Leah 2 1/2 Years Old

We're living so far away and my mom asked on Facebook if I was still doing the monthly updates on my blog. I instantly had serious mommy guilt when I responded in the negative. So now, since I have a few spare moments, I will write a few things that Leah has been doing lately. This is just a random update and I'm not sure if/when there will be another one.

Leah is officially 2 1/2 years old today. She is 36 inches tall and weighs 28.8 pounds... Since we're living in Abu Dhabi, I guess I could post it in in metric as well, so that is 91 cm and 13 kilograms... :) She is wearing both 2T and 3T clothing, but the 2T dresses are starting to get a little short on her because she is so tall.

Leah is such a big girl... she decided that she wanted to be in charge of her own photo shoot. You can see the little remote in her hand.

I don't know if I can officially say that she is potty trained because she still has the occasional accident, but she's doing pretty well. She lets me know when she wants to go potty, but we still need to work on her pulling up/down her panties independently and also getting on the potty since it is too tall for her. We put a diaper on over her clothes for the car, but she has been going out in panties for about two weeks. Unfortunately, those two weeks have not been without incident. We went to a doctor's appointment earlier this week and she peed while sitting on my lap during the appointment. We were a 30 minute taxi ride away from home and it was only the beginning of my appointment. Needless to say, it was an interesting experience. She is doing pretty well at night and will wake me up in the middle of the night calling, "Potty!" rather urgently if she needs to go. She is in a big girl bed now, but she still doesn't quite get that she can leave the bed on her own to go.

As far as eating goes, she has gotten a bit pickier in the last few months. Every morning, we eat scrambled eggs and cereal. She insists on counting the eggs and "assisting" in cracking them. She loves breakfast and usually finishes everything. If you ask her what she wants to eat, the answer will be "eggs," so we'll say that's her favorite food. For lunch, we usually have PBJ, egg and cheese sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, or yogurt. I still do not cook anything special for her for dinner, but we will give her a yogurt after she has tried at least one of everything. Last night it was a noodle, a small piece of chicken, and a miniature asparagus. She sat at the table for about 30 minutes refusing to eat until daddy played "Open the Hanger" with her and her food. She's been eating a lot of yogurt lately.

Leah plays very well independently and loves her dedicated playroom here in our home in Abu Dhabi. She likes to make believe that she is cooking different meals in her play kitchen. She puts food on plates, puts them in the microwave to "cook" them, and then serves you. She'll also get you water from the fridge dispenser and she likes to make tea. If she's not playing in the kitchen, she usually is playing with Play-Doh. I haven't seen it here in Abu Dhabi, but luckily we have a bunch that we got as presents at Leah's 2nd birthday. She also likes to play with her doll babies. She has a doctors kit that she treats them with and she feeds them whenever mommy and daddy aren't available to eat her yummy creations. She also likes playing with her Little People and puts them in the bus or airplane and drives/flies them around. She enjoys doing puzzles, making towers with her MEGA blocks, and making random silly creations with Mr. Potato Head. She is getting better at cleaning up, but needs to be reminded to put away her toys before taking out something new.

Even though it is literally 100 degree (Fahrenheit, of course) out here, that doesn't faze Leah. She loves riding her tricycle around the compound, pushing her stroller, playing on her Power Wheel 4-Wheeler, or riding on her scooter. We picked up a little outdoor playhouse from a friend who was moving away and Leah loves playing in it. Since our kitchen is outside here, I am constantly going in between the two and it is nice that she has outdoor activities that she can do here. I am still kicking myself that I didn't bring Leah's water table or sand box. Yes, I did say sandbox! Most of the ground here is sandy, but we actually have some sort of lawn and we have a bunch of foster kittens that use it as a bathroom, so it would be nice to have her covered sandbox here.

Leah is a pretty happy and content child, but she occasionally has times where she gets upset. Her latest thing is that she will say, "Happy.. happy... HAPPY!" sometimes through tears to try to cheer herself up again. Recently her emotions have become a little erratic. I'm not sure if this is standard toddler behavior, but the smallest things can set her into a fit. We've been trying to teach her how to calm down and she's be hanging out in time out pretty frequently just to get her composure together again.

Leah still is my little shadow and likes to help with everything. She cooks breakfast, lunch, and dinner with me every single day. She insists on cracking eggs and adding different ingredients. She loads the laundry and puts in the soap and helps me vacuum and mop. She even goes running with me every morning. She is my mini me... and MOST of the time, I wouldn't have it anything other way.

Leah is communicating more and more each day. She uses 2-3 word sentences and is learning new words each day. She knows all of her colors, can count and identify numbers up to 5, and is working on letter sounds at school. She loves to sort objects by color and I have caught her organizing her toys by color multiple times.

Leah loves to sing! She knows most of the words to "Popcorn Popping" and "Twinkle Little Star." Doug and I have caught her singing out loud to herself and it is the best! Each night we sing several songs before bedtime and she makes requests as to which ones she wants to hear. Her favorite book right now is "Good Night Moon." Her favorite thing to do is find the mouse each time it changes places in the great green room.

Right now, an average day for us starts out between 6:15-6:30am. We go for a run (I push Leah in the jogging stroller), we make breakfast, get ready, and then are out the door to arrive at school by 8:30am. We are at school for 4 hours Sun-Thurs (standard school/work week here). We get home a little after 12:30pm and eat lunch. Leah goes down for a nap and usually sleeps about 2-4 hours. When she wakes up, we're usually ready to start making dinner. We have dinner by 5pm, watch a show on TV ( Leah usually watches something on her iPad or plays in her toy room) and them we usually play outside in the evenings... she likes to ride her tricycle and we like to go to get ice cream at the little Baqala market that is inside our compound only 4 villas down from us. We start bedtime rituals around 8pm. It usually involves lots of jumping on mommy and daddy's bed, stealing Jumper (Daddy's beloved childhood stuffed frog), reading some stories, brushing teeth, getting in jammies, and singing songs. She is usually in bed by around 8:30.

Leah is still adjusting at school. It's pretty tough to understand that you need to share your mommy with the other kids. We're together for about 2 of the 4 hours while at school. She still gets emotional each time we have to part ways, but is fine minutes after I leave. She loves messy play and recess and is learning to sit at circle time. Her teachers love her and she is learning tons. She looked a lowercase 'a' yesterday and said "a a apple."

I love this little girl and I feel so lucky that I get to be her mommy!

Leah 21 Months Old

Leah is 21 months old and more fun than ever! Right now, she weighs 26 pounds and is 35 inches tall. Śhe is wearing 18-24 month clothing, size 6 shoes, and size 3 diapers.

Prior to leaving for Utah, we went to the local Santa breakfast in the firehouse to get pictures taken with Santa. This year Leah was just not interested. Everyone has one of these pictures in their scrapbooks, right?

Most of this month was spent in Utah where we visited Leah's great grandparents and grandparents. She is becoming quite the traveler with more air miles and destinations than I had in my first 20-some-odd years. She does best when she has her own seat like she miraculously ended up with on an overbooked Southwest flight to Denver on our way to Utah. Fortunately now, she will play with the iPad on the plane to keep her busy.

This month communication-wise she picked up a few new words that she uses regularly - ready, done, tada, night, potty, and clean (keen).The biggest change is that she's constantly trying new words. She hasn't necessarily added them to her regular vocabulary, but you can ask her, "Leah, say ____." and she will usually take a stab at whatever it is.

While we were out in Utah, Leah warmed up rather quickly to her surroundings. She adjusted to Mountain Standard Time within two days of arriving including nap times. We started our time in Utah in Provo with Leah's great grandparents. Leah enjoyed playing with all of the toys that Grandma R keeps around the house. She also figured out how to work Mommy's phone and iPad, so there is now a huge pink "kid-friendly" cover on the iPad. 

Leah's first text message

She also enjoyed giving kisses to Grandma and Grandpa R each night before bedtime. Grandma R was particularly impressed with Leah's ability to remember where things were in the house and how good she was at using a spoon for her age.

After almost a week in Provo, we headed north to Grandma and Grandpa S's house. The first night there we had a power outage for a few hours, so Leah spent that time lighting and blowing out candles in the dark with her aunts. She loves candles and her aunts, so it made the time go by quickly.

The next day was Sunday and Leah really enjoyed watching her Grandma play the organ in church. She had some difficulty with the 11-2 church schedule and had to go home to nap midway through church 2/3 weeks that we were there.

We had a ton of fun decorating (and eating) sugar cookies and making graham cracker gingerbread houses. Leah really enjoyed getting her fill of sugary treats at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

One activity that Leah really enjoyed was being swung in a blanket. Unfortunately for her Aunt and Grandparents, we found that arms became tired more quickly then Leah. Luckily, there were lots of blanket swingers in the house to provide back up.

Leah's personality really continued to blossom while we were out in Utah. We've found that she loves to have an audience and will be a real ham if she notices that it gets the attention (and laughs) of those around her. In this video, Doug's family had shown Leah what it looked like when you cross you eyes and she thought it was the most interesting thing. She ran around the room and would grab your face with both hands, put her forehead up to your forehead and stare directly into your eyes expectantly waiting for you to cross your eyes.

The presents were starting to pile under the tree prior to Christmas and Leah, not understanding that there were fun toys inside, had fun stacking and organizing the presents under the tree.

Christmas morning was great. After not having any snow for quite some time in Utah, they received a major dumping of the white stuff on Christmas morning!

Leah this year got a bunch of toys and books. She's really into drawing and books with flaps that she can interact with. She will sit down and listen to several books at a time as long as she can interact with them.

One of Daddy's presents this year was an HO scale train to go around the Christmas tree. This is just like the kind that he liked to play with his dad when he was a little boy. Leah loved playing with the trains as well. Daddy was able to teach her to pump her first and say, "Choo! Choo!"

After opening all of the presents and eating a yummy breakfast that Aunt Morgan made, we went outside to play in the snow. Leah had a great time and even took a snow ball or two to the face. She loved swinging on the swing in the backyard and riding on the sled. She even got to go down the driveway with mommy a few times.

Leah 20 Months Old

Leah is 20 months old! She currently weighs 25 1/2 pounds and is 34 1/2 inches tall. She is wearing 18-24 month clothes, size 6 shoes, and size 3 diapers. (She was being a little silly for pictures this month.)

Leah's ability to communicate continues to grow. She babbles a lot, but new words are coming out every day. Each night as I'm bringing Leah to her room for bedtime, Daddy says, "Goodnight, Leah!" and Leah will wave to him and say, "Bye! Bye!" The other night she gave an obvious attempt at "Goodnight!" back to him. Her favorite word continues to be "kittycat" and she frequently uses the sign language for "please" accompanied by the word and some desperate eyes. Besides that, she regularly uses the words mama, dada, bye, light, bubble, fishie, shoes, done, yeah, no, mine, doggy, pee pee, poo poo, uh oh, tree, baby, nose, eye, book, ball, hot, and probably a couple more that I'm missing. 

Leah continues to be very observant and helpful. I'm pretty sure she knows where all of my dishes go at this point. One day I was emptying the dishwasher and she picked up the noodle strainer and then pointed to the top of the refridgerator where it goes. I was pretty shocked. She likes to clean up trash and will run and put anything you ask into the trash can. She really likes being helpful and will run and grab things like your shoes or phone if you ask her. She got a 4 wheeler Powerwheels for her Grandma and Grandpa S as an early Christmas present this year and she absolutely insisted that she help.

Leah still loves getting in the fridge, but her new favorite place to cause trouble is in my top pull-out drawers in the kitchen. She slides the dinette chairs up to the counter and spends several minutes pulling everything out of my silverware drawer or junk drawer. Her favorite time to do this is while I'm preparing dinner. Nothing in those drawers or on the counter is safe now. One night daddy left the manicotti pan out on the stove and Leah had a second saucy dinner. 

During the winter, I usually like to light candles in the house to make it feel more cozy. Leah really enjoys watching you light the match to light the candle. She blows out the match each time and shoos the smoke away with her hand afterwards. We had to move the location of the candle and the matches because she is so obsessed with them!

At nursery in church, Leah has picked up even more songs, but her absolute favorite one is, "The Wheels on the Bus." She will start rolling her hands immediately upon hearing the first part of the tune. She also like to do the part where the mommy says, "Shh!" She will also do all of the motions for "If you're happy and you know it!" She has developed a little bit of separation anxiety when I bring her to nursery. I used to just be able to drop her off, but now she usually wants me to put together puzzles with her and then I wait for her to be distracted to sneak out. Just last week, I gave her hand to one of the nursery leaders that was walking in and she didn't even realize I was gone. We'll see if I can be that successfully sneaky again or if she'll catch on.

We are lucky enough to have lots of little friends for Leah to play during a weekly playgroup we are a part of in our small town. Leah loves playing with other kids even though she has an initial warm up period of about 10-15 minutes when she arrives at some place new. All the other kids in the group are older except for the recent addition of a newborn and Leah has learned some new play skills from her older friends. She has started doing some make-believe play with her toys. She was "microwaving" food at a play kitchen for a little boy at playgroup. She likes to fill up cups with the faucet on her play kitchen as well. She also has a little doll baby that she sits on a play potty to go to the bathroom. She can play independently longer now, but she still prefers to have a buddy to play with. She doesn't like to play alone and I'm pretty sure that's why she always keeps me company while I cook dinner. She also like to pretend that she's mommy by walking around in my shoes. (The red pair is her favorite!)

Drawing continues to be one of Leah's favorite things to do. She likes to have you trace her hand or draw an animal. (A kittycat is her usual request.) Surprisingly, she actually holds her pencil correctly. Her drawing is only scribbling, but she makes likes and circles and likes to color in my drawings. She doesn't like drawing with thicker writing utensils and prefers a pen or pencil to a thick crayon. She draws pretty often with chalk on her easel in the front room as well.

Leah loves to read books before bedtime... But NOT with mommy! I can only get her to sit on my lap for a few minutes while I read her favorite book, "The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear." Each night during her "independent reading time," she pulls out the books one at a time, opens up each one, points to the words saying, "eeh, wah, tee" or some other three syllable nonsense words, and then closes the book - starting immediately on the next one. Some nights she forms a pile of perfectly lined up books and other nights they are scattered everywhere.

Leah has started to watch a little television and likes to play with my iPad and smartphone. She has a little game Talking Tom that she loves to play with and another one where she takes care of a virtual kitten. She also likes to watch animated cartoons on an app called PBS Kids. She only likes the music in the beginning of the shows and barely gets past the opening credits before switching to another show. She can turn on both devices and navigate to her games. She loves to take pictures of herself and will say, "Cheeeee" whenever she opens the camera on my phone or iPad.

After Thanksgiving, we set up our tree and a small HO scale train that some friends gave us. Leah was initially afraid of the train, but she warned up to it rather quickly. Daddy has taught her how to pump her arm and say, "woo woooo!" She can turn on and off the train on her own, but usually likes to get mommy or daddy to play with her.

We've had an unseasonably warm start to winter and on Veterans days we were able to go for a jog along a canal path nearby. Leah really loves being outside and is rather content even if I'm pushing her in the jogging stroller. The temperature dropped for a few days and we got a couple inches of snow which Leah really enjoyed.

I love this little girl!

Leah 19 Months Old

Something amazing happened this month ...Leah is officially posing for pictures!! Leah JoAnn currently weighs 25 pounds and is 34 inches tall. She is wearing mostly size 12-18 month, but she is starting to wear some 18-24 month. She is in size 6 shoes and size 3 diapers.

Leah is gradually picking up new words although the most common words out of her mouth are uh oh, momma, dada, and no. She now calls for our cat Lucky and even says his name right. She has picked up two 2-word phrases - "No. Mine!" (Usually when stealing some sort of electronic device) and "More Please!" (For food or her Halloween candy... accompanied with the sign language for please) We had a first last night at story time before bedtime. She has a first words book with pictures of everyday items. On one page, there is a picture of an apple. I pointed to it and said, "Apple" and she said "Apple" back... Several times!!! This is the first time she has tried a new word repeating it after me! She has been trying to tell me things that seem very important to her, but she has yet to find the words for it so I just hear very urgent nonsensical talk. I love hearing her little voice!

Leah is very observant and is making connections daily. She is an absolute sponge right now and it is so much fun! One day I was in the other room and the microwave started beeping. Leah ran in ahead of me and when I finally arrived in the kitchen, she was standing pointing at the microwave with an oven mitt that she had taken out and put on. 

Leah is becoming quite the independent eater. Even if she is starving, she refuses to be spoonfed by me. This makes eating time rather messy especially when yogurt is involved. She is a pretty good eater and tries almost everything that I cook, but she has decided that she doesn't like potatoes at all... amd that includes French fries and my tasty potato soup. :( Luckily, she is still a champ at eating her vegetables, so I don't have to worry too much. She's also good at eating her Halloween candy.

Helping is one of Leah's favorite things to do these days. She helps feed the cats and the fish on a daily basis usually being the one to initiate if she thinks that the kitties are particularly hungry. She helps to load and unload the dishwasher. (I almost have her trained on how to put the silverware in!) She runs to the washer or dryer when they make their finishing sounds and insists on moving the clothes over or into the basket. If there is a piece of trash on the floor, she will throw it away when asked. (As you will see in the video though, I have to keep an eye on her when she is being helpful. Haha!) 

At nursery, Leah is still the youngest, but does her best to keep up with the tons of three year old boys. (This should make the dating scene interesting in our ward one day.) She loves music time and likes doing the motions to all of the songs. She always ends, "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes" like this... At least she knows where her nose is? (Oh wait, guess I don't need to worry about boys with this picture. Hahahaha!)

Leah's favorite place to play right now is definitely in the fridge. Any opportunity she gets, she is in there reorganizing, snacking, or just playing. One day, she was left alone for a short amount of time and she took most of the stuff out of the fridge and placed it on the edge of the counter.

Or this time when she reorganized my eggs without breaking a single one!

Leah's favorite thing to do still is basically to make a mess. It seems like every time I turn around, she has "reorganized" another cabinet, drawer, bin, etc. She helps to clean it up sometimes, but honestly it is a stage that I'm hoping she finishes with soon. I just want her to play with all of the TOYS she has!!! Grandma H. was the recipient of some delightful reorganization as you can see below.

We've gotten into a pretty good schedule lately. She wakes up around 7am each morning. Now that it is cold, I usually grab her and bring her into bed with me for some cuddles, but she usually just wants to play with my iPad. We eat a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, Cherrios, and a banana between 7:30 and 8am. She plays pretty well around the house while I clean up after breakfast. We're usually out the door by 9:30 for the library or a local play date. She gets lots of social time and then we are back home by 1pm for nap time which lasts until around 4/4:30. At that point, I'm getting dinner together and we're eating by about 5ish. We usually watch a tv show and play around a little bit until bath time at 7pm. She likes to play in the tub for a while, but throws the soap at me when she is ready to finish up. We do lots of story time, fishy feeding time, brush our teeth, and then she's in bed by 8pm. I'm still nursing her about 3-4 times a day (usually at wake up and before nap time and bedtime).

Leah knows her schedule and will "remind" me of the next thing that we usually do. At night time after she is in her jammies, I usually say, "It's time to brush our teeth!" and Leah will run out the door toward my bathroom. I usually hang her bath towel up in her bathroom as we are passing by. She usually just runs straight to my bathroom, but the other night she ran first into her bathroom and pointed at the towel rack for me to hang up her towel. Haha, thanks for the reminder. She is very observant!

Earlier in October, we took the opportunity one Saturday morning to go to a local pumpkin patch as a family. Leah had some difficulty navigating the vines sticking up everywhere, but she was able to eventually choose the "perfect" carving pumpkin. She did great on the tractor ride and even successfully took a selfie with my DSLR.

Luckily, Leah was napping during the majority of the pumpkin carving this year, but she enjoyed playing with the guts afterwards and kissing the finished pumpkins.

Halloween was a lot of fun this year! Leah was a black kitty because kitties are basically her favorite thing in the world! The costume was a simple Pinterest idea and I especially like how her tail turned out!

In the week prior to Halloween, Leah was able to wear her costume FOUR different times. The first night we put on the costume was for my parents' ward trunk or treat. Her first experience trunk or treating it took a little while for her to understand what to do, but she was a pro by the end of the night. Her Grandpa S. from Utah was actually here visiting and was able to take her around a little bit. (This is unfortunately the best picture I got all night. It has Grandpa S. helping Leah and Grandma H. passing at candy.)

She also got to wear her kitty costume twice at the library that week and once at a local play date. Group shots with toddlers in costume are always interesting.

By the time it was actually ready for Trick or Treating, we were experts at getting Leah into her costume. She started out the evening a little shy, but by the end of the night she had no problem just walking up to a house and grabbing candy directly out of their bowl. She was so cute in her costume that she actually got away with grabbing 3 full size candy bars at one house. She was all business and lasted the whole two and a half hours of trick or treating. She has quite the collection of candy that we're still working on.

Even though it is November, we have been lucky enough to have some really nice days in the 60's. Leah loves being outside, so we definitely took advantage of that time. Mommy picked up some ride-on toys for outside for sweet deals on the Facebook Yard sale site... One of which was an awesome pink tricycle which actually had to stay in the house for the first couple of weeks because Leah wanted to ride it all the time and thought I was returning it to the owner whenever I would bring it outside.

The other ride-on toy is more of a ride IN toy. I picked up a cheap cozy coupe and decided that I would redo it after Pinterest interfered with my simple idea to buy new decal stickers. Leah loves climbing in her daddy's S2000 and honking the horn and such, so I decided to copy daddy's car. The results were even better than anticipated and Leah loves her new car!

This little girl is SO much fun and we have a great time together!