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When I was a teacher, one of my favorite things was to overhear one student “reading” to another- retelling in their own words what was happening in the pictures. It’s the beginning stages of literacy development, and a step on the road to becoming a reader.

So of course, nothing warms my heart more as a mom than hearing Becca “read” to her stuffed animals. As I do every day, we read books in storytime and then I put those same books in her crib with her for nap. She typically “reads” either aloud or quietly for about 15-20 minutes before falling asleep, and again for 20-30 minutes after waking up.

Today’s book of choice as I walked out of the room was The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. It’s a favorite of mine, and has become a favorite of hers, which I think is awesome. Here was the convo I overheard:
Ok, Dorge! Hungee wyerm (worm). Heya egg. Weaf (leaf). Moon. POP! Sun. Hungee hungee hungee eat eat eat. Owange! Cheh pie (cheery pie). Taustage. Weaf. Nigh night. BOOFWY! (Butterfly).

If you know the story, I’m sure her retelling made you smile, as it did me. Love this girl. So much.

At some point, I wish I remembered the date (I may have it somewhere), Becca ate her first Eggo Nutrigrain Blueberry Waffle. And it was love at first bite. She doesn’t like syrup- she prefers them just toasted and plain. And I oblige. Most mornings her breakfast consists of waffles and something. Waffles and fruit, waffles and eggs, waffles and fruit and eggs, etc. And then one day she had her first bite of a Jimmy Dean breakfast turkey sausage patty. Which has lead to morning conversations like the one this morning, which tops them all:

Me: Let’s go eat breakfast- your waffle is ready.
Becca: nana?
Me: Yes, you can have a banana.
Becca: taustidge?
Me: Yes, you can have sausage. How many pieces do you want? (I usually ask do you want one or two- most times she wants two)
Becca: five.

The crazy thing is, I know she fully understands the concept of the quantity “five”. This silly girl. She sure loves her Eggos… And her Jimmy Dean. I think we need to make an advertising deal. I bet Jimmy Dean would sell a whole lot more turkey sausage if this cute blonde bed-head in footy pjs was telling everyone she wants five pieces of their “taustidge.” Ha!

Yesterday had its ups and downs, with a few bumps and bruises, too. But in an effort to save a few of the cute little conversations we have and preserve them for the future, the one that sticks out to me from yesterday involves the cat.

The girl does love her cat. She asks about Toodles at random times, and often wants to go check on her. Toodles, you see, lives outside. But for a few rebel moments when she’s snuck in the house unseen, she’s an outside cat. We got her to hunt, and she does her job pretty well. In the winter, she lives in Cody’s shop, which is insulated, so it’s much warmer and safer than her being out in the elements. But, it makes for an interesting time of needing to put her out on the days it’s warm, and bring her back in for the nights… And because of this transition, Becca is never quite sure the location of her cat. When it’s super cold outside, she’ll touch the glass on the back french doors and say “cold.” Then, after a long pause she’ll often turn to me with a panicked look and say “Kitty! Cold! Oh no!” To which I always reassure her, “Toodles is in the shop, she’s nice and warm.”

Yesterday, Boo was stalling. For some reason her beloved room time (alone time playing independently in her room) wasn’t appealing- she just wanted Mommy. So she was sitting in my lap facing me, telling me random things that mainly made no sense at all. Suddenly, she said “Toos? Warm?” I replied, “Yes, it’s warm. Toodles is outside today.” She replied, “Door open, Daisy off off, Kitty hi!” I love it. That’s the process when we go out to see the cat. Mommy opens the door, has to tell Daisy “off,” which Becca parrots as well, and then she can go see her kitty. I must admit I was quite surprised at the completeness of her statement. The hand gestures that accompanied were so cute, too- esp the “Daisy off off” part. I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I assured her we would go out and see her kitty later, after room time. (And we did.)

What can I say? The girl loves her cat.

Ya know those days as a mom when you go to bed and think “Whew!  Somehow I survived this one.”  Well, thankfully, yesterday was NOT one of those days!  From the moment she woke up until she went to bed, we had no major incidents!  YAY!  Typically grocery shopping days are not this way.  Bless her heart, there’s just something about HEB that brings out the worst in my princess.  But today?  Today was golden.

When we arrived, we got her typical blueberry muffin from the bakery, and instead of eating it on the go, mommy hadn’t had breakfast yet either, so I got one too (banana nut), and we went to the little restaurant area and sat together and ate.  It’s not really a place equipped for kids, so she sat in my lap.  This was my view:

Her “big girl” hairdo makes me smile, and yet catches my breath all at the same time.  When did she get big enough for her hair to be pulled back like this?  And when did it get so long?  I swear, I’ve been here the whole time, but somehow I missed how quickly she really is growing up.

But I digressed.  We ate our muffins, and did our shopping.  She’s getting pretty good at pointing out produce and telling me what it is, even if we aren’t buying it.  Although I did get a pretty good chuckle when she saw a head of cabbage: “dat gape?”  Bless her heart, it sorta did look like a box of GINORMOUS green grapes!  Hahahaha.  I said, “No, sweetie, that’s cabbage – it’s sorta like lettuce.”  Her response: “oh…(long pause)…  yuck.”  HAHAHAHA.  One of these days, my dear, I’ll feed you coleslaw, you’ll love it, and I’ll remind you of this moment.

My lil grocery helper is also getting pretty good and putting things in the back of the cart for me!  Though sometimes she gets a bit over zealous.  On one particular occasion, she just tossed over her shoulder, and suddenly our pepperonis were slip sliding across a freshly mopped floor and into the next aisle.  Oops.  Our convo:
Me: Boo, you gotta be careful when you put stuff back here – if you don’t look where you are tossing, it doesn’t go in the basket and Mommy has to get it off the floor.
Boo: Baket fuh.  Ah out.  (SERIOUSLY?  Not quite 19 months and already making excuses!)
Me: No, it’s not too full and it did NOT fall out.  You weren’t careful.  Be careful where you put the food, or Mommy won’t let you put the food in the cart.  I’ll do it by myself.
Boo: I hep.
Me: Ok, but you have to be a good helper, not make more work for Mommy.
Boo: Ok. (long pause)  I hep.
And she did!  Nothing else fell out of the cart the whole time.

When we got home, she went into room time, which she LOVES.  I never know what I’ll find when I go in to get her for lunch, but this is pretty typical from my little bookworm:

Toys and chaos all around her, her nose stuck in a book.  Even when she knows I’m there.  Then she starts reading out loud to me: “Eh-tehs.  C, E, R.  Turle.”  Yes, baby, that book has letters.  C, E, and R are all letters, none of which are on that page, but they ARE indeed letters.  And yes, that, my dear, is a turtle.  She wants to learn so much.  It just blows me away, and warms my heart all at the same time.

So after her nap, (which she woke up entirely too early from!) I decided that I would be brave and finally let her actually HELP me with a baking project.  I was making these Banana Berry Muffins (her recipe linked here is for bread, but it made 24 great muffins, too!) and I told myself, ok what’s the worst that can happen?  Usually when I ask myself that question, I live to regret it.  But this time, I was pleasantly surprised!  She sat in her chair at the table and truly helped (she held the spoon/masher, I held her hand) stir the dry ingredients, mash the bananas, stir in the other wet ingredients, and then while I went to the mixer, she played with the salt box (CLOSED!) and took the towel and decided to give George a nap, drummed on the table with the spoon (I washed it off after the raw eggs, don’t freak out, moms), and just generally was very happy and a really great helper!  Note to self – this sort of activity is BEST completed right after nap time when she’s super happy! 🙂

It’s not the easiest thing ever to haul a ton of ingredients to the dining room table, mix them up there,  carry them all the way back across the kitchen to the mixer, then back to the table to fill the muffin cups, and then to the oven, but I got some extra exercise, and she truly got to help.  She was so proud of her muffins!  I made the mistake of telling her she could have one with dinner… and she determined in her mind right then and there that was all she was going to eat for dinner.  SO… with a few grapes, a container of yogurt, and a few sips of water, she ended her day the same way it began – with a muffin.

P.S. Tried this recipe for Chicken and Rice Casserole for dinner and it was really good. 🙂  Served with carmel carrots.  She missed out.  Our deal was to eat all her yogurt, and she did, so she got her muffin.

And all was right in the heart and mind of my little baked-goods-lover.  It was a good day.

Whew.  I’m not sure I had any clue how LITTLE energy I’d have in the second trimester this time around!  I’m past the halfway mark with our precious little Grayson, and I’m still waiting for the sudden burst of energy that will help me accomplish the countless nesting projects that are on my “to do” lists.  I can make it until about 12:45 each day, and then I hit a wall of total exhaustion that can’t be scaled.  And speaking of scales, I have quit stepping on them every day because the climbing numbers add to my exhaustion and frustration.  Frustration  that grows when food gets flung across the dining room because simply saying “All Done” wasn’t enough.  It’s enough to make me want to pull my hair out sometimes.  A lot of times.  But then there’s the cute way she looks at the clock and says “Cock. Teek teek tock.”  Gotta work on pronouncing those L blends still… ha!

But it’s those cute little moments holding her, looking at the clock her great grandfather once owned, that make every single bit of exhaustion fade away.  It’s the countless times I hear, “Mommy up!  Peeze?”  It’s her picking up bits of paper from the floor and saying “Trash?  Away?  Ok.  Hepper.”   But it’s more than that.  It’s the “nuggles” and watching her as she sleeps.  It’s listening to her count even though she misses numbers.  It’s working puzzles with her and helping her learn her colors.  All the while, watching the stretch marks on my hips expand as I feel tiny little kicks and punches, and just this week, hiccups.  Those moments, justify those marks and turn them into Mama Tiger Stripes.

My former clothes may not fit right, and the scale may not be my friend in this world of peanut-butter-and-strawberry-jam-sandwich cravings.  Ten or eleven hours of sleep at night may not cut the sleepies in the morning, or afternoon, or evening.  I may miss out on lots of evening time with my hubby to desperately attempt to find more time to cram in sleep.  I may feel like a zombie sometimes.  But it is all 250% worth it.  Every moment.  Every single possible fear or bit of nervous energy is washed away when I look around me at her beautiful artwork, and see her passion for books.  I may not know how she’ll handle being a big sister, but the moments when she pats my ever-expanding-middle and says “Baby tummy.  Dayson!  Bubba!”  Those are the moments when I don’t worry so much and I know that like every time she’s thrown a fit, every time she’s had to go to time out, every time she’s been loud when she should have been quiet, this too shall pass.  We’ll make mistakes.  We’ll figure things out.  We’ll do things right.  We’ll do things wrong.  And we’ll love them both more than we can understand.

But through it all, I must remember.  She’s only a baby herself.  A baby with a beautiful, sweet, caring heart, who likes to help say “Thank you” to Jesus before her meals, who gives hugs and kisses just because, and who is now quick to say “I you” and “I you, too” to people she loves.  No matter what this little guy comes out looking like, no matter how quickly he walks or talks or learns, he has a big sister who already loves him SO much, (and will no doubt hate him at times, too) and will set an example for him in both good and bad ways.  We’ll work through every one of them, and love him as much as we love her, and together with God at our head, we’ll figure out this crazy world of parenthood. Whether we get any sleep or not.

Grayson Cody- 20th week