Jana's 2 years and 7 months

A lot has been going on this month.

Jana was the flower girl in Auntie Meg and Uncle Sean's wedding. She's decided to be (mostly) potty trained. She picks up new words by the minute, it seems. Daddy went back to work. And Kara is trying to decide if she wants to walk - she can, but isn't sure she wants to. :-P All of this together has meant that our transition back into the school year has not been as smooth as I would have liked.

Jana is struggling with having "gentle" hands, feet, and head (ugh!). Kara's been very miserable with yet another round of green snot as well as what we think is teething due to the massive fountain of drool running down her face, so she's been rather needy. Jana's been very frustrated in not getting the one-on-one time that she had before when both Mommy and Daddy were home.

Jana has also decided to be mostly potty trained (still working on the poopies). She loves the fact that she's a big girl and is so proud to tell everyone when she's gone peepees on the potty. She even still cheers for Mama when she goes, which can be a bit awkward in busy public bathrooms.

Jana's newly discovered favorites this month are: Reese (the 9 year old two houses away, who has everything you could ever want for playing babies), feeding her "friends" (stuffed animals), picking tomatoes (not always ripe, unfortunately), and taking Maiya to the dog park (she even wanted to go today without Maiya).

She's picking up new words all the time - making us VERY conscious of what we say. This month we have "favorite", "interesting", and "I need ____ to go with it" (from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie). Things have also become "scary" this month. The one that is hard not to laugh at is when I say something like, "get off the table please" (in a dramatically corrective tone), I get "Mama, don't call me get off the table." Or "Mama, don't call me get down." She's become very sensitive this month emotionally, but we're still lacking any clue of how her actions can physically hurt someone. So when do they develop that? Soon, I hope.

We've had to add and remove toddler proofing items this month. The door handle lock had to come off her bedroom door now that we're potty training. While it's wonderful to have her potty trained, getting her to stay in her room at night is a challenge and the 3 am wanderings because "I need to go peepee on the potty, Mommy" (which is not true most of the time because the pull up is already wet and warm - ewww) makes the night short. We have also had to add a chain on the front door. Little miss too-smart-for-her-own-good figured out how to unlock the deadbolt and let herself out the front door. While all she wants to do is play with the neighborhood kids, Mama has panic-filled visions of Jana taking off; thus, we now have a chain on our front door.

Jana LOVES to read. We pretty much maintain our 25 book limit each week at the library. Her newest favorites are the Robert Munsch books (Mmm, cookie especially), the "Fancy Nancy's", the "Spot" books (haa, haa), the "If you give a ___, a ___" series, and almost anything Seuss. We found an obscure Seuss that I hadn't seen before, ever, and that is her new favorite. I'm going to have to find it somewhere, but it's a collection of 3 shorter stories called "I can lick 30 tigers today." She loves to have stories read to her and she's starting to memorize parts and recite them or "read" the stories on her own. Right now, we usually read a few stories when she wakes up in the morning, then 2 or 3 before nap, maybe a few after nap, maybe a few in the evening, and 2 or 3 before bead. Now you know why we've become avid library users. Phew!

Here are a whole bunch of new pictures for this month.

Of course, one of my favorites of all time.

Jana LOVES corn on the cob.

Jana feeding Cheetah - who has become one of Jana's most important and favorite "friends" after Anya (6 year old daughter of a friend) came to visit and she had a big stuffed Cheetah that was her special friend.

Jana is now obsessed with sitting on our kitchen stools.


"I wear my (daddy's) sunglasses at night. So I can, so I can..."

While Anya and Jacob were visiting, Jana learned many new games to play - including a lot of pretending. She now pretends to feed, cloth, change, snuggle, sooth when crying, and put her friends down for naps. Her favorite place to put them down for naps when downstairs is on the bottom shelf of the changing table, where we store the extra baby blankets. Apparently that's a cozy place to hang out.
And no, she doesn't wear pants very often these days! :-P

As a compromise between Jana's desire to dress herself and my need for her to be dressed in cute outfits, I have succumbed to buying gymboree on ebay. It's great though - when you have pieces from the same line, they all match, so she can dress herself and not look silly - most of the time. Here are a few of her favorite creations.

Woowee! That's a lot of pink.
Oh little sassy pants! We're going to have our hands full during the teenage years - holy cow!

Jana loves to wash her hands with Purell. She does it at the gym, so we're struggling to get her to use soap and water at home. But, here she is pretending to wash her hands as she rubs in the purell.

"Mama, don't call me 'get off the table.'"

Jana also found her halloween costume. Oh my, does she love it! She wore it to pick up the pizza with me on a 90 degree day. Everyone was called out from the back to look at her while we were at the pizza place because they thought she was so stinkin' cute. But, boy howdy was she a sweaty mess when I could finally convince her to take off the costume.

One day, after Kara went down for her nap and before Jana went down for hers, Jana and Mama made Daddy "a special treat." Rice Krispie treats with Chocolate chip cookies (I had to talk her down from the sprinkles). I'm not so sure that Daddy got that many of them, as Jana opted for those instead of her normal pottying rewards.



While, she's challenging at times and I'm pretty sure that quite often we're on the wrong side of that fine line between independent/strong female and brat - my baby girl, you're the best. I love being around you and miss you so much that I feel "lost" as you'd call it (out of sorts) when you're away from me. You have no idea how much I love that you insist on calling me to tell me that you went peepees on the potty if I'm not at home. I love to hear that sweet voice and love that we can now talk on the phone.