Girl V at age 23.5 months

Last week Girl V took the opportunity, since we were staying in a hotel while visiting my mom for a week, to decide that she is not going to be contained by a crib or anything like it and it is time to sleep in a big girl bed. I could not lock the ADA-mandated lever doors so I watched tv with her in the bed until she went to sleep at midnight (usual bedtime is nine.) Now that we have gotten home, we converted her crib to a toddler bed and put a bed rail on it, and locked her in her room with a baby-proof door handle. Some people might think that is excessive but our little one will not stay put if she can get out. When she is toilet trained I guess we cannot lock her in anymore but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Last week she did not want to drink anything but Coke, because Mommy drinks Coke. She was placated when I let her drink water out of a disposable coffee cup like you get from McDonald's.

Also V can now draw faces. She draws a circle with two dots for eyes, a nose, a mouth, and hair. One time she also drew "leeps" AKA lips. My 70 yr old aunt, who has raised 3 adult daughters and worked in a church preschool for decades, says that she is very, very advanced in doing this, like usually this happens at 3.5 yrs. So on the one hand I am terrified that she will need 'advanced parenting', but also not so proud to think that if she is really smart, I can do that much to hurt her chances in life, assuming I am loving her as usual.

She is now saying a lot. The other day she asked "Mommy, whad aa you doing?" Today she said "Daddy eat nana."

When she watches a scene in Chicken Run that she thinks is scary, she sticks her fingers in her ears to make it less scary.

Soon she will be two. We are trying to teach her to answer the questions "How old are you" and "What is your name" but she has no interest. She is interested in counting and knows the numbers up to twenty-four. She does not count them all in order but she is getting there. She is also singing about 1/2 the letters in the ABC song.