1. Her favorite color is purple. Anything that happens to be purple is therefore automatically her favorite. For example, she'll pick up a purple ball at Target and say "my favorite purple ball". Or one of her toy phones "my favorite purple phone". Our bathroom rug: "my favorite purple rug". And on and on...
2. She remembers who gives her things. Mimi gave her a toy cat almost a year ago and whenever she plays with it she says "Mimi gave it to me". Same with clothes. And things from Yar and Halmony too. And her latest thing is that she gave everyone else all of their things (she bought them at the store and sometimes she'll even throw in that they cost twenty dollars).
3. She recently started nursing her baby before bed. I was expecting this to happen much sooner but she just started doing it a couple of weeks ago. I'm dying to get a picture of it.
4. She wants to dress herself. She's pretty good at putting her clothes on, not so good at matching. She often wants to wear her favorite purple dress, which happens to be long-sleeved and it's too hot out. Sometimes we have to compromise, like last Saturday, when she wore her Halloween costume all day:
5. If we really want her to do something, we just have Sydney do it first. Katherine never rode in the stroller prior to Sydney's arrival but now she wants to ride in the stroller if we even mention putting Sydney in it. I'm wondering how long this will last, it's kinda nice.
6. She wants to do everything herself. The most patience-testing manifestation of this phase is getting in the car seat. First she has to climb in herself. This can take anywhere from 5 seconds to 5 minutes. Meanwhile a reminder - Sydney likes to be moving (see #10 in her list). So we typically have an almost-to-completely crying baby at this point. After Katherine has arranged herself in her car seat, she has to do the straps. If they happen to be twisted, I help her untwist them. Sometimes I get a little greedy and try to actually put them over her shoulders. Occasionally I get away with it. More often, though, she realizes I've done this and:
screeches "NO! Katherine do it! I do it!!"
She then takes the straps back off of her shoulders.
**PAUSES**
(no matter how frustrated I'm getting this always makes me smile)
and then puts them back on.
She then has to buckle the top buckle and each of the lower buckles herself.
7. She is so sweet to her little sister. She comes up many times a day, gives her a kiss on the forehead, and says "Soooo nice" (and yes, she is referring to herself here).
8. She plays really nicely by herself and spends a lot of time pretending. I like to hope that's what she was doing in this pic, pretending that she's feeding her baby, not charging her (or worse):
(the band-aid is purely decorative)
9. She thinks Daddy is the only one who can fix things. This works
well for me, I try not to abuse it. The downside = she thinks pretty
much everything can be fixed with new batteries (including broken
straws, torn papers, etc.).
10. She likes to know how we're doing. But she has already decided before asking. And we have to answer correctly.
Katherine: How are you?
me: I'm fine. How are you?
Katherine: Nooooooo.
me: I'm not fine?
Katherine: No. You're great.
me: OK
Katherine: How are you?
me: I'm great! How are you?
Katherine: I'm doing fine.
