Two Years Old

Adelaida is now two years (and one month, because I haven't had time to post anything in the past month!) old. She is growing up so quickly and turning into such a wonderful little girl. For the past six weeks we have been telling her that she's not a baby anymore, she is a big girl -- and now I'm beginning to realize that we are right! She really isn't a baby anymore, an any way!

I think these pictures, taken on her month-birthday each month, really show just how much she has grown in the past two years.

Her birth-day, December 20th, 2008. She has come so far from such a rough beginning!


Five days old, just home from the hospital and still too small for her clothes.


One month old, happy to be carried in the laundry basket.


At two months old, she was already so inquisitive, quietly taking in the world around her.


At three months old, Adelaida still liked to snuggle and could fall asleep with me holding her. I miss those days!


Here she is at four months old, with her thumb in her mouth. Surprisingly, she stopped sucking her thumb when she was about nine months old.


By five months, Adelaida would laugh at everything! She was so much fun and we just loved to hear her laugh.


Six months old and just a bit shorter than Pink Panther:


Such a happy seven-month old!


Her hair started laying down on her head around eight months :


Nine months old and mobile!


By ten months, Adelaida could really get around: she would cruise around furniture when she could, and crawl when she couldn't cruise. Getting her to lay still for this photo was tough!


Eleven-month-old Adelaida loved to "perform" on demand: clapping, waving, and repeating sign language back to us. She could also say "da-da" but didn't really add "ma-ma" to her vocabulary for another few months.


One-year-old Adelaida was so much fun! In just one year, she grew from a tiny infant who needed to much attention to an independent, beautiful, smart little girl.


At this point I started taking Pink Panther pictures once every three months instead of every month.

Fifteen-month-old Adelaida was fascinated by tags. And, she could say "ma-ma!" I was so delighted every time I heard her say my name.


Adelaida at eighteen months, with such a cute bellybutton!


Finally, by twenty-one months old, Adelaida was clearly longer than Pink Panther. She had about a nine-month plateau in growing where she didn't grow at all, but seems to have gotten back on track and is now gaining both length and weight, although slowly.


For her two-year Pink Panther picture, Dale had to take Pink Panther into the closet (where Adelaida was sure to follow) to get a decent photo of Adelaida next to Pink Panther!


It has been such a short two years, and yet Adelaida has changed so much. I am looking forward to the next two years with her!

Nap Time with a Toilet-Training Toddler

We started toilet training about seven weeks ago, and in that time Adelaida has become a pro at using the toilet. She is especially good about peeing in the toilet -- she rarely has accidents and even stays dry during naptime most days. Pooping in the toilet has been more of a challenge: she did great the first month, then got into a routine where she would hold her stool as long as she could, tell us she needed to use the toilet, sit on the toilet for a few minutes and squirm, then stand up and poop. Not quite ideal, but I'm sure she'll figure it out eventually.

Because she was holding her stool in so long, Adelaida was getting a little constipated. To combat this, we added prunes to her diet this weekend. She loves prunes, but we limit her to four a day, because we don't want the opposite problem either!

This morning, four days after starting prunes, Adelaida had a bowel movement in her diaper before I got her out of bed. That was fine with me, because at least she is getting it out. It was a pretty large volume, so I assumed she would wait at least another day or two before having another bowel movement.

Fast-forward to naptime today. She sat on the toilet and peed just before naptime, and I put her down for her nap by reading her a book, tucking her into her toddler bed, and closing the door behind me as I left the room. Adelaida often talks, sings, and plays by herself before nap, so when I heard her singing and walking throughout her room for the first hour of her naptime, I didn't think much of it. Eventually she crawled back in her bed and went to sleep, and slept almost two hours.

When she woke up, I opened the door to her room and found Adelaida, naked from the waist down, sitting on her bed. The room was littered with clothes, blankets, and stuffed animals that she had been playing with for the first hour of naptime. I asked Adelaida where her pants were, she pointed to them across the room and said "pants wet." I thought she might have peed in her pants before nap and taken them off, but they were completely dry. I then looked for her underwear, but as I looked across the floor for her underwear I noticed several brown spots on the carpet that I'm certain hadn't been there before her nap. I finally found her underwear, right next to the door, and next to several more brown spots on the carpet ... and that's when I realized what had happened.

She must have decided, sometime during the first hour of naptime, that she needed to poop. She removed her pants, removed her underwear, and went to the door (headed to the toilet, maybe?). Adelaida can't open the door to her bedroom, so naturally she just squatted down on the floor in front of the door and relieved herself there. At this point she was apparently not yet tired, so continued playing at various places throughout the room -- I could clearly see a poopy butt-print next to her bookcase, another by her closet, and a third by her dresser, as well as several smaller prints that may have been left later. Eventually she was tired, so crawled into bed -- wearing only her shirt -- and slept for two hours. When I opened the door to her room after naptime, the door scooted the poop back, so fortunately I didn't step in it myself!

Of course there was a lot of cleaning up to do this afternoon: Adelaida, her bedroom floor, her bed, every piece of furniture she could touch in her room, and after all of those things were cleaned, me!

This is yet another way I never imagined I'd spend an afternoon! But such is the life of a toddler's parent.

I was so intent on cleaning up the various messes this afternoon that I didn't take any pictures of the mess (fortunately!). Instead, I'll leave you with a picture of Adelaida from last week, when she wanted not only her pants and panties, but also her shirt, off to use the toilet. When she was done on the toilet, she painstakingly put her panties back on and put her shoes on, but wasn't interested in either the pants or the shirt, so she ran around mostly naked for a while -- and quite happy to be mostly naked!