Isla at 23 months

Isla will be two in less than a month.

She is more or less potty trained, thank the Lord. I am not kidding about the 'thank the Lord' part. It took a lot of prayers to get me through potty training. She has not had an accident in five days. She pees in both her plastic potty and the big toilet, if I am holding her. She has pooped in the potty a handful of times, but often goes in her diaper when she wakes up from her nap. Except when she is sleeping, she wears underpants all the time.

She still loves music. Her favorite CD is her Sesame Street "Sing the Alphabet" CD, but she also enjoys Raffi and the Wiggles. She loves all things Sesame Street. We don't have TV, but we watch some Sesame Street videos online. She also has a number of Sesame Street dolls, books, and an Elmo video. She calls her Sesame Street dolls her 'guys'. Her other great passion is for Signing Time. We have videos Volume 1 - 5, and we get a lot of use out of those. They were instrumental in potty training (she got to watch a video as a reward for using the potty).

She loves books. One of my greatest joys as a parent is watching her independently look through her books while I take a shower. I bring a stack of books into the bathroom, and she sits next to the shower 'reading' them.

She continues to amaze me developmentally. She can name most of the uppercase letters (I would say 85 to 90% of them). She even associates many of them with words. Last night, she told me that "A is for alligator", "C is for cookie", "G is for Grover", "I is for Isla", "K is for Kirsten", "L is for lion", "P is for peanut butter and jelly", "W is for water", and "Z is for zipper" when she was showing me the letter from her fridge phonics. Of course, she got a couple wrong as well, telling me that "B is for dog", and had to ask me what a number of the letters were for.

She can count to eleven, and displays one-to-one correspondence when she counts objects, though she cannot answer "How many". She does not yet recognize her numbers and will hold them up to me and ask "What letter is dis".

She displays very good imaginary play. She pretends to go swimming in the laundry basket, claiming her farm animals are 'dinosaurs' (my parents have toys dinosaurs that she takes into the pool at their house), and asking to dry off when she gets out of the basket. She pretends to change her bear's diaper, making sure to take off his clothes and wipe his bummy, even though he is wearing neither clothes or a diaper. Yesterday, she brought a frisbee to the table with halves of plastic easter eggs on it and told me she was going to eat them. This morning, she handed me a ball, which she informed me was a cookie, told me to eat it, and then pretended to cut me off a piece, using a book as a knife. I want to get her a play kitchen set for her birthday. I think she would get a lot of use out of that. I also want to get her some dress up clothes, as she enjoys dressing up at our friend's house, but we don't have any dress up clothes for her.

She is definitely two. One of her current favorite phrases is "I do it self", meaning "I do it myself". She flips out if I get her out of her booster seat rather than letting her climb down herself. She spends long amounts of time in the morning, trying to get her socks on her feet, and screams as though I am hurting her if I put them on for her. She orders Mike and I around, and often whines if we don't comply. I am currently working on not responding to her screams or whines. "Say it in your big girl voice" and "use you words" have become popular phrases in our house.

She still doesn't understand that we are going to have another baby, and I don't think she will until he/she arrives. The other day when Mike told her that another baby is coming, she pointed to the front door and told him to go get it.

She very much enjoys her positon as the baby in the house. She still refers to herself as "baby" and will sometimes correct us when we say "good girl" telling us, "no, good baby". She did, however, promise Mike that she would help with the baby when it arrives. When Mike told her she would have to do so, she showed him how she would hold the baby and informed him that she would "pet the baby".

She is our love, and we are so glad she is part of our family.