Violet update

Where to start with my latest Violet update?  She is changing so fast.  Every day, she gets funnier and sassier and more her own little self.

She still likes Mommy quite a lot, but she is very social.  When we are out and about, she will often ask other moms and dads to pick her up and hold her.  Sometimes she wants them to do things for her, like push her on the swing or give her food.  It's nice to see that she's so friendly, but it does get a little embarrassing when she is constantly asking asking asking for things from other people.  Thankfully, she does limit her overtures to good friends and won't go up to random strangers looking for attention.  Earlier this month, we went to Padres baseball game with Jack's T-ball team.  Violet wanted her little friend Jordan's dad, Dave, to hold her.  She ended up falling asleep in his arms.  Dave was such a good sport, he held her for her entire nap.

But I really do love how easily she seems to make friends.  I recently started putting her in the Kids Club at my local gym.  There are three attendants who watch the kids, and Violet is very popular with them.  They keep telling me how funny she is.  One thing that I see her doing with them that she always does with me and Tom is she will ask us to pick her up and then she will put her hands on our cheeks and turn our heads to make sure we are giving her our undivided attention.

Violet is much more interested in imaginative and pretend play than Jack ever was at her age.  She has a few favorite stuffed animals, and a favorite game she likes to play is to have me or, more often, her dad change their diapers.  She likes to talk to them about what she's feeding them and sometimes will have them "poop potty," which is to say sit on the toilet.  Every now and then she will try to give them numi num herself.

Speaking of the potty, she has peed on the potty a few times in the past several weeks.  The trick is to give her some privacy, and sometimes she will do it.  Still, the success rate is not high enough to make me feel that potty training in earnest is warranted.  I sit her down on the toilet every time she asks me to, but she actually goes less than half the time.

We have also recently started her on a new bedtime routine.  "Someone" had gotten into a bad habit of singing songs while walking her around in his arms until she fell asleep.  I decided it was time to stop that nonsense, and we've recently just been putting her in her crib and walking out the door.  She cried for about ten minutes the first night and two minutes the second night.  She fussed a little the third night but has gone down very easily ever since (KNOCK WOOD).  Bedtimes have been much earlier, which is very nice.

Another benefit of having her fall asleep in her crib is that I think she is sleeping later through the night now.  She's not so shocked when she wakes up in the middle of the night and finds herself in her crib, because she remembers falling asleep there, so I think she is better able to fall back asleep on her own.  But the consequence of that is she is often waking up around 6:30, when it's already light out.  Sometimes she wants to get up for the day, and that's just too early for me.  I find if I bring her into bed with me, I can usually snuggle her back to sleep for another hour or so.

The other really nice thing about this new paradigm is that it works for her naps as well.  I no longer need to rely on the car to get her to sleep during the day.  I just put her to sleep in her crib anywhere between 1 and 2, and she will normally nap anywhere between one to two and a half hours.  In fact, she has been sleeping so much since we've started doing this, I'm wondering if she was sleep deprived this whole time.

As always, she is talking more and more.  It makes me laugh when I hear her say phrases that she has clearly picked up from the rest of the family.  She'll say, "Ta-da!" or "Look at that!" when she does something she is particularly proud of.  When she finds someone she's been looking for, she says, "There you are!"  Just the other day, she was trying to call Jack while he was outside and she was in her car seat.  She kept yelling, "Jack!" and then saying "Oh, darn it" when he obviously didn't hear her.  Another funny thing that she says is, "Oh dear! Piglet says that."

She is usually pretty clear in her pronunciations, but she does have a few baby-isms that I find adorable.  She often makes the "k" sound instead of "p," so "Piglet," for example, is usually "Kiglet."  She can't say her l's either.  Jack used to "w" them, but she usually makes the "y" sound instead.  She says "byoo" instead of "blue" and "yeyyow" instead of "yellow" (sound familiar, Renee?).  She often gets her m's and n's mixed up.  We almost always go to the snack bar after Jack's T-ball games, and one of Violet's favorite snacks are nachos, or "machos," as she calls them.  Jack likes to get bubblegum, or "bubble gun," as Violets says it.  She says "oh-jes" when she means "orange."  One baby word that she has grown out of is "dobbies" for "strawberries."  Now she says it correctly, although she sounds like a little British girl when she does: "straw-bries."

I think Violet also has her first little crush.  There is a little boy named Markus on Jack's T-ball team.  He has long-ish blond hair and is the smallest kid on the team.  He is super cute.  Violet obviously agrees.  I don't recall ever introducing him to her, but she figured out his name on her own.  The first time she said it, we were leaving the ballpark in our car, and she called, "Bye, Markus!" even though he was nowhere around.  Another time, she was playing on the playground while Jack's game was going on.  When Jack came up to bat, I told her, "Violet, your brother is about to hit.  Say, 'Go, Jack-Jack!'"  She said, "No go, Jack-Jack. Go, Markus."  And she's been saying the words "baseball player" over and over again.  A couple days ago, it was one of the first words out of her mouth when she woke up.  I said, "Is Jack a baseball player?"  And she answered, "Baseball player Markus."

She has been resistant to me putting her hair in pigtails or pony tails.  I can't really blame her, because I don't like having my hair pulled back either.  But she is still in the awkward stage of growing out her bangs where her hair is frequently in her face.  She's never been good at keeping anything other than rubber bands in her hair.  I hope she gets over this aversion, because I think she is just so darn cute with her hair styled.

The biggest sign, at least for me, that Violet is growing up is that we are slowly weaning her off the numi num.  So far, it hasn't been too traumatic.  When she asks, I tell her she can either have that or an M&M.  She usually chooses the M&M.  If she really wants to nurse, I will let her.  During the day, though, that usually only happens if she is really upset about something.  The one nursing session that I think will be the hardest to get rid of is the middle of the night one when she wakes up too early for me to want to get up with her.  It's been a habit that I just bring her into the bed with me and nurse a little so we both can get a few more precious hours of sleep.  But now that she is sleeping later through the night, this little "shot" hasn't always worked to get her back to sleep.  I think once Jack is out of school, we will probably be a little proactive in helping her make it through the night in her own room.

These updates always take so long to write.  I start them days before they are actually published, and it's so hard to keep up with all the changes with the kids.  I feel like I haven't caught up since Violet's birthday, and I won't until we get a couple more big events out of the way.  But I am always so grateful that I took the time to write all these down when I go back and read past posts months later.  Violet's babyhood is just going by so quickly.