a bit about bea pt 4

bea got hot this morning while we were hanging out in my bed (our usual morning practice for when she wakes up too early) and asked if i could help her take off her jammies, so i did. and then i looked over at my baby girl in a little white cami and big girl underwear and wondered where the heck my little baby in diapers and onesies went and what the heck happened?!

i realized a while ago that i was long overdue for an entry on bea but i've been avoiding blogging for a while because our family is more or less in a time of transition and i can't spill every little detail in an update, and whenever we're in that phase, i just avoid the blog. but as i get older, i realize that life is more or less always in transition, and if i neglect to jot down my memories every time my life isn't 100% together i'm basically going to have a whole lot of holes in my records. so, today, i blog!

-milestone alert: bea is finally, for all intents and purposes, potty trained. she wears big girl underwear every day, tells us whenever she needs to use the potty (though does need a few reminders throughout the day), and for the past week and a half, she has been dry throughout the night. i have a bunch of size 4 diapers that i thought about giving away but then i remembered i'm totally turning this girl's world upside down in a month and i'm expecting some regression. so we'll cross that bridge when we get there. she got a doc mcstuffins doctor kit for her first 3-day dry stint and i have probably gotten 8000 checkups since that day. but not she mostly asks for me to give her checkups. she likes to be the patient for some reason...

-bea's imagination is active and often hilarious. she has a tub of little action figure toys ("guys") that consist of princesses, nintendo amiibo "guys", ponies, nemo figurines and a few other little guys which she likes to play with a lot. today she piled a bunch of them into her favorite pair of shoes and declared that they were going for a drive. she then made a "car" out of 3 chairs lined up one in front of the other, demanded i get in the back seat, plopped in the seat in front of me and put her guys in the front and we proceeded to "take a drive" for the next half hour. i wasn't allowed to move. we play games like this a lot.

***interruption: i'd just like to mention that in the middle of me typing that sentence, bea just peed all over the living room rug for the first time after 2 weeks of no accidents. potty training is a process i guess. a really. long. process.****

-bea is a really active "player". most kids her age don't play "with" each other, but "next to" each other but she really does like to engage in imaginative play with other kids. it can be tough when kids her age don't always get it and don't want to go along but she has a few special friends that will indulge her. she's always trying to hold other kids' hands and run from something with them but most kids her age really don't want their hands held for some reason. whenever i tell her we are going to play with friends she says "i hold her hand????" (everyone is "her", even boys. working on that.) she gets pretty crestfallen when she gets rejected, which is pretty much always. she is a tender soul who likes to give attention and affection and it can be a little much for most other kiddos who don't really know how to respond to it.

-whenever we play outside, bea's first order of business is to find an appropriate stick. she then proceeds to ask me "want a stick mom?" and finds me a stick. she really likes playing with sticks.

-she is SO excited for her baby brother to get here. every time we see a baby: "Look mom! like baby bredder!!!!!" she loves helping me open packages of baby things (gifts, gear i've ordered online, etc) and was very excited to help me wash all of his clothes yesterday. i think she kind of gets what's going to happen. whenever i ask when baby brother is coming, she makes her hands into fists, brings them up under her chin, smiles really wide, and whisper-squeals "in the summer! i so excited!!!!" she knows baby brother is a boy ("like daddy!"), she knows he is in my tummy, and she knows when he comes out he will be a baby ("so little tiny!"). she often asks to watch "baby bredder video??" which are all of my what to expect app and baby center app week-by-week pregnancy videos on my phone. her favorite one is the labor and delivery video. it's a computer animated, cross-section, diagram-like video of what happens during labor. she gets a good visual of how the baby is going to come out and how the mom goes from having a baby in there to not having a baby in there and i think she is really grasping that that is what's going to happen to me. at least it seems that way, i really have no idea what's going on in her head haha

-we have been done with the binky for almost 3 whole months! it was pretty painless, as she only used it at night and naps, so she basically just cried for like 5 minutes the night we took it away and was fine after that. i will say that it's harder for her to fall asleep during naptime now. and she doesn't take as good naps anymore (which could also be an age thing), but when we all really need a break and nothing else works, i'll sometimes sneak her a binky during naptime and it gets her right to sleep like old times. and she doesn't ask for it again after that either. i think we are just lucky with her that way. whenever she sees a binky anywhere she says "i dont use a binky. they for baby bredders." so i think we are on the right track with that.

-bea's fallen in love with the beach. it is her favorite place to be. she loves to collect "shelfs" in her bucket, dig in the sand with her toys, and dip her toes in the (freezing!) water. our beach has a playground with a million swings too, which are her other true love, so she asks to go to the beach pretty much all the time. so glad it's finally warm enough to do it and that we live so close! (even if it's only the sound and not the "real ocean")

-bea says her own prayers now, with no help. really, we get shushed when we try and help. she prays on our meals and says family prayer at night and her own prayers when she goes to bed. they usually include abby on her mission, blessing the strawberries (? dont know why she says this instead of whatever we are eating. but she always blesses the strawberries), gratitude for church and nursery annnnnd that's about it. we'll work on adding more when she feels like letting us help again.

-she LOVES ballet class ("bal-yay kloss." love that british touch on the word "class"..... don't know where it came from). this week is her last week of ballet and her recital is on saturday and i am just in pieces about it. it is the highlight of her week, and she loves sharing her moves with us daily.

-on the whole, bea is typically a delightful child, as anyone who spends time with her will attest to. she has her moments though for sure, especially when she is tired and hungry, and that's when her 2 starts to show. most days she is a joy, but yesterday (and i am not exaggerating here, i am 100% serious) she had a real, true, full-blown meltdown every 10 minutes except for the hour where i let her play in the tub. every. ten. minutes. so even the most perfect of children have their days.

-i was talking with some friends this past week about how we never really had to baby-proof anything for bea. she really has never been interested in "getting into things" around the house. she's never in the cabinets unless she needs a bowl or something, she never looks under the sink, she never fools with our electronics (which are not properly stowed by any means), and she doesn't like it when things aren't put away on shelves, so she doesn't usually get stuff off of them. she had a phase maybe when she was like 1 where she would get wipes out of the wipes box a lot, and get all of my *ahem* feminine items out of the bathroom all the time, but that's basically it. other than that, no messes with this one (meal time is a different story -_- even now that she's big). now that she's older and capable of moving things around, she still is pretty tame, and only moves furniture around when she wants a sippy cup off the counter or something. i am not expecting this to happen again with the next child.

-she still sleeps with her swaddle blankets ("sleepies"). she needs one white, patterned one on the right side of her face (either circles or stars. her preference changes daily.) and one solid colored one on the left side of her face (again, color preference changes daily). i have no idea why that started but it started in like february and is still standard bedtime practice.

i know there's more i've been meaning to write down but i can't think of it right now. pregnancy brain. i'll come back and add it if/when i remember. i'll add pictures then too.

can i just say though that these pregnancy mood swings are really no joke?! after i heard bea say "mommy i have peepees!!!!!" and watched in horror as she peed (and kept peeing and peeing and PEEING) all over the rug today, the pregnancy rage boiled up (which of course had to be suppressed because scolding is apparently the absolute no-no in potty training. all "good job"s and "we'll try again next time!"s.) but after the mess was somewhat taken care of and i started cooking her mac and cheese for lunch it literally just left and i was back to loving every aspect of my life, dirty dishes in the sink, still in pajamas at noon, endless laundry and all. it's amazing what spending your entire day serving someone else (and a hint of caffeine!) can do. especially when it's the last thing you want to be doing. yeah it can really be a crap job sometimes (literally) but there really isn't any better way to spend my time. at this point though i think i would rather be spending it with this little boy out of my belly rather than in. i am getting totes uncomfortable up in hurr.