She's so curious...

I'm starting to see that as Alex approaches age 3, curiosity is starting to set in! I can see the "Why?" and "What is that?" questions coming now. We've had some funny happenings over the past few weeks that I have to share.

The first took place at my parents' house over the holidays, when Alex was watching cousin Nolan have his diaper changed (can you guess where I'm going with this?) and she pointed out to me "Mommy, look-Nolan has a tail!" She probably said it 5 times, over and over, and my brother and I couldn't stop laughing. Probably not the best response, but I was caught off guard! When she says something these days she needs a response of some sort or she will continue to say it over and over, so I finally said "Yes you're right" and I left it at that. I haven't given much thought to dealing with these issues yet, but I can see they are coming!

She's also going through a phase where she needs to correct you if you say something inaccurate--for example, Marlon says "You're my little sweetheart" and she responds "No I'm not, I'm Alex". And if Marlon doesn't take back his statement she gets very worked up, saying "I'm NOT a sweetheart, I'm ALEX". It's pretty amazing to watch her thought process as she figures this stuff out in her head.

The next interesting event took place yesterday, but it was NOT a pleasant one. While driving Alex home from school I gave her a box of raisins to snack on (for those of you with kids older than mine, can you guess where I might be going with this one?). Just last week she was eating raisins in the car and I noticed her trying to stick it up her nose--I quickly yelled at her (out of concern) and she got all teary eyed, so I back-tracked and explained that she should never stick food up her nose because it could get stuck. Well I guess she didn't quite get my message, because yesterday she says "Oh no-the raisin is stuck" and I look back to see her eyes filling up with tears. I stayed calm because I didn't want to scare her and I asked if it was in her nose, to which she replied "Yes". Mind you, I'm driving on the highway going 70 MPH, so I told her to just hold tight, then I noticed her stick her finger up to try and get it, so I quickly said NO--don't put your finger up there--I could only imagine how far up it had gone at that point. When we got to a light I reached back and tried to have her blow into a tissue while covering up the other nostril--no luck. Now I was starting to panic a bit! We got home and I took her into my office where I knew there were tweezers, and I held her back under the light to see if I could see it, and it was so far up I could barely tell it was there. I said a little prayer, got my cell phone out in case I needed to call the dr, then tried to have her blow her nose again. I was a little scared to use the tweezers because I thought I could possibly do more harm than good. Blowing the nose wasn't working and she was getting a little upset, telling me to get it out. She grabbed the tweezers off my desk and said "Use these"--(it's as if this has happened to her before??), so I carefully stuck them up there and after a few tries I was successfully able to remove it. Thank goodness it was a raisin that is mushy and not something like a peanut. Hopefully she will remember this experience and never try something like it again!

She's also gotten into playing make believe with her toys and dolls, which is pretty cute to watch. I've always thought that would be a fun thing when it came along, and it is great to see her playing on her own, which she won't have to do for too much longer once baby brother comes along!

She's becoming a good helper--she likes to help cook-particularly mixing stuff in bowls, and she's great with the laundry...putting it in the dryer, taking it out, (still not so great at folding), and then putting it in the proper room (although she typically dumps it onto the floor unless given specific instruction!).

Guess that's it for now...for those of you who have kids approaching 2 and 3, you're in for a fun ride!