What a Wonderful World

Okay, I know our world is far from wonderful, but the past few weeks have been pretty darn good!  Our little lady celebrated her 14th month of life, we had a great week at the beach with my family, and our Aunt Sally turned 25!  Since our computer had been down and I am clearly behind in my blogs, I will try my best to catch up!

Mary Frances with Sally at her new house

We are continually blessed by Mary Frances and love all of the new adventures that toddler hood brings.  Not to mention the parenting challenges!  A few months back, when she threw her first "tantrum," I started to freak out, thinking I had clearly NOT prepared myself for the discipline challenges to come.  I promptly emailed a bunch of friends asking them for good books to read on discipline at this age.  One friend asked me what Mary Frances did that made me want to read all of these books :)  I guess I over reacted a little!

Hamming it up at the beach

Anyways, the good times definitely overshadow the difficult ones.  It seems Mary Frances has blossomed overnight into this precious little toddler!  She walks everywhere, usually with her lovey in her mouth.  She talks a lot and loves to capture your attention.  We can understand a lot of words now and she has even learned how to sign some.  She can sign all done, please, more, and thank you.  She LOVES animals and making animal noises.  Mary Frances knows the noises for dog, cow, duck, cat, lion, horse, and owl.  She also knows and can point to all of the facial features and most body parts including head, knees, toes, fingers, belly and most importantly, belly button.  Beware, if you ask her where her belly button is, she will more than likely try to lift up your shirt and find your belly button.

Too busy to stop for a picture

Mary Frances is definitely a prissy little girl and I think she is going to be a strict rule follower (once she decides to follow the rules :).  The reason I think she will follow the rules is that she likes to enforce the rules with Maggie!  Did I mention she is a bossy little thing? :)  She loves to point and tell me when Maggie is doing something she is not supposed to do, i.e. play with Mary Frances' stuffed animals or empty boxes.  She will run around saying, "No, no, no dog!"  Yes, "no" is an official word in her vocabulary now.  As far as being prissy, Mary Frances does not like to be dirty or messy.  At meal times, if she is eating a particularly messy food and it gets on her hands, she will hold out her hand and say, "uh oh!" as if she wants me to clean it off right then and there!  I usually tell her it's okay and that we'll have to wait until mealtime is over and then clean it off.  I realized early on I could make her really obsessive if I cleaned it off every time she wanted me to.

One of her favorite toys and
dance spots.  Did I mention she likes to dance?

Lastly, I just wanted to document some of the short term goals I have for Mary Frances.  More to keep me accountable than anything else.  In my parenting reading, I have read a lot of great tips for this age.  Mainly from the Toddlerwise series.  I read the Pre Toddlerwise book and now am reading the Toddlerwise book.  The first tangible goal I have for her is to have blanket time.  The idea behind it is to put Mary Frances on a little blanket with toys and have her be able to sit and entertain herself for a period of time.  A friend of mine had told me about doing this with her first and then I read about it in the Toddlerwise series.  The purpose of blanket time is multifaceted.  One is for Mary Frances to be able to play without having to be entertained. A second purpose is to help her gain self control to actually stay on the blanket and a third and very important purpose is to know that I can put her in one place and not worry about her getting in to trouble at home or at a friend or relatives house.  We started today and just tried for 3 minutes.  I think it was overall a success.  Granted, she got up from the blanket several times, but I just kept redirecting her to the blanket and told her to stay there until Mommy said it was time to get up :)  We'll see how this goes!  I'll keep you posted!

Okay, I think that is it for now.  We are so thankful for this precious little girl and for all the energy it requires to chase her around!  More to come soon.

Love,
Katy