My little mimic

We are full on in the mimic stage, I believe. She is cracking me up!

Tonight, as we were getting her ready for bed, she grabbed her lotion and put the tube end to her hand and then started rubbing her hands together and up her arms. She watches me put lotion on my hands and feet (from a similar tube) every morning. Once I got a kick out of it, of course she had to keep doing it.

She also loves to steal the broom and dustpan and run the broom along the floor. They're almost her size so I may need to get a (clean) set to take home with us for her to play with. She's not supposed to play with these as they're pretty dirty and she knows it, but she still makes a run for them every day.

Oh, and speaking of things she knows not to do. She'll run to X and then stand there as I tell her not to play with X. She'll look at me and grin, almost evilly, and then reach for it. At that point she gets pulled away, and she'll cry/whine for extra emphasis at her displeasure.

She has also discovered a love of flipping. She comes to me and stands in front and reaches for my hands. Once she gets them, she 'walks' up my body until her butt is above her hands. At that point, she leans back and I help her flip over. Squeals and laughter every time.

She's starting to work on the word water. We've heard 'wawa' and 'wa' when she's pointing at the glass. Ah...the end of another 'dat' would be so nice.

She helped her dada sort laundry today, even. She was in her post-nap not quite awake phase. He put her on the bed in the midst of the pile and she would pick a piece to hand to him for folding. He says she gave him one piece at a time and was very helpful.

She's really fighting her nap these days. She's not ready for no nap. I'm not really sure she's ready for just one nap, but she's closer to that than 2 naps. I think in her ideal world, she would take a nap at 10am. The problem I have with this is that by dinner time she's a royal crank and I can't convince her to take (even a short) nap in the afternoon. Thus, I keep her awake until noon. At that point, I think she's a little too tired and so naptime is a struggle. Right now, we're working on a routine because that has SAVED us at night. Hopefully we can get something implemented so she knows when it's time to go down and stops the fits.

I hadn't even realized how valuable the nighttime routine was until she started battling naps. Nighttime is so easy for us these days. Even in Phoenix when her schedule was SHOT, she went down pretty easily at bedtime becaus she knew it was coming. These days, we eat dinner, play if there's time (which there usually isn't), take a bath, nurse and then go to bed. At the end, she is always reaching for bed and goes down without even a whimper. Even a day like today where she put her nap off until almost 3p, she went to bed easily at night. It's just glorious. It really makes me believe in the value of repetition for kids.

In case you wondered, she's still on her banana kick. Now they're 'mayna' and she still demands one every day at snacktime.