1,2,3 I'm counting sheep. Baah!

In four weeks Rylee and Haylee will be turning two years old. A part of me wonders where the time has gone, a third of me wonders if I am going to make it to four, and the rest is glad to be a mom.

It is AMAZING how a child's mind works. Some people say that women tangent to much running from one topic to another all in the same breath... apparently they haven't hung out with a two year old! LOL (Laugh out loud). Haylee and Rylee have now mastered the art of talking and throughly enjoy learning new words, pronunciations, and sentences. This new mimic feature of isn't always the greatest thing! For example, while Nana was over for lunch one day when Haylee ran out of juice and said "I want more juice, damn it!". The look on my mom's face was priceless. Then of course the look is followed by, I wonder who says that. Guilty as charged. I am happy to announce that Haylee and I HAVE NOT said since.

Haylee has demonstrated her art of sentence structure in other ways as well, in fact last week we were watching BabyFirstTV - an educational channel directed towards the cognitive, social, emotional, etc. development of children from 18 months to preschoolers - a counting show came on. Three sheep were on the screen and I heard the narrator slowly begin to count the sheep. The next thing I heard was Haylee saying, "1, 2, 3. I'm counting sheep. Baah!" Now mind you the narrator was still on sheep number two when Haylee began counting herself. I was very proud of her! Both girls continually surprise me with their sentences. Rylee now says "welcome" when someone says "thank you", and both are attempting to say the dog’s name, Princess. So far we have Princy, and Pincess. :)

Since we are not in Preschool yet, I am very happy to have shows like Super Why, Word World, Number Time, etc. to help reinforce what I try to teach them. Haylee can count to 10 and knows all of her ABCs. She even knows a little addition and subtraction but only with objects of 3. Rylee is doing great as well! She can count to 5, and has half of her alphabet down! The can both recognize letters of the alphabet ... well mostly from O to Z, but is a start!

Here are a few of my other favorite things:

• Haylee will say "exuse me" after she sneezes and says "ha-choo" instead of "bless you" when some else sneezes.
• One night at the park, Nana was showing Haylee the bark on the trees and after she touched the bark she looked at her hands and said, "Where's the soap?"
• When Rylee calls to someone she always says "come back!" and peeks around the corner to see if you are coming.
• When Rylee came out of time out and was asked if she was going to be good, she replied “no”. I instructed her that she needed to go back to her room, she did! She came out two minutes later and when asked the same question, she nodded her head yes and played.

Well, we have officially hit the terrible twos. Someone told me today that it wasn't the terrible twos, it was the terrific twos. While I thought her approach to this new phase in motherhood was interesting, I was laughing in my head. :) Albeit, yes, some days are terrific, and most are definitely terrible :). Granted my days are now a lot longer, nap time is now set at 1pm sharp… maybe 2 with some coaxing of snacks… bedtime is at 8pm sharp, wakeup call is at 5:45am, and any time in between that I want them to go down because they are tired is out of the question. Our time outs are now on our bed with our door closed, which really doesn’t matter since they can open it. Their temper tantrums are more dramatic as their world ends at the slightest shiver of indiscretion. Their laughter is more heart felt and their curiosity more fun. They pick up fast on manners and protocol and they have a knack for demonstrating the wrong thing to do at the weirdest times. For instance, I have a bad habit of using my shirt to wipe their nose. Now I don’t do it often, but apparently I do it often enough, because Rylee came up to me last night, climbed into my lap and took my shirt in her hands and wiped. Yeah, not pleasant. That habit stopped abruptly.

LOL.