Karina is just over 2 years old and in the last month has changed a lot. She has definetely entered the terrible two's, but because she has such a laid back and agreeable personality, it's just not that terrible! She will, of course, snatch toys away from Eliana or every once in a while, defiantly refuse to obey, but for the most part, if you reason with her, she'll says "Oh" and do what you ask. She loves swinging in the backyard, maybe because then she gets one-on-one time with Mommy or Daddy. It's hard being the middle child!
As you can see, she is becoming more independent...insisting that she put on her helmet by herself but not quite knowing how...
Karina's speech has also taken off in the past two weeks. She used to only be able to say a handful of consonants, which makes understanding her real hard, especially when she is not signing the word at the same time. Now she is saying more consonants and also stringing 3 words together. She has also recently learned her colors and can count to three.
Karina is very good at puzzles, much better than Eliana at this age. When she is playing by herself, she will do puzzles, play with her train set, leaf through books, or enjoys playing with her dolls.
When it's time to play with Mommy or Daddy (we've recently tried to institute "Karina time" and "Eliana time" when one of the parents give undivided attention to the particular child for 10 min.), Karina always breaks out the Busytown boardgame. Although she doesn't totally understand the rules, she has a fun time moving the pieces around just like she's seen Eliana do.
Karina has also gotten better at climbing and monkeying around in the playground. She's catching on quickly how to climb ladders and how to do other things at the park.
Karina has her silly side as well. While enjoying her after-dinner ice cream cone, she decided to use it like a chapstick and also happened to get some on her nose as well. (There are melted sprinkles on the ice cream, which is why it looks blue-green.)
Karina is not into jewelry or accessories nearly as much as Eliana, but does enjoy accessorizing once in a while. We keep colored hair bands in their bathroom and Karina likes to pick them out and wear them like jelly bracelets. She's such an 80's girl!
At her last dental check-up, her dentist gave Karina an "ok" to start using a tiny bit of real toothpaste, which is very exciting for Karina, who has until now has had her requests for toothpaste cruelly denied by her parents. She loves her toothpaste because it's bubble gum flavored and also has a Hello Kitty on the tube.
And one night, Karina was reaching into the sink when at the same time, Eliana--who was also brushing her teeth and had a mouth full of gargled water--decided to spit into the sink. Guess whose sleeve got soaked with water/spit/toothpaste sludge?
Part of our bedtime routine is saying prayers. Karina knows to close her eyes and clasp her hands but her prayers are modified. She whispers, "Mommy...yeah...Daddy...yeah...baby...yeah...Jie-jie [big sister]...yeah...me...yeah", then repeat. She will sometimes do this many many many times!
Last week, Karina all of a sudden decided that she was going to potty train herself. Before that, she had no idea about going pee-pee voluntarily. Then seemingly overnight, she started requesting us to take her to the potty. She's been going strong for about a week now and we can count on one hand the number of times that she's had an accident. And this is usually when she's preoccupied with something else and forgets to tell us (and we forget to ask) that she needs to go.
As a reward for going potty, Karina gets one M&M! Which she calls "Em Em!"
Karina is also our timid one and gets really intimidated by animals. So when we visited the zoo and she saw the elephant...
She decided that it'd be safer to stay behind Mommy's legs.
At the zoo, probably Karina's favorite part is not an animal, but a statue of animals. (Eliana was the same way for about a year.) There is a statue of a lion family and the girls played there for about 15 minutes.
It was also fun to see how they measured up to bears.
Our little Karina is growing up so quickly and we're excited to watch her personality blossom even more.
No comments:
Post a Comment