ok, I Do NOT know how to short blog

More pix of Diella posing for me. Surprise, surprise, hehe. She’s a Pro!

Let’s start with the no-so-good stuff, and then end with the fun stuff! Diella is now officially full-fledged in the Terrible Two’s stage. I think it started a while back, but it is unfortunately quite bad now. Just disobeying, and saying NO, and occasional screaming, and even has thrown her food on the floor once or twice. Also with the napping, still having problems (bedtime isn’t Half as bad, that’s gotten a lil better again), but she still throws a fit when it’s naptime, sigh* … we’ve tried everything, we try to be nice and explain things, and try to have her explain whats wrong, we’ve tried to be firm & use time out & spanks on the butt… so I guess its just a matter of time until she grows out of this. Today, after an episode, I sat her on my lap, facing me, and I worked up some tears and told her how sad it makes mommy when she disobeys & when she says no, and I told her that I don’t like yelling at her, and that she has to start being nice again. She just wiped my tears away & looked at me with such concern and said “ok.” … So, we’re just praying until that day that this is over!

This other thing that she does that I cannot stand… when I ask her if she wants something, for example a food, like perhaps, chicken… she’ll say yes, and then as I go to get it, she says ‘no, no chicken’ … so then as I put it away she says, ‘yes! Chicken!’ and she does this All The Time! And with Everything! Not jus with food, but with goin potty, with getting a toy, with anything! Grrr!!!

Yesterday I saw that she had drawn on the floor and on an end table with blue crayon… she KNOWS she’s not allowed to do this… so we had Her clean it up Herself… handed her a Lysol wipe, and she did, perfectly, every spot, all by herself, I was glad! And a lot of times lately, while we’re goin through this tough stage, when she’s in timeout, we tell her she can get out when she stops crying (we explain that there’s no need to cry when she has no Reason to cry…. Not that crying is bad all the time) we have her take a deep breath & usually she stops right then… so today, in timeout, she (without me prompting her) took a deep breath and said ‘stop crying’ … I’m glad that even though she continues to disobey & face the consequences of it, at least she’s starting to know the pattern of this, and she needs to do to correct it.

K, some new things she says… Jasmine taught her how to say hippopotamus… and she says it Perfectly! Every syllable! Her first FIVE syllable word! … she’s getting very good at single & plural usage of words, like that & these & this & those… she uses them correctly almost always! I think that’s hard for her age! … The other night we were getting ready for bed and she said ‘relax’ … hehe, I said ‘you wanna relax?’ , she said yes, hehe, aww… I figured maybe she learned that word from Jake. I asked him, and she did, aw! … We added a few things to our nightly prayer, we ask Jesus if He will help Diella feel safe & comforted & help her have good dreams, etc… and I LOVE how she says comforted, its like ‘con-ti-fed’ ! love it! … oh and she says ‘watch a movie’ a lot, I’m not sure why, she never used to be That into tv, now she seems to love it & wanna watch it a lot, boo.

Yesterday, while wearing her jammies, she decided to do some accessorizing… she put on a necklace, her rain boots, some winter gloves, and a tutu… she was a fox!

The other day she was coloring, and you know, at age two, its pretty much just scribbles… but I asked her to color the shoes on the page we were on, and she scribbled over the shoes… I mean, I guess that’s not a really big deal, should be easy enough for her, but I wanna keep teaching her to color specific parts of the page, steada just all over the whole thing with one crayon, ya know? …. And then she got this toy from a friend for her birthday, ya know that thing where the pen is magnet & it draws, and then you move that thing across the bottom to erase it, dunno what its called… well she was drawin on that, and she goes “mama, look! Happy face!” (she always asks us to draw happy face & sad face).. and she drew, all by herself, I’m telling you, it was almost a Perfect circle! And like two dots in the middle!!! Cooool! Oh then she erased that & scribbled a crooked line, and she goes “a seven!” … sure enough, it looked like a seven! I don’t think she meant to draw a seven, but realized that it looked like one, once she did, hehe

Yesterday we were on our way out the door, and I asked her if she would please turn off the tv, and hand me my phone that was on the couch… and she did both… I just think its neat that she cant understand & follow 2 directions at a time… I dunno, I thought it was cool.

I was singin random stuff in the car yesterday, trying to keep her entertained, and I would use one person’s name & just sing it over & over in this little ditty.. like “mom-mie, mom-mie, mommy-mommy-mommy, Mooo-ooooo-Mie” … and then we’d do daddy, then Diella, then Ethan, and everyone in our whole family, both sides, and just kept going on & on, and she’d just giggle… and when she’d say “again!” … I’d say ‘who should we do? Howww boooout…. _____?” then we’d do another one… then she started to decide the next person, she’d go, ‘howwww booooout…. Chicken!” and we did chicken. Then a few other animals. Then she suggested Jesus… then she even named a few family members that I forgot! Hehe, I just loved how she picked up on & repeated… ‘Howwww boooout”…. And filled in the blank, hehe, it was fun!

Ok, we had a trip to Virginia again last weekend, and two things she did, that we so great!!! … we were at her cousin’s high school, at his graduation, out in the football stadium, and after a while she said she wanted to go potty, I said “really!!?? Ok lets go!!” … so I took her to the public bathroom, thinking No way would she actually use that potty, she’s never gone on a big toilet… sat on them before, but never went on anything besides her lil training potty… but …. She did!!!! She went pee on a potty in a public bathroom! (yes, Of Course we put TP down & washed our hands Really good!), but I was just So proud of her! Oh, and at home when she goes, I usually give her a piece of candy as reward, well I didn’t have any with me then, and she Always asks us for gum (we’ve never given her any, we always tell her its for big kids, not for little kids), but so I gave her my gum, and you should have seen her… the entire rest of the night, she was just glowing, SO proud to be chewing gum, like she was the biggest Big Girl in the world… and she didn’t swallow it, she chewed it like a champ, and she loved every second of it!

And the other awesome thing she did in Virginia, really kinda blew me away… we were all eating at a restaurant, had just gotten our meals (it was us & a bunch of the fam), and I asked Diella if she would pray for the food, so she folds her hands & looks around and says to Aaron, “you pray too” (he wasn’t folding his hands yet, so she was asking him to), then she continues to scope everyone out, and points to Ben, says the same thing, and then to Nate, “you pray too”… and she would not start the prayer until everyone was ready & everyone was joining in… I thought that was kinda deep!!! Then she prayed, “Jesus, thank you, Amen”… but it was so neat! Almost like she was keeping all her uncles and everyone accountable for praying over their meal! Yea girl!