Isla: 2 Years, 5 months

Isla is at such a fun age! Maybe all kids are fun at this age but I think she is absolutely hilarious. She comes up with the most random ways to entertain herself which 1) makes me feel boring that I didn't think of the activity myself and 2) makes me thankful she is capable of being creative. Take for instance path building. She likes to collect all the pillows from the living room and lay them out across the floor to build a "path." She also likes to utilize a set of hardcover books on our shelf for the same purpose. Then she asks "Mom go on the path with me?"

Isla can officially spell her name! I just randomly caught her saying "I-S-L-A" one day. I'm trying to teach her to write it now. She asks me to do it all the time so hopefully she will figure it out before long.

I see little bits (ok maybe a lot of bits) of my personality in her. Each of the place settings in her toy dishes set is a different color and the other day I tried to give her a pink fork to go with her white plate. I was immediately corrected and told she would be needing the white fork with the white plate. I've intentionally tried to be very lax about this sort of thing in my play with her as OCD tendencies are not something I want to pass on to her. But apparently it runs in her blood. :)

For whatever reason, the staircase has turned into the bedroom for all her dolls and stuffed animals. She loves to put them down for their naps on the steps and always makes sure to remind me "Mom, be quiet. Ducky is sleeping."

Speaking of Ducky, Isla is coming up with her own little catch phrases. Her latest is to add a "y" to the end of a word and then repeat it again without the "y." Like her ducky is now "Ducky Ducks" and her soap has become "Soapy Soap." I feel like she's done it to a few other words too I just can't recall what they are at present. It makes me laugh.

We have added this wonderful little question to our "most-commonly-used-sentences-in-the-Crozier-household" and it has almost changed our lives from a discipline standpoint. Isla continues to test and test and test. But now when she is testing and bordering on disobeying, we ask her "Isla, are you going to choose to obey or disobey?" It really gets her attention and she stops whatever she is doing and usually responds eagerly "Obey!" and does whatever we ask. Only once did she tell me "Disobey!" and I don't think she was pleased with the consequences so that was the end of that. Yesterday over breakfast she told me out of nowhere "God wants me to obey." (Yes, apparently she is listening!) Then she proceeded to ask me "Where's God?" and so began a popular conversation in our house... She knows "He's in our hearts!" and yesterday she told me He was in Emma's heart too. :)

Isla adores her little sister and I have been particularly touched by how the two are engaging with one another this past month. Isla loves to lay on top of Emma and repeat "We don't share germs!" over and over in her face. (Can you tell she's growing up in a house with two medical professionals as parents?) They both proceed to giggle and laugh and so the cycle repeats. I hate to admit it but my two year old has become a mighty fine little babysitter during dinner prep and clean up time. I'll ask Isla to go give Emma her binky or go make Emma laugh and she will!

I love how Isla says certain words. For whatever reason she has never been able to say "picture." Instead it comes out "pick-shook" and so I had to capture it on video because someday she'll say it right and I'll be sad. She did finally master the word "pool" but it takes a lot of concentration first for her to get it right!

The other day I was changing her diaper and out of no where she told me "Some day when I am bigger and bigger, a boy gonna give me a ring for my finger!" She also told me that she'd like a big girl watch so she can wear it with her running shoes and run for exercise.

She joined me in doing my Jillian Michael's workout DVD a couple times last week while we were snowed in. She used Emma's stacking rings as weights and it was pretty adorable. I'd just been using my 3 pound weights to break myself back in but of course Isla had to ask why I wasn't using the 7 pounders. I told her that I couldn't lift those ones yet so she went the rest of the day repeating that "When mommy is older and older, she'll be able to lift the big green weights." Yes Isla, someday when I'm older.

Isla seems a bit more interested in using the potty over the past couple weeks (I think mostly because it prolongs bedtime). But, we've had two successes in four days so that give me hope. I'm still not pushing it as I know she'll let me know when she's ready.

One of Isla's very favorite words right now is "actually." She often tells me things like "Actually I'd like pasta Mommy" or "My dolly needs a clean diaper actually."

I think we conquered our early morning waking problem where Isla would start wailing at 5 AM for us to come fix her blanket....We told her she was old enough now to fix her own blanket and sure enough, after a few demonstration where we showed her how, she can do it all by herself. Ahhh, the magic of empowering...

As for other favorites, she is loving Spot the dog books, gluing all sorts of "crafts" with her glue stick, having her Daddy tell her made up stories and pretending the coffee table is a slide at the park (ummmm?) She's such a sweetheart and I'm grateful for her every day!