A Little Bit of Schmitt: Lily

My sister recently posted about her son Stuart in free form to remember this stage of his life. I wanted to write some things about Lily so I will remember this fun time in her life. I hope my sister doesn't mind that I even copied and pasted parts of her post because our children are almost exactly the same. :)

She can communicate mostly with me because she doesn't use lots of words. It's more subtle than that.... haha. Kinda wishing that she would use more words. She's mostly stubborn. When she's in a good mood, she'll repeat any word we give her. But mostly, we ask her to say a word and she says dog or dada. Her favorite words are bye-bye, night-night, dog, dad, mommy, puppy, bus, truck, ball, bubbles, baby, and banana. She does say please and thank you and mo (more) when I make her.

Her favorite foods are fruits, sour cream alone or with stuff, lobster bisque soup from Zupas, milk, apple sauce, pb&j, graham crackers, pasta and marinara sauce. Her current obsessions are going outside, going on walks, pushing her stroller, going out anywhere, story time at the library, nursery at church, animals such as an elephants, lions, ducks, bunnies, dogs and cats. She also loves cars, trucks or buses, her nose, mommy's belly, her blankets, her darn binky, tickling daddy (she says "ticky ticky"), and uncle Terry. Her favorite songs are any hymn at church (she makes up words and belts it out), "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeee," "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "Ring Around the Rosies," and "I Am a Child of God."

She loves puzzles, coloring, "writing," looking at books, snuggling with her blanky, and pulling anything and everything out of the drawers and cupboards. She loves saying hello and bye bye to everyone. She says bye bye to everyone and everything. Like, this morning, she said bye bye to her cereal before she started eating it.

We are working on going up and down stairs standing up. She enjoys trying to put her shoes on. One of her feet is almost a size larger, so she can only get shoes on the smaller foot. I have to do the other. Ha! She wears the one shoe around the house, though. I think part of the shoe excitement is wanting to go outside or out somewhere.

Brad visited and Lily has a very special love for him, as shown above.

She sleeps 12 hours a night with 1 or 2 interruptions. When we cut out bottles, she slept through the night for a good while and then has been worse lately. I think it's allergies because she has a perpetual runny nose all day. She gives hugs and kisses willingly, waking up mommy each morning with a kiss. She knows all the parts of the face, and most of her body parts. She loves helping with meals, vacuuming with mom and doing the laundry. She is a good helper when she wants to be. If she doesn't want to help, she cannot be persuaded.

She can drink out of a regular cup, but spills sometimes. We still use sippy cups most of the time since she loves to give herself an impromptu bath. She loves to pray. We have been known to have more than two prayers at breakfast because Lily folds her arms and won't eat unless we pray again. She says "mum" for Amen at the end of prayers. She loves being tickled, loves balloons, and stickers. She can play on the playground equipment all by herself and loves the slide. She climbs up, sits down at the top and pushes herself onto the slide, shimmies off the end, laughs and runs around to do it all over again.

Last month, she learned the words "mine", started using "no" forcefully and stopped wanting to stay near mom in public. Grrrr....I fear the wonderful toddler time is turning into the difficult toddler time. Alas, I still love her but feel that I may need a few more prayers. Good thing she likes to pray.