The Toddler

Our toddler. She's a little bit hyper you know. Okay, really hyper at times. And she is so loud! She yells all the time; not because she's mad, she just gets super excited! She does this really loud, fake laugh when she's happy about something. She's also endearingly sweet, hilarious, and really fun.

I kept telling Mitch that I would rather have a hyper and social child than a shy, boring one. I got exactly what I wanted.

Here we are playing "ghost baby." Layla loves to walk around with something over her head and pretend to be a ghost. A friendly one though — she gives hugs. You can hear her say, "how" in the video, which means hug in Layla language.

This is what our car rides typically sound like. Layla yells out someone's name  — maybe Ernie, Elmo, Baby, Daddy, Mamma, Papa, Mammy, Katie, Brockie, Dudin, or Natalie — and then we repeat it.  She usually says the names of whomever we had seen last.

And here she is just being Layla.

Her little sense of humor is really emerging. The other day I wore this hat and she wanted to put it on her Ernie doll, which she thought was so funny! She also enjoys putting her hair barrettes in Ernie's hair.





A few things she's learned lately:

• all of the actions to "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and some to "Popcorn Popping" which she calls "papapapa."
• she sings the ABCs while we wash her hands. She usually sings something like, "a,b,b, m,m,m,o,v..."
• how to walk on her tip toes, which she does a lot.
• all of the letters in the alphabet by sight and sound.
• several numbers; she tries to count and usually says something like, "Two, Nine, Eight, etc."
• if you ask her which number comes after one, two, and three, she can give the correct answer.
• she tries with all her might to jump, but just ends up squatting really low and then standing up really fast while saying, "Jump!" It's absolutely hilarious!
• besides her normal vocabulary, she started talking jibberish, and often throws in one of her "real" words in the middle. It's pretty funny to hear her chew us out in toddler language. 
• Mitch went to change her diaper the other morning and in the middle of her crying she yelled, "Why?!?" Too funny. When Mitch puts her to bed at night, I bring in her milk. She will say, "how!" which means hug, and then sit up and hug me over and over again, saying "how" each time. I love it.
• Other words she's learned lately are: oh no! (sounds more like ah no), alrighty (which she pronounces perfectly), and hello (she says hewwo and I'm not sure why it took her so long to say hello, maybe because she always said hi instead?).
• The other day I gave Layla something she wanted, she started walking away, and then turned and signed "thank you" without me even telling her to say thanks! Proud mom moment for sure! 

On the other hand, Layla is now starting to throw tantrums. Isn't that fun? She's only thrown them at home so far, so I have yet to experience the drama of carrying a screaming and kicking child out of the store, but I'm sure it will happen eventually. So far we've managed to keep the tantrums to a minimum by using the two I's our pediatrician suggested: ignore and isolate. Sounds mean, right? But it works! As soon as I leave the room, she stops crying, comes to find me, and is distracted by whatever I'm doing.

Today we had a great day at church — Layla was really, really good during sacrament and she absolutely loves nursery. She even got to see her new best friend at church, a 10 year old girl named Lila, whom Layla just adores. She can't say "Lila" so she calls her "Owa." After church, we did our customary eat-lunch-and-take-nap-routine, the nap part has yet to happen. We spent over two and a half hours trying to get her to take a nap. (That never happens; she's usually so good about going down.) She was hysterically crying and completely inconsolable earlier. It's now 3:45 and she's finally stopped crying, but I can hear her Ernie doll talking through the baby monitor, so she's obviously not asleep. Frustrating.

Overall, she's a total sweetheart, she just has a lot of energy.