Curran at 2.5 yrs old

 Warning: this is a long, wordy, boring-to-most-people post! I am trying to document as best I can, because after going back and reading posts from when C was an infant, I realize just how much I have forgotten!

-She now says "I lub you, Mama" {or Daddy} unprompted all the time, and it melts my heart every time.


-She loves to sing in the car. Sometimes she demands that I sing along, but it's usually when there are no words to be sung at that moment. Other times I sing automatically and she yells "Not SING, Mama!" She's a bossy one.

-She's gotten to where she'll ask me 85,000 times "Where we goin', Mama?" every time we're in the car, even if I have answered her 84,999 times. So finally one day I said, "Where do you think we're going?" She said in a very exasperated tone, "I don't wanna think!":)

-She has gotten very into saying "Oh dat's my fabrit {favorite}!" about everything she sees {toys/characters in Wal-Mart that she has no idea who/what they are}, a certain color I'm wearing, a toy she hasn't played with in forever, etc. I'll say, "That's your favorite?" And she says, "Yeah, I LUB it!" The other morning she was so cute when I put on my jacket. She said in the sweetest voice, "Oh you have yellow on your jacket, Mommy? Ooooh yellow's my fabrit!" :) The other day I was changing her diaper and I scratched my stomach on the changing table {it's an old wicker one and is falling apart}. Curran asked to see the scratch and lifted up my shirt. Then she said, "I sorry, Sallie Cate. {about the scratch}Mama, what's dat?" I told her it was a mole. She replied, "I lub moles!" :)

-She is getting very good with using her manners. She almost always says please and thank you. The main time I have to remind her to say please is when she is grumpy first thing in the morning and demands, "I WANT ORANGE JUICE, DADDY!!!" Ummm, can we get a 'please' in there somewhere? But she always says in the sweetest voice, "thank you, Mommy!" for just about anything I hand to her.

{lunch buddies}

-My favorite time of the day to talk to her is dinner time and bed time. That's when she gets going with her stories. Sometimes the stories are an endless loop; she'll finish a story and then start right back over at the beginning, hardly taking any breaths. Sometimes I can tell she is fibbing, like when she gets fixated on someone pushing her at school or her pushing someone else, but she makes me laugh.

-When we say our prayers at night, I usually start by saying "Thank you God for..." and she takes over "Mama uhhh Daddy uhhh Curran uhhhh Sallie Cake uhhhh" and it goes on and on like that. When she gets side-tracked, I'll say "Who are your grandparents?" to remind her who to pray for. Of course she doesn't really understand familial relationships, so I try to explain to her that Nana and Cricky are her grandmothers and Big and Pop are her grandfathers. Well, a few weeks, she asked "Who are my granmudders?" Then she asked, "Who are your grandfathers?" So I told her their names, and she asked where they were. I told her that they were in heaven. She replied, "You miss 'em?" in the sweetest voice. I said that yes I did. She then said, "But you see 'em again." At that point I was getting emotional and thought how in the world does she know that, and then she quickly continued "Dey come back tomorrow." :) 

-She loves talking on the phone to Sissy and Cricky. It's pretty cute. She'll say, "Wook {look}Cricky, wook Cricky, wook Cricky" over and over, trying to show her whatever she is playing with.

{hula outfit that my mom got as a joke at Tuesday Morning}

-One of her favorite shows right now is Little Einsteins. She knows all the words to the theme song, and 'Einsteins' comes out sounding like she's from New jersey.

-One of her favorite books is her Big Sister book Santa brought her. She surprised me one night by "reading" the whole thing by herself! I was so impressed! You have to follow along with her or you may not understand everything she is saying, but it was so funny that both John and I were laughing so hard. She used all the same inflections that I do. :)

-She LOVES helping in the kitchen. She'll grab her step stool and stand next to me, and as we complete each task she'll say, "what next, mama?"

-When we were cleaning out the study, I found a small photo album I had forgotten about that had pictures from her first 1 or 2 days of life. So we looked at it together, and now she's obsessed! She constantly requests to look at her baby pictures, and she'll say "Dat Mama holding me first time, dat Daddy holding me first time" etc. I've created a monster. :) She also likes to look at her "batized book" {pictures from her baptism}. There is one where the priest is holding her "presenting" her to everyone, and he is looking down at her smiling. When she first saw it she said, "Why dat piest laughin' at me?" :)

- On the potty training front- I have decided to just wait it out and not put any pressure on either one of us. My first goal was to be done by Christmas (Ha!). The second deadline was to have it done before the baby comes. Well, that's now 10 weeks ago so I don't see that happening. It seems like from everyone I've talked to, that is goes much more smoothly if you wait until the child is ready/initiates it. We are practicing with pull-ups, and she really like those. I also bought her a potty watch that plays music every 30, 60 or 90 minutes to remind the kid to go to the bathroom. We play with it some now just b/c she likes to wear it, but we'll use it more when we are really training. She has had a few successful potty times but most of the time she just sits there with no results. Santa did bring her a potty book that she LOVES, so maybe it will give her some ideas. I've just decided that I'm not going to stress about it.

-Her sleeping has gotten better, thank goodness. She still wakes up once at night a few nights a week, but goes back to sleep easily with me just tucking her in. We bought this bunny clock to teach her to stay in bed later {we are slowly working our way towards 7am}, and it seems to be working really well. Some days she sleeps late enough that the bunny wakes up before her, but if not, we can just go in her room and remind her that the bunny is still asleep and she needs to be as well. So far, so good!

-I have to record this story before I forget it. The night we were leaving for the beach for New Year's, I was trying to hurry and load the car before it got dark. We were going to pick John up at work on our way out of town. As I walked out of the house, I shut the front door behind me b/c I didn't want C following me into the front yard. When I got back to the house, the front door wouldn't budge even though I knew I left the handle unlocked. {Without going into too much detail, our lock is kind of complicated and it is very easy to look yourself out.} So I called out to Curran and she was standing right at the base of the front door {I could hear her but couldn't see her}. She has never locked the door before, so I had no idea how she reached the deadbolt, but I asked her to unlock it. She replied, "Okay, Mama!" in this sing-songy voice. Then she'd say, "Come in, Mama!" I kept telling her I couldn't because I she had locked me out. We went back and forth with me telling her to unlock the door and her either saying ok or that she couldn't reach the lock. {Now how she could reach to lock it but not unlock it is beyond me.} Thankfully my purse was in the car, so I tried to call John at work {no answer} and then my sister. They were out on a walk but had their keys with them {with a copy of our house key}, so she said Craig would run them over to our house. They were probably about 1.5 miles away. When I walked back to the door, I finally thought to tell Curran to go get her step stool. I don't think I have mentioned that step stool on here before. We got it for her in the fall when she switched to her big girl bed. She could get out of the bed, but b/c it was so high she couldn't get back in it. Well, she LOVES that darn stool and carries it all around the house. Well I guess while I was at the car, she had thought herself to go run and get it because when I suggested she get it, she replied that she already got it. So after explaining which lock to turn, she finally unlocked the door, right as Craig came sprinting up our street. I felt so bad Craig had come all that way, but I was so impressed C thought to get her step stool! The grandfathers didn't seem to share my frustration with that situation, they just both kept commenting on how smart she was. :) And for the record, I have since seen her reach up to the lock and try to turn it, so I am trying to teach her that she is not allowed to turn the lock without a grown-ups' permission.

She is such a joy and keeps us laughing, and although this age is so challenging and at some point most days I feel like I want to pull my hair out, I know one day I will look back at this time with such nostalgia. I love you, CurryBug! I still look at you sometime and marvel at the little girl before me, wondering what in the world happened to my bitty baby!