Allison – 2 1/2 Update

Allie is 2 1/2 years old! It seems like she just turned two yesterday. I’m shocked by how fast time is going by. I just love this stage. Her vocabulary has exploded, she repeats almost everything we say, and she wants to tell us anything and everything.

She loves music, dancing, jumping, singing, running in circles around our living room, wearing her princess dress, talking about animals, playing the guitar or piano, swinging at the park, watching movies (she’s obsessed with Trolls and Sing right now), and being the center of our attention.

She is shy and cautious, but extremely sweet and cuddly with me and Tony. She really doesn’t like strangers and will cry and hide behind me whenever someone new comes near her. She seems to be very fearful of things and I think she gets it from Tony. When she’s in a new environment she will think through every movement she makes. When watching her play at the playground you can tell she is scared to fall so she moves pretty slow. I hope this doesn’t mean she will have a lot of anxiety when she gets older. We are working on her feeling more confident.

She has lots of energy and thankfully it’s mostly joyful energy. She wakes up with such a big smile every single day which makes me so happy. She’s enthusiastic about life and I love that about her.

Schedule

Allie usually wakes up at 8 am, we leave the house around 9 am to go to stroller strides, we come home for lunch, she’ll take a nap at 1 pm and sleep until 3:30 pm, we’ll play outside or meet up with friends, have dinner around 5 pm, and then bedtime is at 8 pm. The last month or so she has been fighting us when it’s time to take a nap or go to bed. I really hope this doesn’t mean she’s going to drop her nap soon.

Eating

She loves to sit in her highchair and eat. I thought she would be done with the highchair by now, but she still loves it so I ended up ordering one for Logan. I knew she would be upset if we took it away from her. Her favorite foods are berries, smoothies, chicken, cottage cheese, cheese sticks, pizza, corn, hummus, and raisins. She has had some constipation issues lately so we have been giving her a lot of prunes.

Challenges

We have two things we need to work on within the next six months.

She still sleeps with a paci (she only gets it in her crib for sleeping), I have wanted to take this away for awhile, but Logan still isn’t sleeping well so I don’t want to ruin her good sleep habits and be up with two kids at night. My plan is to take her to build a bear and have her put the paci in the bear and let her know that pacis are only for babies. I will do this by her 3rd birthday.

Another challenge is that she’s not interested in going on the potty. She has started going into the bathroom to poop, but when we ask her to go on the potty she starts screaming. I don’t think she’s ready so we are going to wait to do the 3-day potty training in June. I’m hoping she’ll be ready by then and we can put her in a swimsuit or let her be naked for 3 days.

We signed her up for preschool! She will start the Soon2B3’s program at our park district in September. Allie turns 3 a week before the program starts, but the director approved her to be in the class since I want her to be the oldest instead of the youngest when she goes to kindergarten. Her class will be on Tuesday and Thursdays from 9-11 am. I’m really excited for her to start, but I have no idea how she’s going to react. She’s never been away from me with anyone else, but her grandmas. I really hope she loves it.

Happy 2 1/2 years, Allie! We love you so much!