She refuses to do anything according to the norm. Sometimes I wish I could just crawl inside her head for five minutes and try to figure out what really goes on in there. It's also fun trying to decide what's going on in there. It will be easier when she can actually answer my questions by herein lies the problem, as it were.

She will not talk until she is pretty certain she'll say the word correctly. Sometimes a word will slip out and then Jonathan or I will try to coax her to repeat it but she won't! A few weeks later she'll be more comfortable with the word and will then say it more often. Almost all of her new words are dealt with in this manor. I'm pretty sure this stems from me. I have major performance anxiety and when I don't know that I'll do something the very best I find it difficult to do the task at all. As a child it would stress me out to the enth degree. She seems to have acquired this trait from me.

There are pros and cons to this. The major pro is the fact that I can relate to her feelings and for the most part I can calm her down when she gets overly anxious. The cons are her complete unwillingness to try new things unless it's on her terms. She's just so...*sigh* me...lol

All in all she really is an amazing kid...really. She'll sit and play by herself for quite awhile. I can see a burgeoning imagination growing right before my eyes (she'll 'feed' bunny on a regular basis making eating motions with her mouth, it's so cute!) and she's just so sweet I think her sweetness oozes out of her. I did not think it was possible to love a little person so much. :p

<--She's giving the 'camera face' in this pic...lol

I'm most definitely getting that 'want another baby' urge. It mostly has to do with the fact that it's 2010 and Jonathan and I have agreed this is the year we want to try for baby number two.

Now being me I keep talking about the 'plans' and how well it would work out if...yadda yadda. I'm fully aware that we can't control when we get pregnant. I'd honestly be pretty happy if it happened any time this year. I would like to be able to go to my parents place for Christmas but I also want to submit to the Lord's plans so I just keep laying it in his hands.

And I watch the Veggie Tales episode that teaches about patience...it's very helpful...lol

Speaking of Veggie Tales we've scaled back the viewing for our little fan here at home. It was getting to the point where she couldn't stay interested in anything for longer than a few minutes at a time and I think that had to do with the constant influx of images from the TV. So we just allow a couple of episodes a day and after a day of not really understanding Arielle adapted quite well. Now she'll happily play with her books or toys of quite a long time. Her newest thing is to play with an afghan she'll place it nicely on herself while she's sitting in her chair, take it off...rinse repeat...lol

She seems incredibly fascinated with the fact that her feet are beneath the blanket. She gets so thrilled every time she 'finds' them after pulling it off...lol I love, love, LOVE looking at life through the eyes of a toddler. It's so cute!

I was reading back in the first couple months of her life how little sleep we were getting and I'm just marveling how that's changed. She is truly an amazing sleeper, sure she has her bad days but really they are few and far between. Over all she's awesome! She sleeps from about 8 at night to between 8 and 9 in the morning, then goes down for a nap between 1 and 1:30...she'll probably chat and sing to herself, even giggle, for sometimes an hour and a half, then she'll sleep for almost two hours...and I swear to you she'll go to bed fine at 8 that night...it's crazy talk!

Sure this will probably change or the two year molars will come and mess with it, but right now I don't care about what could happen cause she's a sleeping dream. Which is why the rose coloured glasses are back on about a newborn...lol

Anyway my dream child is up so should go play with her...look at me all bloggy at the beginning of a month. :)