Lucy, our big girl

It's been a while since I posted a little update on what our Lucy girl is like. I know I posted on her 2 year old birthday, but there are some things about her little personality and her growing up that I just don't want to forget. This post is mostly for me, so read what you'd like.
Here is Lucy.

For starters, she sleeps in a real bed! I wanted to wait till their room was put together before posting pictures. But who knows when that will be. Here she is:
We bought the little bed off Craigslist, picked it up in South Pasadena and spray- painted it brown. Worked great! The first night we brought it in the house, Lucy thought it was too much fun to play on the bed and pretend to go "ni-night". Once Casey turned off the bedroom lights though, she wasn't so sure about it. She grabbed her blanket and pillow and threw them back in the crib. But one week later after painting and prepping the bed, Casey put her pillow and blanket back on the bed and put her down for the night. And that was that. She slept fine, she loved it, and we haven't gone back since. In fact Owen now sleeps in the crib and she refers to it as "Owen's bed". She's moved on!
Here she is after sleeping in the big girl bed. She was such a ham. Her face looks gnarly in that first pic:
It's real cute to see her sleeping in a bed. She's growing taller and seems older to me every day. I walked in her bedroom last night to put Owen in the crib and we had our first real conversation.
"hi mommy"
"hi lucy"
"what are you doing?"
"putting Owen in the crib"
"okay!"
It was fun to have real dialogue with her.

For the most part, Lucy is a really good kid. So here are some Lucy-isms that go on at our house.
* She's generally an obedient child. Yes, she has her melt-down moments. But usually when I ask her to do something, she does it. I feel too fortunate at times. When she's running away and I ask her to "stop, turn around" she usually does. When she's playing with crayons and I ask her to put them away so we can do puzzles, she picks them all up and puts them in the can. When I ask her not to touch something, she won't touch it.
* She goes to bed easily if she's tired. But if she's not tired, she'll lay down in bed and say "night mommy" and then 5 minutes later we hear her in the bedroom playing with toys, in the dark for about an hour. Eventually she gets tired and climbs back in bed. It's harmless so we usually just leave her in there to play.
*She's great at saying Thank you. It's usually a "thank you mommy, thank you." And when I tell her thank you for something she responds back with another thank you (I'll have to work on "you're welcome" with her)
* She's really into Pirates and really into hats. The perfect combo:
* Her vocabulary increases each day, though she's probably still behind her peers on that. And she still speaks in jibberish. The other day when I picked her up from nursery, she talked non-stop to me for a minute, probably telling me this and that and what they sang and who did what. It was all in Lucy-talk and made me laugh.
* She doesn't understand the proper usage of some words. She'll say "more milk" when she hasn't even had any yet. And ever since I told her one day that Owen was being funny, she now laughs at the smallest things and continues to tell me "funny mommy, funny".
* She laughs when she farts. I'm trying to teach her to call it a "toot".
* Whenever she falls, she gets up and says to herself "okay?" (since that's what we've always said to her, "are you okay?") Now she does it to objects also. She'll drop her rag or her water cup and say, "Okay water?" "Okay rag?"
* She still carries that rag around. I need to limit it more often, but hey, there could be worse things. One night she woke up, wanted some milk and kept asking for a rag, but they were all dirty. So I tried to fool her by giving her a dishtowel. In the dark, she quickly starting working her fingers around the edges of the dishtowel, feeling it out. And immediately she handed it back to me saying, "all done! all done!" She knows her rag when she feels it!
* She's very visual. She knows all the letters of the alphabet, she can count (almost) to 20, and knows most colors. She likes to associate the color with the object, "black pants!" "red truck", etc.
* She's super good at puzzles. Even when she was real little, she could easily figure out the baby puzzles. So we got her some actual jigsaw puzzles with 12 pieces (made for 3 year olds) and she can almost do them on her own.
* She would watch TV for hours if I let her. She loves Backyardigans (especially the Pirate episode), Little Bear, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Sesame Street.
* She spends countless hours of the day jumping. She'll jump around the house, jump down the sidewalk, jump through the mall.
* She loves to go on walks. We usually take a walk around the block each day when it's sunny. She'll usually choose one thing she's on a mission for. Some days it's "flowers? more flowers?" and she'll pick up every yellow weed flower she can find. Other days it's "trees? more trees?" Well, on this day, it was sticks:
* She's very dainty and steady with her hands. She doesn't knock things over very often and she's good at building towers. But she likes to be tough and wrestle too.
* She plays well on her own. She'll play with her little people and farm animals for hours. When she wakes up in the morning she'll stay in her room playing with the little people till we come get her. Even if the door is slightly open, she won't come out till we get her.
* She's never been a child who pulls everything out of the cupboards. She's inquisitive and asks me "what's that?" all the time, but I've never had to baby-proof the house very much because she just doesn't get into things. When other kids come over to play they seem to find all sorts of things that I've forgotten about. It keeps me on my toes!
* ANNOYING #1: She has an easy gag reflex. If she gets too worked up from crying or coughing, she will likely throw up. If she takes too hard of a fall and gets super worked up over it, she'll throw up. I have cleaned up more throw-up in the past two years than I can recall doing in my entire life. When she starts crying too hard, we immediately put her in the bathtub. It's like she has this secret weapon we don't know how to combat! In time, I think she'll learn to calm herself down.
* ANNOYING #2: She often says "no" when I (or others) try to sing and whistle. She does this at home, in the car, or even at church when we're all trying to sing hymns. It's super annoying so I tell her "yes" back and we're working on letting everyone sing. This week, however, she let me sing all sorts of Backyardigans songs to her and even asked for them "again?" Maybe we're on to something.
* ANNOYING #3: She's a horrible eater. She's actually improved much in the past couple months. But for a while, her entire diet consisted of Milk, dried cherries, cheerios, an occasional peanut butter sandwich, and crackers. She will never sit down for a meal at a regular meal time. I have to be pro-active about offering her things before she gets too hungry because then she will just ask for milk.
* As a result of that, she's a skinny girl! She looks healthy though and continues to hop her way through life. So I know she has enough energy.
* She enjoys having her teeth brushed, which is a recent discovery. She thinks it's a fun game to open her mouth and have us scrub them for her.
* She likes to pose for pictures. Getting into some library music:
* She adores her little brother. She likes finding him in the morning when she wakes up, she likes talking about him "Owen funny? Owen's chair? Owen bath?", she likes laying on the floor next to him and making him laugh.
I'm so blessed to have two sweet kids. Lucy has been a joy over the past two years. Yes, there are days when I'm frustrated to wits end. But overall she is a real sweetheart and continues to make me laugh. I'm so excited to see what little people she and Owen grow into. Casey and I are blessed to be their parents.