I haven't posted an update on Emma in a while, so here are some things about Emma who turned 2.5 earlier this month.
One of my very favorite new things that Emma does is sing primary songs spontaneously - in the car, at home when she's playing, whenever. Her favorite songs are "Families Can Be Together Forever" (aka "family song"), "I Love to See the Temple" (aka "temple song"), and "Follow the Prophet" (aka "prophet song"), although she also likes singing a lot of other songs with us like "I Am a Child of God," "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus," "I Want to be a Missionary," and "Book of Mormon Stories." She enjoys the more interactive ones, too, like "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam," "Once There Was a Snowman," and "Popcorn Popping." A non-church song she likes is Winnie the Pooh's "Little Black Rain Cloud." In short, she really likes songs and enjoys singing which is adorable.
Emma often exerts her desire to be independent. For the past few months she has insisted on climbing into the car and into her car seat by herself (occasionally needing a hand when climbing in). If she can open something herself (e.g. a door, a snack) she has to do it (or else she
will cry), and if she can't do it herself she has to be the one to get to it first so she can try and then ask us to do it.
She is a big fan of watching movies and will sit through a whole movie which I'm sort of glad for with baby coming due. Her favorite movie is probably
Frozen although she is easily convinced to choose something else. I love hearing her laugh at funny parts in movies - her laugh comes out so freely, I just love it.
Playing is taking priority over eating in her mind which is not a very fun change. She's still a pretty good eater but does best when we eat together and have the same food. She can pretty well manage drinking from an open cup, but we still have her use sippy cups most of the time.
Her vocabulary has grown some and she speaks clearly most of the time. Some of her new most-used phrases include "I want it," "need help," and "MY do it."
Going outside is still one of her very favorite things. She loves when her daddy takes her for a walk (and so do I) and lets her go down the slides nearby and sit on benches and do hopscotch.
Three weeks ago she climbed out of her bed for the first time. She only did so a couple times that week, but has been climbing out more regularly after she's done sleeping in the morning or done napping. It only took one or two times of her climbing out just after we had put her down and us putting her straight back in bed to realize she couldn't just get out whenever she wanted. So for now she's still in a crib but we may very well convert her bed into a toddler bed within the next month or so. She naps well most days, although she occasionally has days she doesn't nap. Sometimes several days in a row she won't sleep during nap time, and then she will sleep during nap time for a few days. When she gets up from bed she makes sure to grab her Pooh bears and climbs out of bed with them in her arms. She turns off her white noise and grabs her puppy so she has her puppy and Pooh bears then makes her way out of her room and comes to find me. If I'm in bed still she comes into my room and says "go downstaaaaaairs!" (with a cute inflection) and if I take a while to get up she tells me "get up! Get UP! Go downstairs!"
Emma's counting skills have improved and she does pretty well counting items when there are 10 or fewer, although she still often double-counts or skips some. She also sometimes like counting things like this: "one two three thirteen seventeen eighteen!" In terms of colors, she still seems to be [what I call] reverse-colorblind and gets colors most of the time but mixes up black, white and grey.
Emma seems as excited as she can be about Baby Brother coming next month and we believe she'll be a great Big Sister, but his arrival will certainly come with a long transition for all of us.
