Mariah Lately

It's been awhile since I've updated on Mariah. Partly because time flies and partly because she has been a little challenging. She has her ups and downs like any toddler but sometimes it seems like there are far more downs than ups. Overall, she had a good June and most of July, and I love that the older she gets the more she can communicate. 

(Pictures from our visit to the Rose Gardens at Elizabeth Park in West Hartford a few weeks ago. Thanks Mom for her cute ice cream dress :)

She knows most of her colors, some of her shapes, and a few letters (A, B, C, O, M). She likes to count things, very carefully pointing to one at a time saying "two...two...two..." The last few weeks she is calling Matt by his first name and she has been calling us both Honey. She calls herself Yaya and needs to do things "Yaya self!" She is learning so much and talking constantly and makes me laugh HARD every day. 

She still loves her food. As soon as breakfast is over she asks, “Dinner?”. She asks to put salt and pepper on everything, and if I say no to salt then she asks for honey :) She is a little cook and wants to mix foods together and practice making things herself. She is constantly yelling, “NACK!!” (snack) at me, but I never seem to guess which snack she wants before she crumbles into a pile of tears on the floor. 

Her favorite show by far is Daniel Tiger. She copies so many phrases and mannerisms from that show it's borderline embarrassing. If you've seen it, then you can appreciate that she tells us "ugga mugga" and "hiya toots" and wants to play silly beast and eat banana swirl.

Despite her challenges Mariah makes me laugh every single day. She had a doctor’s check up last week and when I told her we had to go to the doctors she immediately recalled the episode where Daniel Tiger went to the doctor and said "Doctor! Daniel! Shot! Yay!" Unfortunately her experience was not all smiles and giggles like the show portrayed. Media can be so misleading. Huge disappointment. For the next two days, she kept pointing to her bandage saying “doctor. shot. doctor.” I asked her one time, “You’re right, you got a shot. and what did the doctor say?” She shook her finger and said, “No more monkeys!!” haha!! Fine line between reality and song singing.

I was rubbing the inside of a banana peel on a mosquito bite on my leg last month so try to make the itching stop (it actually works!), and she looked at me with disgust, then came over and said “mama. yucky.” and took the banana peel and threw it in the garbage. Sometimes you need a one year old to call you out.

Mariah loves flowers and collecting rocks. She stops to smell every flower and usually wants to put them in her hair or behind her ears. She loves her “wower” (flower) jammies and her “buherfye” (butterfly) dress. When we were going to the library the other day, as we were walking out of our apartment she held up a finger and said “Wait! hairbow! necklace!” and we had to get a hairbow and, not one, but two necklaces before we left the house. A lady must look presentable. When we play with play-doh now she only wants to use it to make bracelets and rings.

She watches very intently as I put on make up and says “paint face.” Very confusing for her since when we paint pictures I tell her no less than a hundred times to NOT paint her face.

The words I hear most often from her are: “holdyouholdyouholdyou!”, “cuddle mama”, “hands. hold hands” “wheez!” (squeeze) and “bih huh” (big hug). She is so affectionate it truly melts my heart. I never ever ever tire of kissing her cheeks and hearing her giggle. When I say, "I love you soooo much!" She replies, "Soooo much!!"

Mariah’s other favorite phrase right now is “udder one” (other one). If you kiss one arm, she holds up the other and says “udder one!” If you give her a cracker, she takes it with one hand then holds out the other and says “udder one!” She needs everything to be even.

Just in church yesterday, as the sacrament prayer was ending everyone said amen, then after a brief pause Mariah yelled “A-MEN!!” everyone laughed, and as the bread starting getting passed she said , “BITE PEEES!” (bite please!). She is such a ham, she was looking all around smiling. She loves making people laugh.

Mariah loves her friends so much, she talks about Tyson, Abbie, and Alice all the time and asks to go to their houses every day. She fake calls them on the phone and has detailed conversations with them.

She says "Hi!" to everything and everybody when we're out and about. Hi to dogs, hi to lights, hi to people, hi to flowers, and hi to cars.