Two-Year (Really??) “Miss”-cellany

I did a short post on Miss’s birthday. Now I have some time to write about what my big girl is doing at two.

She is such a funny little girl. She’s very active and curious. She is starting to get into pretend play more and more. She’s enjoying dress up, taking care of her dolls, cooking in her kitchen, etc.
Here’s she giving her doll a bath. The other day she was “feeding” her Elmo doll, by holding him up to her chest as if nursing him. She cuddles and bounces and “burps” her dolls, and I see her rocking and shushing them. She’s such a good little mommy.

She’s also an active little monkey. She loves to climb and romp. She can jump with two feet, balance briefly on one foot, and kick a ball. She likes spinning around, or being spun around, to get dizzy. She also has quite good balance. Today her fun new thing was “I wanna stand on Mommy’s back.” She managed to balance very well up there.
Yes, she’s holding my hair here to get herself steady.

After she mastered balancing on my back, she thought it was very funny to jump up, straddle my back, and drop down on her rear end onto me. Yeah. Ha. Ha.
She loves music and dancing, but you knew that already. . . She is in gymnastics and music classes, each once per week. She sings a lot now. Sometimes she busts out singing all the words to songs that I can’t believe she even knows. Like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Rock-a-Bye Baby.” She knows these songs even though I’m pretty sure I’ve only sung them to her a couple of times. The other day she started reciting “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” word for word while we were driving in the car, except she didn’t get the counting down quite right. It was adorable, by the way.

She loves reading and can recite many of her books, almost in their entirety. “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” is one she can pretty much “read” herself.
Her language amazes me more and more every day in how rapidly it is improving. She nearly always speaks in complete sentences now. She sometimes busts out with the funniest and cutest things too. “It’s pretty windy today, Baba,” or “Don’t worry Mommy,” or “Just be patient Lass” (when Lass started fussing to eat and it took me a minute to get to her). When she says “no” to something, she often likes to give a reason. Like, “Miss, would you like a snack?” she’ll say, “No, I too tired” (which sounds like “toy-ed”) or “Let’s put your socks on” she’ll say, “No, it’s too little.” Too tired and too little are her her standard responses these days.
The other day she was rubbing Lass’s hair and she noted that it was soft. She then commented that her own hair is soft as well. I asked her about Mommy’s hair, and she agreed that my hair is soft too. Then I asked her about Daddy, and she said, “No, Daddy’s pokey!” She can repeat nearly anything that is said to her or within her hearing. She is really into identifying people by name. Today she pointed to herself and said her name, then pointed to Lass and did the same, and pointed at me and said “Mommy.” Then she said, “That’s my family.” After Daddy came home from work this evening she correctly listed all four of the members of her family. She is getting a little better at using the correct pronouns, though she still makes mistakes with this quite a bit. She knows all of her letters and the sounds they make. She is starting to be able to identify what letter a word starts with by sounding it out. She knows all of her colors and shapes. Seriously, I am amazed by the capacity of her two-year-old learning every day.
She loves to do crafts. Coloring, painting, gluing, etc.




Of course anything that she can manipulate with her hands is fun. Play-Doh squishing is a joy for her.



She is pretty good with her spoon and fork now, though she often chooses not to bother with them. She eats very well most of the time and is a pretty adventurous eater. She has always eaten dinner at the table with us and pretty much eats what we eat.


She loves her sister. She likes to get down on the floor near her and give lots of kisses and hugs. She calls her “Sis” and gets very excited when Lass “talks” to or smiles at her. She tells her that she loves her, which just makes me want to press the pause button and savor such moments with my littles.
I know I say this every time I do one of these posts, but I really love this age. Miss’s personality is really emerging and I am enjoying her so much. She’s smart and funny and sweet. She gives hugs and kisses freely and often without prompting. I’m so blessed to be able to watch her grow every day.
And in case you were wondering, Lass is 6 months old, and I’ll do a post to update on her achievements very soon!

Am I Crunchy?


I was just pondering this question the other day. I suppose the answer depends how you define that term. I wasn’t really sure, but I thought that “Crunchy” was a term to describe people who are concerned about the environment and live accordingly, by doing various things to reduce their impact on the environment. If you define it this way, I suppose I’m pretty Crunchy. Obviously, I use cloth diapers. I try to conserve water. I use cloth napkins and real plates/cups/bowls. I make cleaning products out of natural ingredients like vinegar, tea tree oil, baking soda, washing soda, etc. I do still keep a mixture of bleach and water for some jobs and I have a few commercial products, mostly leftover from my days of living in the nasty rental house when I would have used a sandblaster to clean if I could have. But for the most part I use the natural stuff for cleaning. I recycle as much as I can. We joined a Community Supported Agriculture group, called Good Earth Farm, to get organically and locally grown produce all summer and much of the fall. We replaced beef in our diets with venison from the deer my husband shot bowhunting last year, even though it was a buck and is tougher and more gamey-tasting than a doe would have been (he has promised to shoot a doe this year, and I know many people will be horrified and think this is not really environmentally friendly, but look into it, it really is better for the environment than eating beef and we just aren’t into being vegetarians). I don’t drive a very environmentally friendly car, but I have yet to find one that is both highly fuel efficient and big enough for a baby and two dogs, plus potential future babies. There are some things that I’m just not willing to do, like using “family cloth” instead of toilet paper for example. Not going there. So needless to say, I’m not perfectly environmentally friendly by any stretch, but I try.

This morning I looked on a message board that I pop onto from time to time about cloth diapering, and there was a thread asking “What is Crunchy?” I was intrigued so I took a look. The answers on there included other things that I hadn’t necessarily thought of as “Crunchy,” but I think I was probably wrong about what the term means. If you think of the term “Crunchy Momma” in particular, then some other things come into the picture that don’t necessarily have anything to do with being environmentally conscious but are more related to a style of parenting, such as breast feeding (check), babywearing (check), babyfood-making (check), co-sleeping (nope), not vaccinating (nope), homeschooling (nope), homebirthing (nope), momma-pad-wearing (nope), and so on. Check out this fun “test” of crunchiness that someone posted: How Crunchy Are You? I scored in the “Pretty Crispy!” range. About in the middle I guess. Which is really where I ought to be I suppose when I think about it. It’s not that surprising when I think about the choices I have made, which are not really mainstream, but are not terribly far into the granola world either, compared to some*. So how crunchy are you??
*Note: This post is in no way meant to be a judgement of more mainstream or more crunchy mommas!