Well, if is official, I have one constantly talking baby girl. :-) And I do mean constant. She has a lot to say (like her mother). Not all of it do I understand, but there are many words now that I know exactly what she is saying. For example, "Bamby" is how she calls "Barney". Yes, we do love the big purple guy in our house. Other Abby words include mommy, mama (depends on what she wants/needs as to which one she says), G.G. (her grandma), dog, uh oh, thank you (sounds like "tank tu"), Pete (our next door neighbor), ball, purple (the only color she will repeat), and Will (a little boy in her class - only she says it "Wiiiiiiiiiiill"). She truly has the cutest little southern accent ever. I have discovered she likes to repeat everything. This means mommy has quickly needed to learn to say different words when cut off in traffic.
Today Abby had her first official public fit. For those of you in the North who may not use the word "fit", this means she had her first public tantrum. "Fit" seems to better describe it though. We had a play date with Avery and her mommy Kris. They came to our house and the girls played around each other in Abby's playroom. It was very cute. Then we went to lunch. Abby actually did well until the check came. You would have thought I asked her to pay it for us. Actually the screaming was relatively quick. In reality it was about 20 seconds. But I have created a different way of looking at it in a new concept I call The Toddler Index. Much like the heat index used by weather forecasters ("today will be 90 degrees but with the heat index it will feel like 110"), The Toddler Index translates how it feels to the parent of said publicly screaming toddler. Abby was only about a 2 today (on a scale of 1 to 10). I have no disillusions though as to know today was only the beginning. Poor kid was so tired. She literally fell asleep before we left the parking lot. The good news is the baby who woke from her two hour nap was my sweet happy-go-lucky Abby.
We had to run a few errands after Abby's nap and she was so good that we stopped by our neighborhood park. The story I am about to relay is true. I don't believe I could have made this up even if I wanted to. A dad was pushing his daughter (2.5 years old I later found out) in the swing. I put Abby in the other swing and proceeded to also push her. The little girl next to us then announced (loudly I might add), "I am swinging high. I have a vagina." I paused a moment to see if she had said what I thought she did. Realizing she did not get any kind of reaction from me, the little girl said (much louder this time) "I SAID I have a vagina". Her father at this moment had officially turned every shade of red to be found in the Crayola 128 pack of crayons. I replied in the only way I knew how by saying "um, ok".
Abby is officially off the bottle now. It was actually a non-event according to Abby. One night I just did not give her a bottle but gave her milk in a sippy cup. And that was all there was to it. She was already on a sippy cup during the day so the only bottle she has been getting was the bed time bottle. So, now for bed time routine, we do bath, pajamas, brush teeth (all 8 of them), then we read several books in her rocking chair, and bed!
Abby is just the sweetest, happiest, most loving baby in the world. She is incredibly cuddly (with me or other people she knows very well). In public, she is a little ham and loves to smile and wave at strangers, especially in stores like Target. She also loves to wave at people in the cars next to us when we are stopped at a redlight. I just get a lump in my throat when I think that a few months ago she had never even been in a car. This kid is so incredible and I am the luckiest mommy in the whole world. Every night before I put her in her bed I tell her "of all the beautiful babies in the whole world, how did I get the best one?". And I mean that with all my heart.
Until next time.