My Daughter...

My daughter is growing so fast! I think she's going through a growth spurt or something too b/c the past few days she's been eating ALL her food and has actually been telling me she wants to eat! These days, MJ LOVES her babies--so much that she even disciplines them! She'll grab a spanking stick, go to my room with baby in hand and close the door (that's how it's usually done for her). She'll say something like, "I haf give my baby spakin right now!" When I ask her why she usually responds with, " Uh, I don't know." So I have to fill her in that she needs to have a reason for spanking her baby, like they're disobeying or being mean or disrespectful. She ususally chooses the disobeying option :) I can then hear her swating her baby multiple times, and she'll finish by telling her baby, "You haf obey me!" (in a not-so-nice tone--do I sound like that to her?) She'll come back out and sometimes repeat this process consecutively 3-4 times, either with the same baby or the next baby or stuffed animal that's in line! Can you tell what she normally gets spanked for? :)

I took the picture above this morning. As you can see, each baby has a "blanket." She just HAS to line them all up right in my walking path! She also refers to the red, white, and blue dish rags as her "flags." I guess they do have the same colors :)

She has also started referring to her babies as her daughters. About two weeks ago, she had her baby wrapped in a place mat from the table, and she said, "Mommy, my daughter cryin," as she cradled the baby in her arms. Ever since then she tells me what her daughter is currently doing :)

We recently got some new shelves (new to us anyway) from some friends who moved to a new house. Before Eric secured and I could put books on them, MJ had plans of her own as to what they should be used for!


As much as she loves her babies, she still doesn't have any names for them. We usually refer to them by the color of clothing they're wearing (pink baby, brown baby, blue baby, white baby, etc.). Most of the time they don't wear any clothes--guess she just likes them better w/o any. She has a couple of babies that don't have the cloth body. I guess she didn't know what to call it b/c she was telling me the babies she had like this, "my blue baby, white baby, doll baby." :)
You don't realize how much you do or say things until you see your kids copying you :) After I fix MJ's hair, I tell her to look at me, and I normally say, "Awww, what a cutie," or something like that. Well, lately, she's just been saying that for me, and the pic to the left shows the face she gives while she's saying it :)

MJ also loves to climb and balance on you if you're on the floor--especially Daddy--there's much more room to balance!

She has become quite independent and even wants to feed herself most of the time. She says, "I do it by myself!" So, I've had to give in and let her at it with a spoon on her own :) At this point, she actually has much better dexterity with it. She still makes a mess, but it's not as bad as it used to be :)

She is constantly into something or doing something that makes me laugh. Last week, while I was trying to catch a little catnap, she told me she had to go to the potty. I told her to go and had this fleeting vision that just b/c I was nice and cozy she was going to have some mishap like fall in the potty or something like that. Well, not a minute later, she's crying b/c SHE FELL IN THE POTTY! It never fails :) She really just tipped her bottom in the water but couldn't pull herself the rest of the way up.

And lately, she's been staying dry over night! She did have a wet diaper this morning, but before that she'd actually gone at least a week of staying dry--to the point that after re-using the same diaper night after night, Eric finally had to give in when one of the tabs tore off. He did try to make it work anyway but to no avail :)

She's also gotten pretty good at pronouncing out words on her Word Whammer. Now keep in mind these are 3-letter words with short vowel sounds. We still have a long way to go, but she's making some progress!

Some other things she's currently saying:

• What's wrong?
• What's the matter?
• What's going on there?
• What's the problem?
• When Elijah starts crying and being really fussy, she'll tell me, "He's so tired."
• On pretty days, she'll look out the window and say, "It's so pretty!"
• After I brought out a bag that had a ton of baby gift bags, she saw what they were and said, "Oh how wonderful!" :)

And currently, her two favorite songs are "Jesus Loves Me" and "Amazing Grace."

Boy does she copy me! I have to start having a constant prayer asking for wisdom and guidance to act and speak in a way that's worthy of being copied. It's amazing the things she picks up that I don't even realize she would know until I hear her say or do them! Well, that's enough on my little sweetiecakes for now. Next I'll have to update you on my little man!