The Pope Kiddos: the BIG sister

Lily is a wonderful big sister. She's very concerned about Abigail. She imitates everything we do to soothe her ("It's OK Abigail." while shaking her bouncer). She holds her hand when they're in their car seats next to each other. She'll also tell me if she's sleeping or awake in the car. She's very proud of herself if she can get Abigail to take her pacifier or if she gets her to stop crying. She's also a little jealous. If Daddy rocks Abigail, Lily needs Daddy to rock her. She likes to be called a baby. She needs Daddy to feed her sometimes (despite having been eating on her own for at least 6 months). She will tell you she is NOT a big girl. She is a baby. We heard this would happen. This was one reason we didn't try to potty train her yet because we thought that might regress too and I didn't want to potty train twice (or run up the stairs to the bathroom 80 times a day at 9 months pregnant). So we'll cut her some slack. She's only two. She always seems so much older but she's two and right now she needs some babying. That's OK. The whining though, oh the whining. Hopefully that doesn't last long.

On all other accounts she's doing wonderfully. I'm convinced she's a child genius. :) She is speaking in sentences pretty much all the time. She drops a few words here and there and we try and repeat the full sentence back to her. Her memory is amazing. We can tell her something once and she'll remember it. This can also be a bad thing. Once her Aunt Melody told her she needed to brush her teeth because she had bugs in them (just joking around with her) and now she's convinced there are bugs in her teeth.

She's still very sensitive. If she gets in trouble, she often cries, it seems more like tears because she's sad about being a disappointment (which is really sad to see). She is sometimes afraid of her Papa Jerry (like when he pretends to be a monster). She was nervous about her grandparents in general for a little while. She hadn't seen them in person in 6 months (only over Skype) so it was a little weird for her. But after a few hours she warmed up and let them pick her up. She's so good at sharing. She'll share toys and snack with her friends without being asked. She gets confused when other kids take things away from her though. If it's a prized toy she gets upset and cries but mostly she's just confused.

She can count up to 13 and is working on getting up to 20. She knows her alphabet and she can identify all of her letters and numbers (1-9). Although sometimes when she's saying the alphabet she goes back to A again after P but if reminded about Q she'll finish the remaining letters. She knows all the basic shapes and some not so basic (like rhombus). She basically knows her colors but sometimes still gets some of them confused (red and green). She knows a ton of animals, she must know at least a hundred or so. She's way beyond, cat, dog and rabbit (she knows flamingo and toucan and cheetah). She loves dinosaurs and visiting the "dinosaur museum" (Yale Peabody Museum). She loves books. She reads 3-5 books every night with her Daddy before bed and we probably read a dozen more throughout the day. She likes books about dinosaurs especially right now. She still likes Elmo and Sesame Street a lot.

She's beginning more imaginary play. She makes her animals and toys do things and she narrates what they're doing. She can occupy herself for longer periods of time playing on her own. She mimics what she's seen other people do. For example she was walking around holding her stuffed rabbit over her shoulder bouncing up and down saying, "it's OK, shush, shush, shush," like she hears us say to Abigail when she's crying. She is a parrot 100% of the time. She repeats anything anyone says. Literally every word. We have to start watching what we say and also make sure we're speaking grammatically correct if we want her to. She always wants to know where things or people are, even if they're still in sight. We're not sure if she's hyper-sensitive about losing something or if it's just a phase. If I go upstairs to go to the bathroom she'll say, "Where'd mommy go?" at least three times. Even if I told her where I was going. It was particularly sad after her aunt and cousin left when she asked where they were at least a dozen times the whole day after they left.