The End of January?

Goodness, this month has flown by.

Last January we were slammed with snow storm after snow storm. This month has been relatively mild. We had a couple inches of snow two weekends ago (I think.) We've had some rain too, but for the most part the weather has been really nice. Right now it is sunny and 62 degrees; tomorrow calls for rain but a high of 63 degrees! No complaints from me, I'll take it.

Peabody is so much fun these days. She is saying more and more recognizable words and phrases. She cannot bear to be congested or snotty. "Boba, ri' deeeer," she says, pointing to her nose (booger, right there!)

She calls me Honey now. It is awfully cute with her little voice.

Socks are "yosh" and are removed whenever possible.
Shoes are still "plah-plops" and shown to everyone she meets.
Barney is Bobby.
Church is "chitch."
The Boogie is Deedah.
My brother is Unnah Woo-ey. Ha! That's my favorite.
Her blankie is "lolly."
"Ah wa'" is "I wanna." "Ah wa' eat. Ah wa' Bobby. Ah wa' lolly. Ah wa' beebee [baby.] Ah wa' milmy [milkies.] Ah wa' moowee [movie.] Ah wa' Ma'y Poppy! Honey! Honey! Ma'y Poppeeee!" Mary Poppins is popular with all of the small people in this house.

She sings a lot. She likes to sing "Ring Around the Rosy" and the "Twinkle Twinkle/ABC" song. Her own version of the Barney "I Love You" song is, "I luh me, you luh me." The other day while singing it she saw a picture of my mom and sang, "I luh me, I luh Lela."

She's recently decided that she likes yogurt, and stands by the fridge banging on the door and yelling, "Huuunneeee, lola [yogurt] ri' deeeeer!" If she thinks something is yummy she says, "Mmmmm, mnom, mnom, mnom."

If she is hurt she says "ah-chee, ah-chee! [ouchie, ouchie] A boo-boooooo." I have my suspicions that sometimes she is just itchy.

She hasn't had a hives outbreak in quite a while. I can't remember when the last one was. Maybe she's outgrowing it ... or maybe it's environmental/seasonal and is dormant for now. And now that I've actually written about it she will probably pop some out tomorrow.

Her hair is finally, finally long enough for a teeny tiny ponytail!

The Boogie has been really sweet lately. "Honey," she's been telling me, "I'll never stop loving you."

Since Papaw died she talks about heaven a lot. "Honey, I will be happy when I go to heaven ... but I will miss you."

Once she told me, "I love you the most!"
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Because you're my mom and you're sweet," she answered.

She loves to play games and do workbooks and sticker books. She pretend plays a lot with Peabody. They pretend they are animals or veterinarians or mothers with babies. We have a couple of older LeapPads that they have been playing with a lot, reading books. We let the Boogie play games on pbskids.org (she calls it "PBS kids dot ord dot com") and I must say, she learns a lot on there!

She makes her own bed every morning, gets herself dressed, and folds her pjs and puts them away. She still requires some specific direction while doing it but can clean up the entire playroom by herself. I try to help some because I know she didn't make the entire mess -- and in fact probably didn't make much of the mess at all -- but sometimes I just can't help and she can do it all herself.

Although it doesn't happen much anymore, she still says some things incorrectly and cracks us up. The other day she was singing a song that she learned in church: "Tony Chestnut knows God loves him." For each syllable of Tony Chestnut the child points to somewhere on their body, toe, knee, chest, nut (forehead.) Except the Boogie was singing "Tony Chestbutt knows God loves him." She really thought that was how it went and focused intently on pointing to the correct body part. When she said "butt" she did point to her forehead so she had that part of the song right. When we got home from church I immediately got the camera out to record her singing it ... and she sang "Tony ChestNUT." That just figured.

She and Eric watched all of the "How It's Made" episodes on Netflix. She would ask to watch it during dinner: "Can we watch 'Halits Made'?"

She went through another phase of crying at night. I would go to her as soon as I heard her, but she would quickly escalate to all-out wailing before I could get there, which was different -- normally it sounds like a coughing, almost fake crying. I thought it was night-terrors and read that you aren't supposed to wake the child during them, but she so quickly got louder and louder that she was waking everyone else. We had to take her into another room each time and turn on the light and talk to her. We'd ask her questions and she would mumble unintelligible responses. Her eyes would be glazed over and unfocused, and if we stopped talking she would immediately close them and seemingly fall back to sleep, only to begin wailing again. If we didn't let her close her eyes after a few minutes she would rouse enough to snap out of the crying and would be totally fine and completely happy! The next morning I would try to unobtrusively quiz her about the night before -- she never remembered anything. It started 2-3 weeks ago, but the last few nights she hasn't been doing it at all. It's very strange and I can't put my finger on what is causing it, unless she is going through a growth spurt or something.

Time for a walk! It's a lovely day.