Music

"Bass. Bass. No treble" This is what Frannie was repeating over and over this morning on our way to school. I asked if she was singing the "All about that bass" song. "Yeah". So I played it on my phone twice til we got to school.

She turns on the radio and dances around the house and loves holding our hands for Ring around the rosy and then we all fall down. And tonight she took out her keyboard and turned on a beat and started "playing" piano. She has even started playing her harmonica which is hilarious. 

After I put her to bed each night she'll sing something along with her talking...twinkle twinkle little star is the current favorite. 

Little Person

She's a little person. As in, we can have conversations, she can tell me what she needs and how she feels, and she can understand "if this, then this" (to a certain degree). It's awesome. She runs around the house talking, singing, and dancing, and when she goes to bed she lays in bed talking and singing to herself anywhere from 5-30 minutes. Her body and/or mouth is in constant motion.

I LOVE the new room she's in at school. They do more learning types of activities and with a smaller class and older kids, the teacher can process with her if she tried to do her little fit - which they (as it so happens) have stopped now that she's with older kids. She came home with this matching puzzle game thing and she did it; matching the shapes to their shadow. So cool to see and also was a great reminder how I could never homeschool her because it wouldn't have occurred to me to do that with her right now.....I'd be more likely to say,"let's go to Barnes and Noble for coffee".

She is still into counting and now she is naming everything's color. She gets better at this daily. Everything used to be blue or orange but now she can pretty much accurately name the right color. She can be quite the stubborn one though. This morning she pointed to a green basket and said blue and I'd correct her with green to which she'd repeatedly say "blue" until I just give up.

I just got rid of 5 or 6 pairs of pants cause they were too short. She took a 4.5 hour nap the other day (unheard of!) which I think was so she could grow another inch. She's reaching doorknobs and turning them now, where she wasn't even close before.

We had a fun Super Bowl at home. The three of us ate snacks and watched the game. She's really good at eating stuff we eat and she's a big fan of our homemade popcorn.

Well I thought the playing with toys would be the next post and don't get me wrong, it's so much fun to watch her play and learn, but there's something much more surprising now and that's NO. No Mama, no Daddy, no Foxy. And more often than not, it's usually yelled with hand gestures. Thankfully, it's really not bad or all the time but teaching sharing and saying things nicely is a high priority around here.

"What's that?" is the other favorite phrase of the moment. Also "What's (name of person) doing?" Listening to her make sentences and put ideas together blows me away daily. She is even counting forward and backward and in Spanish. I was in the kitchen listening to her talk and sing to herself in the living room and as I listened closer I watched her lining up her toys and counting each one. Then later she was running around the house counting to ten in Spanish. That's insane.

She was moved to the older toddler room recently because she was getting irritated with the younger kids messing with her stuff in the other toddler room. She apparently would cry to get out and "go for a walk" and then would try to go into the three year old room or sit in the principals office reading or coloring. Now that she's with the older kids, she's much happier.

She's still really into music and books. She loves dancing and is doing more pretend play with her dolls and toys. Last week she had a double ear infection so that really stunk (for all of us) but she's back to her spunky self now-even though Brian and I have her cold now.

Holidays

What a great holiday we had! It looked a bit sketchy at first as actual Christmas found Frannie with the flu, an ear infection, and teething her top canines, but with antibiotics things improved quickly. We saw Grandma Joy on Christmas Eve Day and Frannie was able to meet her cousins Tony and Diane, along with three new dogs including a boxer named Tiny who was three times her size.

We hung out as a family Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Opening presents was so fun this year. She really took her time and after opening each gift she'd play with whatever it was before moving to the next one. We took a break to make blueberry pancakes, which Frannie LOVED helping with. Then to get out of the house we went to Bentleyville again to see the lights.

Friday Frannie, Maymay, and I drove to Dwight where we stayed til Tuesday afternoon. Frannie was a great traveler. We got to see "Bikkee", Meg, the "Bret's", Beth, Val and Buzzy, and the highlight of picking and dropping off Booboo at the train. 

We stayed in Hayward a couple days to play with Boppa and Maymay and then came home Friday to relax. Although we got here and the furnace had stopped working so the pipes partially froze. Thankfully everything was fixed by 7 that night so we were actually able to enjoy the weekend.

Next post-watching her play with her new toys....amazing.....

Brain Growth

It's like you can see the neurons connecting every day. As she's coloring a picture of a zebra in her coloring book, she spontaneously says "zebra". I didn't tell her that's what it was. At the mall there were a line of brightly colored chairs. She runs up, slaps the blue chair and says "blue". Lucky guess I think to myself- until she runs to the orange one and says "orange". Crazy!!  The stuff she picks up on and remembers blows my mind. I LOVE watching this happen. 

The other big news was a pee and poop on the potty because she told us she had to go. Over thanksgiving she told Maymay and me that she had to potty so we went in and she did it. SO happy about that one!! Since then she's pooped on the potty again and every day we have to sit on the potty and try-that's her doing not mine. And I read "Potty" the book about 10 times and she pretends she's dumping out her little pot into the toilet. We are certainly on our way.

Thanksgiving was great. Family time with Maymay, Boppa, Booboo, and Al was very fun and relaxing. Another generation of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has come along...Frannie loved the balloons (and even some of the Broadway singing and dancing). We went to get our tree and then to see the Bentleyville lights too. Really, really fun. Frannie enjoyed the lights and all the peole....and the best part was that it wasn't totally freezing like last year.

Sensitive

Each day I get a note saying what Frannie did that day at school. This also includes an am and pm mood report. The vast majority of these say Happy :)

However, the past two weeks or so, more and more "sensitive" is being written with today and Thursday last week being sensitive both am AND pm. What happened??!? I know she's teething because a canine popped through and you can see the others and I think those back molars must be moving a little because she's constantly chewing on her finger way toward the back of her mouth. So is it just teeth? Is it the terrible twos starting early? No matter what it is, it's killing me not knowing what's happening with her. Like can I do something to help? I'm hoping it's either teeth or a stage because a whiny fussy kid is not fun.

On the flip side, for the most part (there are more "sensitive" times at home too but they aren't the majority) she is happy and busy. She is stringing words together like crazy and I swear just within the last day she is able to "read" parts of books from the pictures. She is big into dancing and music. We hooked up our TV to the basic stations and we watch The Voice together on Mondays. She claps and dances....SO CUTE. She also loves swimming in the bathtub. We went into a pool two weekends ago, and she really liked the hot tub. Since then she considers herself a swimmer :)

Cartoon Voice

Talking up a storm. And the best part about my little parrot is that she has the most adorable cartoon voice. She gets more clear with her words every day and I'm amazed at how she uses them correctly. Love love love this stage.

We went to Boo at the Zoo, which is essentially trick or treating during the day at the zoo and had a whirlwind yet fun time. I had the cutest tropical fish costume that a friend gave me for Frannie to wear, but she absolutely refused (aka enormous fit) to wear it. So we settled on a purple princess and got a few suckers and fruit snacks along with great people watching and animals too.

It's a good thing we did that because Halloween in Duluth was the coldest in like 5 years or something ridiculous with temps around 35. We opted to stay home and hand out candy to a whopping  10 kids.

She's still loving school and loves doing "big girl" stuff like standing on her stool to brush her teeth at the sink and wash her hands. The potty is a topic of conversation and she's pooped on it twice but we still have a long ways to go. 

Her latest obsession is Chapstick. She will carry a tube around with her and just continually put it on. And then when I'm not looking she'll dig in it with her finger and rub it on her hands/the couch/her clothes/etc. 

Being outside is still a favorite as well. She doesn't mind the cold and would dig in the dirt, run around, play with her ball, slide and swing, and eat apples of the tree for hours if she could.