Toddler Tales

Sure, being a mom is not always glamorous.  My clothes usually have peanut butter and/or stickers on them somewhere and I've encountered more poop face-to-face over the last two years than I ever dreamed.  Still, it is AWESOME and I love being a mom, especially because of all the funny little things my kids do.  Everyone keeps telling me to write these things down, so I thought I'd put down a few of my favorites...

For a while, everytime Jenna would see Juliette asleep, she would run up to her and yell, "JULIETTE!"  and of course, Juliette would be startled and wake up.  Well, I finally sat Jenna down and told her that babies grow big and strong while they're sleeping, so we shouldn't wake Juliette up.  The good news is, she listened and stopped yelling Juliette's name. The bad news is, NOW whenever she sees Juliette sleeping, she starts chanting, "GROW! GROW! GROW! GROW!"  So.....you can't win 'em all, I guess.

Jenna has been really into feeding the birds since watching Mary Poppins. We had a dove in our yard so Jenna grabbed a few leftover pieces of waffle, threw them in the grass, turned to me and breathlessly said, "OK! Ok.  Mommy, push up my sleeves!  Push up my sleeves!"  And then ran out towards the bird with her arm outstretched saying, "Here bird!  Sit here!   Sit here, bird!"  Her face was totally like, "This is it!  This is the moment!"  It was hilarious.  Needless to say she did NOT get a bird to sit on her arm, but she hasn't given up yet.  She's even varied her tactics over time...a few weeks later we were in the tropical bird house at the zoo and she ran up to one of the birds with her arm outstretched and said, "Here bird!  Sit here!  It's me, ANNA!"  As in, Anna from Frozen.  Because even at 2 years old, she knows that being a Disney princess will up the odds of a bird landing on you.

Ok, for those of you who have never read Duck on a Bike before, here it is in a nutshell:  a duck rides a bike and all of the farm animals are watching him.  Then a bunch of kids ride their bikes to the farm, and when they go inside, all of the animals grab a bike and start riding too.  It's cute.  Anyway, we were reading it and I decided to have Jenna practice some inferencing.  There's a double-page spread illustration in the book just after the kids leave their bikes out...all of the animals are staring bug-eyed and you can just see the front of a bike tire.  I asked Jenna, "what do you think they're looking at?" and all of a sudden she got very very serious and said (maybe a little darkly?), "Tigers."

Up until recently, Jenna hadn't really made things up.  She only talked about things she had seen or heard others say.  UNTIL dinner one day, she busted out the most random monologue, all while wildly gesturing and nodding her head.  She looked over at me and urgently said, "Mommy!  A cow knock on the door?  And get Mommy's phone and take a picture Jenna's back.  Ok?  Cows.  Knock on the door.  Ok?  Take a picture Jenna's back!  Ok?  Ok Mommy?"  So I just said "...yeah. Ok!"  because what else am I going to say? But then she got really scared!! And she climbed into my lap and I had to spend the next ten minutes trying to convince her that a cow wasn't actually going to knock on our door. (?!??)

Oh yes, and then there's BCOI.  Every time we color with anything....markers, chalk, crayons, a pen, paints, you name it....Jenna asks me to write BCOI over and over and over again.  I have no idea where she heard it or why she always asks for it, but we have BCOI graffitied all over our house.  Come over sometime and see how many you can spot.  It's like those numbers from Lost.
 BCOIBCOIBCOIBCOIBCOIBCOIBCOIBCOIBCOIBCOIBCOIBCOIBCOI

And of course, we can't forget about Juliette!  She's in that phase where she wants EVERYTHING in her mouth. If we're being really silly with her and our faces are close together, she gets overly excited.  She grabs my cheeks, opens her mouth as wide as possible, and tries to pull my entire face into her mouth. It always makes me start laughing, which makes her start laughing, which gets her even MORE excited, which makes her work even harder at getting my face in her mouth.  It's a vicious cycle.

nom nom nom

Anyway, like I said: I love being a mom.  I'm sure I'll have lots more stories like this in the future so stay tuned.