It’s been awhile since I did a proper update, but hopefully you can keep up with the pictures in the gallery. The short story is Lauren is doing great and continues to amaze us with what she knows. She can count to 13, say most of her abc’s, and her vocabulary just continues to surprise us as she seems to say new and different words everyday.
At 2 years old, she’s about 24 pounds and 31.75″. That puts her in the 25% for weight and 15% for height. She’s just now wearing a 12-18 month shoe. She’s always been little, so she’s continuing right on target.
Her asthma was great all summer except the attack while camping. However, the bursts of cold air we’re experiencing here and there are really causing her some trouble. The first time the weather dropped below 50 degrees, we ended up doing breathing treatments around the clock along with a steroid to get them under control. We can’t wait until she outgrows this.
Her favorite shows are Elmo and the Doodlebops. The Doodlebops are scheduled to come to KC in January, so we think we’ll take her. She went to the circus for the 2nd year in a row and while some things scared her a bit, she loved the majority of it.
We took her to her first movie a few weekends ago…Bee Movie. She loved the experience of it (the theatre, popcorn, seats, etc) and she did really well the first hour and then bounced between standing and Billy and my laps the last 30 mins and even asked to go home a few times. Just a bit too long:) In the future, we’ll probably only try movies that have singing/dancing, as that holds her attention better.
Her favorite activities are coloring, playing with her baby dolls (feeding them, changing their diapers, putting them down for naps/bed, playing dr. with them), playing with her kitchen (which involves us pretending to eat and wash a lot of stuff), and playing “tent” (using blankets over the furniture she can crawl through).
She loves bread, cheese and fruit. Unless you consider french fries a veggie, she will barely touch them. The only meat she’ll eat is chicken nuggets…and she has to have them frozen, the same way she wants her breakfast (waffles, toaster sticks, etc). We’re not sure why, but it makes dinner prep easy! She’s still on soy milk and loves it.
Halloween was great! She was dressed as a pumpkin (see pics in the gallery) and we went trick-or-treating with the Brays. Lauren and Ethan got the hang of it really fast and were pretty excited about getting candy for only saying “trick or treat”! The houses with scary music or ghosts/masks/etc scared Lauren, but that didn’t stop her from getting her candy before jumpking into Billy’s arms saying “I scared!”. She also loved to hand out candy to the kids after we got home, she gave each kid one piece and one piece only!
We are really looking forward to Christmas. We’ve been talking a lot about Santa and reading books about Santa and looking at pictures of Santa. Yesterday, we were shopping and there were many displays of Christmas decorations and dozens of Lauren-sized Santa’s. She ran up to each and every one of them and gave them a hug and kiss. We can only hope for so much when she sits on his lap in a month or so!
And I’ll leave you with some cute things that went on last weekend:
- She’s having a rough time of bath and doesn’t want to get in (afraid of the drain). On Saturday night, Billy took her up to change her diaper and said, “why don’t we just do your bath?” She started freaking out and was saying, “no…my diaper, no bath!”. She thought she’d been tricked! So, he decided to do bath the next morning instead. At bedtime, he said “are you ready for bed?” (she was acting tired a little early) and she grabbed either side of his cheeks, turned his face to hers and very seriously said “bed, not bath”. She didn’t want to be tricked again!
- She got a new little Cabbage Patch baby as a belated birthday gift this weekend from friends and she loves it. I was out to dinner with gilfriends Saturday night when she went to bed. So when I went in to get her Sunday morning when she woke up, I saw the baby, but it had no clothes on (no socks, no outfit, no diaper, no hairbow) and I asked her where the baby’s clothes were and she looked at the baby and said “daddy have it”. It cracked me up…why would Billy have the baby’s clothes? The way she said it was so funny.
- Her neweset thing is asking you what you’re doing (which kind of sounds like “you dirty”). All weekend, she’d come up to each of us and say “what are you doing?” So seriouslike too, and she knew good and well what we were doing most of the time (making dinner, eating, cleaning, etc), but it was like she liked trying out her new saying. So cute.
- She constantly checks on everyone making sure everything’s ok. When you’re eating, she asks you “is it good?” and when you say “yes it is”, she nods her head in approval. She’s done this to strangers in restaurants. Cracks us up. Such a little mother hen making sure everyone’s taken care of, she’ll make a good mommy and hostess. =)
- We had Brody’s annual vet visit Saturday morning and she.loved.it. I knew she would bc she’s very into her dr. kit, going to the dr, and playing dr. with Brody. Her head was right in the middle of everything the entire time asking the vet what she was doing. After his shots, she scrambled out of my lap and petted/patted Brody telling him “come here, it’s ok Brody…it’s ok” (and ok is pronounced “otay” which makes it so much cuter) and gave him hugs and kisses.
