HOW MANY PAIRS OF PANTS CAN YOU USE?

I've figured out that Lauren goes through approximately 4 pairs of pants a day. Thankfully, Matt and I don't go through quite as many pairs or the laundry machine would be going constantly. It already seems like it is always going. Between clothes, diaper covers, towels and the many dish towels needed to clean up spills, I can't imagine doing more laundry... but I know that in a few short months I will be! Here are some reasons why Lauren needs to change her pants a lot.

Hot chocolate spills (and it is amazing how many pieces of clothing she can cover with one drink)

Lots of walking (with some tripping involved)

Running around with Austin (and doing some more tripping)

Laying on the floor in the mall with a new friend

Sitting around on the ground and scooting through sidewalk chalk (and yes, I know that her hair is out of control! I really don't want to cut bangs for her but it seems like all of her hair grows forward and is taking forever to be long enough to tuck behind her ears!)

And potty training - though I don't typically take photos when I'm just trying to hustle a little bum onto the toilet.

Today, after our trip to the farm, Lauren's hair also needed a good washing. I always knew she was delicious but today a baby goat figured it out as well.

Lauren was a bit put off by getting a goat shower but her hair dried quickly and she didn't mind for long. I've always been amazed by how quickly she gets over things. I guess in the grand scheme of what she's had to get over, she has learned early not to sweat the small stuff.  

TERRORIST TWOS

I couldn't write a blog post in the last week because Lauren was acting like a little household terrorist and I was trying to follow the adage "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Thus, the radio silence. Now that we're out of it, I feel that I can write again without saying something I will regret because I have my mommy goggles of love back on tightly.

On one of our hardest days, I insisted that we take a photo to help celebrate making it through the day.

Thankfully, Lauren seems to have snapped out of her funk just in time for me to decide to keep her around. It seems that she likes to work in threes. When her heart stopped, it was down for three days and she's had three surgeries. For new behaviours, it takes three days for her to accept the change and adopt it. When she's delightful, it usually lasts for three weeks and when she is awful, it takes three days of Matt and I working our hardest to snap her out of it. This last stretch of awful had us discussing our plan of attack in the basement each evening so that we made sure that we were a consistent, united front.

How can I best describe Lauren's behaviour? I would say that she was acting like a teenager in a two year old body who had lost all ability to speak anything except whine. So she was being defiant in every situation, would whine and cry instead of speaking, and refused to comply with regularly expected behaviours. This is so atypical of her! She visited the naughty spot so many times that it was like a carousel. And then, three days later, she started using her words again instead of whining, acting like a regular loving human being and being delightful once again. It is nice going into one of these stretches that we know that it will only last a few days but, wow, sometimes three days can feel like it lasts forever!

Oh and you might wonder why Lauren suddenly started acting so terrible.... It wasn't because of an oncoming cold or teething or a lack of sleep. She started because she caught sight of herself fake crying in a mirror and then proceeded to do it in every single reflective surface that she could find. And that affinity for mirrors, windows, glass doors, and the overflow drain in the bathtub took our little drama queen into her three day binge of naughtyhood. I honestly felt like draping my home in sheets so she couldn't get any of the reflective feedback that she so desired.

The one thing that does amaze me is how, even in the midst of her most terrible stint, during our moments of quiet I want nothing more than to scoop her up, hold her close and feel her little body melt into mine while she curls in tight. I guess that's what true love is all about.

TWO YEAR OLDS ARE...

Exhausting. 

Dramatic.

Fearless.

Constant.

There is such a change in Lauren since she has hit two. I think the best way to explain it is that her personality has gone from large to massive. She has an opinion about everything and makes it very well known. When she is excited, she dances instead of walking. She spends a significant amount of time squealing and laughing and running around. I spend a significant amount of time exhausted!  

What a blessing the nice weather is. We usually spend our afternoons and evenings outside exploring our backyard and neighbourhood. We are lucky to be surrounding by parks and paths and playgrounds. There's no shortage of places to find new sticks, rocks and birds. 

I am just trying my best to keep Lauren entertained without the TV. It is amazing how much she wants to watch movies and it drives me nuts to have her plugged in. I don't want that to be her go to and so we've gotten creative.

There has been painting outside,

 reading in the laundry hamper,

 making a birdhouse (which brings dozens of robins and chickadees to the yard, much to all of our delight),

working on our animal sounds, both inside and outside of the house,

running and chasing,

and tackling me for kisses.

With only two months to go until Baby Number Two joins us, I'm enjoying every moment of down time and mommy-daughter time that I get with Lauren. I'm also starting to feel the third trimester so I'm enjoying bedtime as well. 

LIBRARY LOVE

When we were expecting Lauren, Matt and I would talk about what things were really important to us. One thing that I thought was important was to make Lauren a reader. And I knew that we would do this by saying yes every single time that she brought us a book. We have always read to her before naps and bedtime, but now it seems that we are constantly reading to her. Sometimes I just want to say no, but now I just tell her to pick another book when she brings me one that makes me want to gouge my eyes out and run screaming from the room. 

The team effort that Matt and I have made to give Lauren a love of reading is paying off. I catch her reading all the time. 

She always brings us book and she acts many of them out a we read them to her over and over. We have our favourites to read to her and we share in our extreme hate of others, but I know we both love the feeling of having Lauren snuggle close and tuck in to read a book together. 

Last week, I took Lauren to get her own library card. 

She was more than excited about the actual card itself and that got even better when she saw the rows and rows of books.

They had so many different kid-friendly areas for her to check out that I know this will be a regular stop for us. We will keep Lauren's love of books going forever!

(Can you tell that she signed her card herself? Such amazing penmanship.)

THE SAGA OF THE BIG GIRL BED

For two months we mentally braced ourselves for the transition to the big girl bed. We set up her new room with the bed in it. We played in there with her. We practiced going to bed in the big girl bed. We talked about sleeping in her big girl bed and come the day of the move, I thought we had done everything we could. After Lauren's nap, I took her picture and said, "That was your last sleep in the crib. Tonight you're going to sleep in your big girl bed." And Lauren's response was a short, "No." She said it in that tone that only a two year old can manage, where there is no discussion, no trying to rationalize and obviously no other alternative. No. 

Well, around here, though she tries mightily, she doesn't rule the roost. That night we went into her big girl bed and started her bedtime routine. Diaper, pjs, medicine, brush your teeth, read some books, little snuggle and then sleep. It went well until the books. At the last page of each book she would start to cry. I would tell her that we had another book and the crying would stop. That happened for all four books. At the last one she was weeping and clinging onto me so I reverted to what I did with her when she was a baby and I started to sing. Now, by no means am I a beautiful singer, but Lauren never seems to care. It took a while but she relaxed into me and I thought we were golden. Ha. Never underestimate a two year old who has told you, "No."

That first night I would leave the room and she would launch herself out of bed. Matt and I had the foresight to put a baby gate across her doorway because she mastered door handles right after she learned to walk. So she would stand at the gate, crying and shaking it with all her might. I would go up and put her back to bed. That lasted for more than three hours. 

And repeated for three nights.

I was ready to buy a second crib.

Lauren's daycare provider, K, who is phenomenal, gave me the pep talk that I needed to stick it out and push through. It only took another few nights and then she was sleeping like a  baby  big girl in her new bed. After just over a week her solid 12 to 13 hours of sleep came back and the transition was complete. 

But then we had to repeat all of this with naptime (I had planned this so that I did it over a time when she would be at daycare for naps so I only had to deal with one sleep session at a time). 

Thankfully we can say that we lived happily ever after and now naptime and bedtime are something that we all look forward to again (albeit for different reasons... bring on the movies and popcorn. The kid is in bed!)

Now onto potty training. Ahhh!