Dance with me Daddy!

I wish I had the pictures but I was too taken in by the moment that I didn't get the camera in time. We were listening to Christmas music after dinner and Lucy had passed out some instruments for all of us to play. Daddy thought his turn was over so he began cleaning up the kitchen. She raced in and told him to dance some more with her.

Our little toddler is expanding her vocabulary and emotions. And wow...did the pretend play explode at our house. She's adding all the extra words into her sentances including adjectives and articles. It's funny because we've been deciphering all those extra words for so long that now we have to be patient while she slowly and robotically, sometimes, gets the words out. Her song repetoire has greatly expanded as well. So car rides with the toy piano have turned into mini-concerts.

With all this new learning and understanding of the world, you can't possibly ask her to sleep, right? She spent a week deciding that naps were really unnecessary while sharing a wider variety of emotions in response to all the things that her Daddy and I were doing wrong those days. We just couldn't get it right. We weren't giving her the right teddy bear at bedtime or the right plate at her meal. We always messed up the coat and shoe choice even if she just told us the one she wanted. And don't even get me started on breakfast.

So we got to see our sweet little girl with that fabulous smile spin her head around and shoot lasers through her eyes while her body thrashed, stomped, clapped and spun. She only tried hitting me once...so far. I had my own explosion at that. Rodney and I only got through it by tag teaming the experience. One hour at a time until we were exhausted from all the yelling and negotiating and general stalling.

Right along with all this emotional craziness, has come some of the sweetest moments as well. She says, "bless you" when you sneeze, "Please" and "Thank you", and "I love you" when she's headed to bed or we're leaving. She is also taking great care of her corduroy bear and baby doll. These two have been getting a lot of special treatment. They ride in her coat like a baby in a front pack or sometimes in her little backpack with their heads sticking out. Corduroy regularly gets breakfast next to Lucy even though she usually eats his portion when she's done with hers. But Baby gets breastfed. Yep...the shirt comes up, and the baby is put quite accurately at Lucy's chest for her meal. I should explain that Lucy spends a few hours a week with her caregiver, Lucretia who has a 7 month old names Yuuma. Yuuma is breastfed. I had no idea she was paying such close attention. Lucretia said she has begun asking lots of questions as well. "Does Yuuma bite?", etc.

We now burp the baby and sometimes clean her mouth when she spits up. Today, Lucy told me the baby was sad and she was walking around the house quietly saying, "it's ok baby" and then singing, "rock, rock, rock, rock, rock the baby slow". (the song I've sung to Lucy)

So...we're pretty proud of our little one. She continues to amaze and amuse us. And I'm so happy she is getting all this practice with a baby before the emotional reality of sharing her mama and daddy with a baby settles in.