The Pope Kiddos: 22 months

Lily is going to be 2 in 2 short months. It's hard to believe. Some days I feel like she acts more like a 4 year old though.

She's beautiful, she's sweet and she's so smart. She still loves her kitchen and she prepares meals in it multiple times during the day. She likes to make pizza dough and soup and she likes to show you how to eat it. Usually she says "hands" and she wants you to pretend to pick up the food with your hands to eat. She also likes to make food for her rabbit. She'll open his cage and leave a row of plates and bowls at the front of his cage. If he doesn't come up to them she shouts "try it! try it!" to him. She loves when he comes up and smells the bowls and sometimes he'll pick them up in his mouth and toss them around--she usually finds this hysterical.

She loves working on her numbers and letters. She loves counting but she still skips 7 & 8 when she counts to 10. I think she thinks this is a joke because when I correct her she laughs. She starting to want to count past 10 also, she really likes the number 13 and often just says "9, 10, 13" so we're going to start counting higher. She can also recognize some numbers. '8' for sure, which is funny since that's a number she always skips. The other day in the grocery store she just started telling me what all the checkout lane numbers were. She's also starting to have some number sense. If there are two of something she always says, "two babies", "two cups" or whatever it is.

She's also getting close at having the whole alphabet down. She sings her ABCs on her own to practice. She has an ABCs DVD that she loves to watch. She can get through 'I' in the alphabet all on her own and then she'll add in other letters along the way for the rest of the alphabet. She knows some letters by sight as well. She knows 'O' and 'W' and a few other letters. She wants to learn all the time. I can see her mind working all the time and figuring things out.

She is talking up a storm. She talks non-stop. Her vocabulary is huge, she's always surprising me with the words she knows. She's also starting to string words together into short phrases. Her pronunciation is also getting much better. Occasionally she'll still says a word or two that I don't understand but she's getting a lot better. She says, "Here, go mommy" all day long and hands me things. She's also very good about saying, "Thank you mommy" when I give her something (like lunch). She's a very sweet girl. She's saying a few other short phrases as well and is putting together words on her own.

She sleeps about 10 hours or so each night. She's been staying up later until 9 or a little later some nights. It makes it a little easier for her to talk to her grandparents on the West Coast. She looks forward to that so much. She often gets out her play laptop and says she's going to "Skype" with "granma, bauby, papa". She's still napping, which is a great break for mommy during the day. She's still napping for close to 3 hours every day. Hopefully she'll keep that up for a while longer.

She's made some friends here that she loves. She talks about them all the time. Her two best friends are Avery (20 months) and Skylar (2 1/2). She asks about them every day and always wants to do things with them. Although when they're actually together she doesn't do a whole lot of playing with them. That will come with time, but for now she just likes to see them. She's really good at sharing. Most of the other kids her age are taking toys from the other kids but Lily is sharing. She doesn't get upset if another kid takes her toy and she'll pass out toys to the other kids. She recently had a few kids over to our house. At first she was a little surprised with the kids playing with her toys but she got used to it quickly and did well. Now she asks for kids to come over all the time.

She's really interested in babies too. She talks about her baby sister a lot. She recently said that her baby doll's name is "baby sister". She's always talking about the baby in mommy's tummy. She's very excited to meet her. She likes seeing other babies too. One of the 3 year old boys Lily plays with has a 3 month old brother named "Rocco". Lily is constantly asking about Rocco and wants to see him. She always points out babies and baby strollers.

We also took a trip to Philadelphia this month to visit Papa Jim while he was on a business trip. Lily loved seeing her papa and also swimming in the pool and looking at the pond inside the hotel. We ended up leaving a little earlier than we planned because a big snow storm was rolling in the day we were driving back. We still went to Independence Hall, took in some sights and had a Philly cheesesteak before we headed back but we thought it'd be smarter to drive during the day. We hit one rough spot in New York City where the roads weren't plowed or salted yet but overall the drive wasn't too bad.

Lily got some new teeth this month. She got her 1st eye tooth last month and this month two more popped through. She has one more that's just getting ready to pop out. They don't seem to bother her too much. A few times she's said she has said her mouth hurts but mostly she just chews on her fingers or her sweatshirt.