Today, Isabella turns 31 months old. She's officially closer to age three than she is to age two.
She's either calmed down a bit from last month's emotional upheavals, or I'm so exhausted and numb that her "twoness" isn't bothering me as much. The jury's still out on that one. But I have to say that there have been plenty of times over the past month when I've just watched in awe at the remarkable person she's becoming.
Obviously, we live in a house with a lot of noise, most of it made by Luci and Nicholas. It seems one of the babies is always crying (usually Luci), and the crying has become just another background noise, like the hum of the refrigerator or the sounds of my cats' too-long nails tapping across the floor. Sometimes I ask Isabella to help me calm the babies down by showing them a toy, or trying to make them laugh or smile, and several times recently I've come into the family room where we all tend to hang out to find Isabella on her own and without being asked attempting to calm her crying brother or sister with a rattle or by giving them a binkie or covering them with a blanket. I'm not sure quite why, but witnessing these unexpected displays of Isabella's affection toward her brother and sister brings tears to my eyes. I'm just so proud of her.
There's still lots of big emotion going on in her world, and she loves to tell me exactly how big. She's very fond of saying, "I'm really, really, really disappointed/mad/frustrated/scared." One "really" is never enough. But she's also concerned about my emotions. She often turns to me and asks, "Mommy, are you happy?"
She's heavily into playing with the peeing doll I gave her for Christmas. My grandma named her Elizabeth, so Isabella loves pushing her around in her doll stroller and taking her to the imaginary swimming pools that exist in each room of our house. She also nurses her, which is pretty adorable to watch. Of course, she hasn't the slightest interest in the doll's bodily functions, or her own for that matter. We've made no potty-training progress. I've taken to asking her if she would like to wear a diaper or big kid underwear every morning when I get her dressed. I'm crossing my fingers that her interest in wearing underwear occurs sometime before her high school graduation.
One of my friends gave her a Dora book that came with an accompanying CD a few weeks ago, and now Isabella cannot get enough of listening to books on CD. Since she's a fan of playing DJ anytime we're in the car, calling out her song choices every 4.5 seconds from the back seat much to my annoyance, I've found this books on CD thing fabulous. We found that several of her books came with CDs that we never bothered to play, so now anytime I'm in the car with her, I pop one in and...total silence from the backseat. Score!
I'm incredibly sad to report that her napping days are numbered. In an average week, Isabella will nap maybe one or two times. The rest of the time, she sings, talks to herself, and yells, "Mooooommmmy. Come get me!!!!" For awhile, she wouldn't get out of her bed, but eventually she realized she could and we weren't standing outside her door ready to storm in the second her big toe hit the hardwood. Now, we hear her running around in her room, and I'll often come up to get her and find her in bed with a stack of books. There are worse things she could be doing, I suppose, but she still needs this nap, because she gets loud and loony come dinnertime when she hasn't slept. Oh, and yeah. Mama needs her to nap too. Goodbye afternoon nap, I will miss you more than you know.
Current Likes: Sprinkling Parmesan cheese on everything, pizza
Current Dislikes: Keeping her shoes and socks on, having her picture taken
Isabella sounds like a delight. LG pretty much won't take a nap unless we've gone out and done some activity during the day. On days when we've stayed home all day there's definitely no napping going on around here.
Hey, Kristi!
My 7 year-old was a much more reluctant reader than her sister was, but she has an amazing vocabulary, thanks to books on CD. In fact, that's why I finally broke down and let her get an iPod for Christmas, even though it seems a little ridiculous for a first grader. She checks out audio books from the library, and then we rip them to MP3's and put them on her iPod so she can listen all the time.
She looks so big in these pictures! It's amazing how fast they grow isn't it?
Happy 31 months Isabella!
A always ask me how I am feeling too. Are you Mad/Sad/Glad/Habben A Good Day? etc.
It's a bittersweet age, isn't it?
Almost three sounds *so* grown up!
I can't believe how grown up she looks. It's amazing. I'm sorry it's still so hard with the twins. I think with all those months of crying I would be certifiably crazy. My hat's off to you.
Isabella sounds like a delightful little girl that is weathering things great. You're doing a good job.
Good luck with the naps. J&J both quit napping around that age. They just couldn't fall asleep anymore. It made for a rough few months from around 4:30 on, but then it got better.
It sounds like she's going to be a great big sister! As for the parmesan, Little Elvis is a big fan, too. For a while, we could get him to eat foods he normally wouldn't just by sprinkling (dumping) parmesan on them. He caught on to this after about 3 days, oh well.
The freaking naps. WTF? Ever since we got rid of the binky, T is on a napping strike. Some days it doesn't really seem to matter (yesterday) whereas on others, she is a complete train wreck (Friday) and I want to gouge my eyes out.
I will have to check out the books on CD for the littles. I love them so much myself and I think T would get into them. Might even help her sleep? Ha.
Cannot believe she's getting so close to three! She's a real cutie.
Happy 31 months Isabella.
Im sure toilet training will come in its own time, we done the same with Rebecca just talked about it every day and in her own time she gave up nappies (she was 3y 4m) and its just
worked this last week with nighttime.
Sorry the napping is stopping that it TOUGH , only the baby naps around my house now and i miss the daily breaks.