Another week slipped between my fingers. Getting old sucks!

This week it has become apparent just how completely she realizes that letters make words. She will point to writing and ask, “A-dah?” (What’s that?) until you tell her what it says. She’ll point to letters she recognizes and make the associated sounds: “O! Ooooh. P! Peh peh peh! A! Aaaaah!” She’ll point out the letters that she knows and then demand to be told the rest. And then, the other day, we were outside playing with her new chalk and I decided to write her name in chalk. So I started writing and saying the name of each letter as I did: “J… O… S…” and when I was done, she took a piece of chalk, scribbled on the ground and said, “A… B… O… … …B… O… O…” I’m so excited for her tablet to show up, so I can let her play alphabet games that can feed that hungry mind! She’s also trying hard to count past 3. It’s so exciting! I’m eager for her to be able to read so that she can enter my wonderful world of books and all the places they can take you and all the amazing lives they can show you.

She’s also well and truly into the toddler phase where all rules must be obeyed. She gets so upset when Dad sits in my chair, or I wear his watch, or one of her classmates doesn’t do what they’re supposed to! It makes her really frustrated. We try to accommodate her on some things. Primarily, we try to make sure that she has a consistent set of rules and routines so that she knows what to expect next. It seems to help her have a better overall day if she’s not constantly trying to figure out what’s going on (hey, I would too). The other day at school, there was an enormous puddle on the playground and one of the teachers asked J to help her friends avoid it. J proceeded to very carefully take the hand of the twins* in her class and walk them over to a different part of the playground. Sometimes her desire to have everyone do what they’re supposed to backfires. When the kids in her class don’t follow instructions fast enough, sometimes she tries to help them in the same way we “help” her when she’s not doing what she’s supposed to. In other words, she uses her hands to try to move them to where and what they’re supposed to be doing. In other words, she pushes them. So many euphemisms in childcare! Well, euphemism might be the wrong word. For an adult it would be a euphemism. When we tell her we’re going to help her do something she doesn’t want to do, yes, it’s a little bit of a euphemism for force her to do it anyway. But I do really think that the regulatory systems of a two year old aren’t advanced enough to be able to deal with too much delayed gratification or how to do something negative now for a positive result later. So it really is helping! Or am I just convincing myself? Anyway, when she pushes the other kids it is clearly done in imitation of when we use our hands to put her body where it’s supposed to be. (“Use our hands to put her body?!” WHO EVEN TALKS LIKE THAT)

Tonight is a Thursday night. On… Saturday, J started to poop in the tub so dad quickly moved her to the potty, where she was no longer able to go. Then she continued to not go until Tuesday, when she had a difficult time of it, but was able to poop on the potty. The only reason I mention this is really for my own record, because Tuesday night she started throwing up despite the Prevacid that she’s currently on. At her 2-year well check, the pediatrician mentioned that if she has reflux, we might have regular bouts of vomiting alleviated by Prevacid, but that it wasn’t a good idea to keep her on Prevacid long term. So the fact that she was vomiting with Prevacid is worth noting, as well as the surrounding circumstances. So anyway, she vomited every 2ish hours from about 8pm until about 4:30 or 5am. And of course, we kept her home with a nanny on Weds. She seemed totally fine. This morning (Thursday) she gagged a couple times in the car on the way to school, but I decided to chance it and drop her off anyway. About 30 minutes later she had diarrhea, but they were willing to keep her as long as she didn’t have another bout today. Of course she didn’t. So is this a stomach bug, or more of the unexplained GI issues we’ve been facing? I have no idea. I’m not eager to subject her to a whole bunch of tests that I rather expect will turn up nothing, which is the next step should her unexplained vomiting continue.

Not much else to say this week. Lots of rain. She has enjoyed splashing in the puddles and finding snails and worms and pill bugs. I’m still working with her on being gentle, so sometimes it’s a little bit of a massacre :(. But she’s getting the hang of it. In the Dino Buddies room (where she starts Monday! EEEK!) they have a really sweet little hermit crab who will walk on anyone’s hand, and she’s been working her way up to holding him. Pretty adorable!

Okay, nothing more for this week. Since I got to type at a keyboard anyway, this was a rambly post already.

* She and those two are some kind of awe-inspiring whirlwind of toddlerhood. They love each other and the three of them get so worked up about each other! They run through the halls and shout at each other about having their water bottles. They always want to leave school together and never want to separate when we get outside. The goodbye hugs, followed by various parents carrying off various fussing toddlers, is almost inevitable. Apparently her name is the only name of other children those two will say, and they’re always the first people she mentions when you ask her about her friends at school.