The Lovely Years: Jillian: {2 Years}

Jillian –

You are 2 years old today! I can barely wrap my mind around the idea that my bitty baby is 24 months old. You are going to the doctor in 5 days, so I will update later with your official stats. According to our at home measurements, you are 23lbs, 3 oz and 34 inches long. Update: You are 24 lbs, 4 oz and 33 inches long!
{That is 5 lbs, 11 oz & 4-3/4 inches longer than last year, and 17 lbs, 14oz & 13 inches longer than at birth!}

You wear mostly 18 Month, and a few 12-18 Month clothes. You wear size 4 Luvs or Pampers Cruisers brand diapers for the daytime and size 4 Huggies Overnight for bed. You currently wear size 4 shoes, but you may need to move up to size 5 soon.

Eating is a relatively easy with you. You are fed three meals and two snacks. If we let you, you’d just graze all day long, and seem to like smaller meals over large ones. We are fortunate that you are not a picky eater, and I can count on one hand the foods you absolutely will not eat. You drink whole milk for breakfast, lunch, and a little right before bedtime. You have water with dinner and if you’re thirsty throughout the day. You use sippy cups with straws, but can drink from cups without a lid.

You have 16 teeth! All we’re missing are those two-year molars and you’ll be done growing teeth. Before we know it, you’ll be losing your first tooth! And after all that hard work ;)

Sleep is great when you’re feeling 100%. You only take one nap in the late afternoon for about 1 ½ - 2 ½ hours depending. Nighttime sleeping is going well too! Your big birthday gift is your very own big girl bed! We will transition you into it in the coming months. Hopefully that transition will be relatively smooth. If you’re not feeling good, it’s harder to get you to nap or fall asleep quickly. Usually a little snuggle time with daddy at night will get you right to sleep. You also have bad dreams every so often. You’ll wake up crying and will hold your daddy tight when he checks on you. Usually we cuddle and you’re ready to go back to bed within 5 minutes or so.

This fall, you started a pre-preschool class with mama! It’s called Listening for Littles, and it is through your speech therapy group. Overall, you seem to really like school, and I’m sure you appreciate that mama gets to stay with you. You are finally saying two-syllable words, and have a few phrases like “all done”, “pretty shoes”, etc. You can count to 10 perfectly, and you try counting to 15, but you usually skip 11 and 12. You love to count and sort things repeatedly! You can say the alphabet with a little help, and you can recite the words to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, but you don’t sing. We’re just proud of you for talking so much :) Your speech really started to flourish around October, and took another leap when we came home with your brother! Also, you are finally to the point where speech therapy isn’t a cause for a total meltdown for you! I’m very proud of your progress baby girl! You truly amaze me :)

Climbing, running, walking, hopping… you name it, you want to do it! You absolutely keep us on our toes. We are lucky that you haven’t had any major spills, but you definitely push the envelope sometimes. We love giving you the freedom to explore the world around you though! It was hard this summer because we figured out you are allergic to grass, (and you are possibly allergic to cats too). This meant that we had to give you allergy medicine, watch the weather to see if we could play outdoors, have you sleep with your humidifier, and all kinds of other things. The silver lining? We got you a little swing set and slide for our backyard! You love this and can’t wait to go for a quick swing after dinner. Once the cold weather started to kill off the grass, you were feeling better. This meant we could play outdoors more! I swear you would live outdoors if we let you!

The biggest change in your life just happened; you’re new a big sister! Your brother, David, was born on Dec. 1^st, and you have transitioned better than I expected! You weren’t too sure about this new thing in your life, but seemed to be more open after he came home from the hospital. You also did really well with seeing mama in the hospital. I think it helped that I went on a mission trip this summer for a whole week. It gave you the opportunity to see that you can be apart from mama, and that I will always come back. Plus, having your grandparents around to give you lots of attention helped :) Hopefully you will continue to love being around your new brother!

Jillian, you are such a special little girl. You are our first born, and we could not imagine life without you. As you learn and grow in so many ways, we find our hearts bursting at the seams! Your personality lights up our lives, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for you. We love you baby girl! :)

Some outtakes: