22-23 Months Old!

Little Miss Lacey is 23 months! We're rounding the corner to age 2, and she has become such a little girl. I am clinging to her little baby voice and her toddle walk/run because I know it will soon be gone.  Sniff, sniff.

And yet, she's hit that wonderful terrible twos stage, ugh. She will be my child that drops to the floor with tantrums. She'd do it all the time at the store, except for the fact that I am much stronger than she is and can easily pick her up. So strong willed, this one. I have two of the same. Heaven help me!

I had to make my first ever call to Poison Control last month. We were packing for a trip and I had portioned out the kids vitamins for the week in a ziplock bag and left it on top of the kitchen island. Lacey had pushed a chair over to the island and climbed on it to get to something, found the bag of vitamins, and sat down and ate them like candy. She ate eight; her dose is 1/2 of one. I called the nurseline at our pediatrician's office and they wanted me to call Poison Control just to make sure the amount of iron was not going to be harmful. Good news was, she could have consumed 40 before that level of iron would have done damage. Bad news was it led to 2 days of diarrhea and irritability.

This girl is going to be fun, but quite a handful over the next 17 years....


Latest stats:

• Weighs about 26 lbs, wears size 4 diaper, size 18-24 months and 24 months clothes, size 6.5 shoe
• Hair is very blonde and very curly. I have no idea where she got hair that curly! It turns into a frizzy mess after her nap, and it actually much longer than it looks since her curls are so tight. 
• Eyes are hazely-brown, may continue to get more brown as Luke's did.
• Loves to play with others, but seems to do a little better at playing alone than Luke. She likes to build with blocks and she LOVES to color, paint and "write". She often says, "I write! I write!" and gets the paper and crayons or pencils and sits for a while at the little table to scribble. She actually can already hold a pencil correctly. We talk about colors each time she uses them, but she doesn't have those down yet. 
• Counts to 10 all the time, but misses 4 and 5, and often 6. 
• Loves to sing! Luke never was a singer, still isn't, but Miss L sure loves to sing and clap. We were visiting Allen's family in TX and she graced us with a performance. Check her out in this adorable video: http://youtu.be/LAs79b_nZcQ. 
• Loves to be read to and starting to look at books by herself and even read to herself. The other day she read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See and it was the cutest ever! She has recently plopped herself in my lap and said, "I read you", meaning she wanted to read to me. 
• Was a great eater, but I can see her starting to hit that point Luke did where he began to refuse things he had previously eaten well. She does still like yogurt, eggs, sausage, has started to like cereal with milk; likes turkey, mac & cheese, apples, grapes, blueberries, broccoli, sweet potatoes, chicken nuggets. Doesn't love PB&J, but eats it. Tolerates chicken, beef. Likes pasta: spaghetti, pesto capellini, working on ravioli. 
• Nap is down to about 2 hours; Lacey doesn't seem to need as much sleep as Luke did at this age. Wakes about 7:30 - 8 am, down for nap at 12:30 or 1ish, up at 3 pm. Bath around 6:30, bedtime around 7:30. However, she takes forever to fall asleep, so even though I may put her down at 7:30, she is often still awake an hour later, just talking and singing in bed! 
• Silly girl! 
• Walks on her toes!
• Still very cuddly. Loves to be held and cuddled, loves to give hugs and be hugged. Still sleeps in a big kid sleep sack because she likes that blanket, covered, cuddled feel.

On to some pictures!

My girl loves books!

And building!

Her silly "cheese" face. She loves to pose with this face, but it's usually some strange contortion she thinks is a smile!

Chef Lacey. Ironically, she doesn't like to cook with me much. Luke still loves to do that, though.

Luke wanted to take a picture of the "girls" as he called us.

Does she not look huge in this highchair now?!

We took a road trip over 4th of July to see family and friends in Texas.

Luke did great in the car, he played on his LeapPad pretty much the whole way there. Lacey, on the other hand...very whiny and kept wanting "dout", or her word for down/out. It was a loooong 8 hours. Needless to say, she got some Benadryl on the way home and slept a nice 3 hours. 

We stopped at Cracker Barrel, deciding that would offer a good resting place full of fun distractions and food the kids would eat. They loved the rocking chairs just their size!

On the way home we were fortunate to coincidentally get to time a quick meal with some friends from college who were getting ready to leave from the Little Rock airport! Allen ordered fried okra, and to my surprise, Lacey kept eating it off his plate! Sure, it was fried, but okra? Yuck.

Sweet pic with Grand Dad and Granny Dot. You will find this pic so much funnier when you look at Luke's face and learn that he was promised chocolate to take this picture.

We shared some frozen yogurt one day and the girl went to town!

Her favorite park activities are the slides and the swings!

At CMOM (Children's Museum of Memphis)
There is this little river with a very slight current that sends plastic fish down for the kids to catch as they float by.

Their favorite thing at CMOM is a toss up between this FedEx plane onto which they can practice loading cargo, and a couple real firetrucks that allow the kids to explore life as a firefighter. It was too crowded to go grocery shopping at the mini Kroger, but that one is also a huge hit. It has kid sized carts and real shelves stocked with items that they can place in their cart and take through check out using real cash registers. All of CMOM is pretty fantastic.

My next post about Lacey will be a celebration of her 2nd birthday!
Oh my!