Alicia at 22 months

Here is our girl at almost 22 months.  Alicia is BIG on getting praised.  She loves building things with her mega blocks then she brings us her creation and exclaims, "Look at this!!!"  She is also big on feeling pretty - amazing how young they pick that up!  (I'm not sure that is such a good thing...)  She loves to have her hair in pigtails and to wear bracelets, necklaces and even earrings (and she actually keeps them on!).  She also will put her hands above her head and on tip toe walk or turn in a circle while saying "ballerina".  And she adores Disney princesses.  Grandma and Granddad brought her princess figurines back from Disney World and she carries them around hugging them and even sleeps with a few each night.  They also gave her a princess nightgown and that is all that she cares to wear.  Her other obsession is kittens. If a book has a kitten in it, then that is the only page she wants to read.  She also went ecstatic over a Hello Kitty in MiMi's store.  MiMi of course bought it for her, and that has become Alicia's first comfort stuffed animal.  She likes to sleep with it every night.

She has actually learned all her capital ABC's over the past 2 months.  I didn't set out to intentionally teach her them, but she easily learned A-F playing with her magnets and foam bath letters.  So I kept pulling out 3-4 each week and now she knows them all and will even read them on trucks and store signs as we drive through town.  She also started naming numbers when I had never taught her them.  I guess she picked them up from just reading books.  She gets 1-9, but sometimes gets a little confused on 6 and 9.

We tried some early potty training... just to see...but that didn't completely work.  She loves sitting on the potty and the rewards that come along with it, but although she would sometimes go when I put her on the potty (every 15-20 min!), she couldn't hold it or let me know when she had to go.  That translates to A LOT of accidents.  After a couple of weeks I decided I was too big, had too little energy and it was too close to baby boy's arrival to pursue that for now.  I still try to sit her on the potty some, but we will be in diapers for a while.

We've been reading books like "Waiting on Baby" and "I'm a Big Sister" to prepare her for Little Bit's arrival.  She knows that a baby is coming and can show you his room and stuff, buts she has no idea how her life is about to change...  Here is a picture of her loving her cousin McKinley.  Hopefully she will be this gentle and sweet to her baby brother also!