily. But my baby hates me three times a day, and that's hard. When she gets mad enough, she will literally push away from me and refuse to look at me. (Granted, that happens more when I try to clean out her nose, but she's not a fan of her stretches, either.) My biggest worry right now is that this is going to be a barrier to our bonding as she gets more responsive. I want to be sure I see her, not just the angle of her head, and I don't want her main association with me to be "Quick! Squirm! Get away!" So here's hoping I have something more positive to say about that in a month...

On happier notes:

Our shrieking, babbling girl has started mimicking our sounds. Tim is sick (boo) and this morning, he was coughing and Rosie coughed right back at him. I pretended to cough and she did it again with a huge grin on her face. New game! She'll even "sing" back to me sometimes - I love it!

We are having success with solid foods. Can I just exclaim for a minute how happy I am about that? Success! With solid foods! We've only tried cereals and vegetables so far, but even so, Rosie typically likes to take the spoon away from me as soon as it's in range, stick it right side up in her mouth, flip it over (so that most of the food ends up in her mouth), then take it out and chew on the bottom of it. And somewhere in the process, the food gets mostly swallowed. SUCCESS! 

Rolling-everywhere-Rosie is just starting to scoot (mostly backwards) and in her wild rolling-ness, she tends to get stuck under the couch. She also is catching onto the concept of coming and going, so if I start to "chase" her, she rolls away, and if Daddy beckons her over, she'll roll across the room to grab his toes.

Speaking of whom, this girl's got a sixth sense for her daddy. Anytime he walks in the room, she instinctively knows it and has to find him and grin like crazy at him. Daddy's girl? I think yes. She also continues to adore her sister, even though sister's new favorite game is Take Toys Away from Rosie.

Her first tooth has cut through on the bottom and I think the second is on its way. At least, let's hope so, because the minute that thing shows up, it's sleep training time. Rosie has, so far, resisted transitioning to a crib or pack 'n play and still insists on waking up 2x a night, so once she's healthy and not teething, I think we're just going to bite the bullet and let her cry it out in the crib until it takes.

And other than that, Rosie is still our ridiculously happy, bouncy girl. She gets SO EXCITED when I go in to get her from a nap, I just had to video it. 

Other than the physical therapy part, Rosie at 7 months is great so far! We just can't get enough of this beautiful, happy girl.

We tried on her Halloween costume a bit early to make sure it would fit. Too. Cute.