Abigail: 2 Years Old

It feels pretty surreal that Abigail is TWO years old. I had to keep reminding myself all last week that her birthday was coming up. Life is just that busy these days, especially with school starting back recently. It doesn’t seem that long ago that Abigail was born, and here we are. When our other girls turned two, we already had another baby on the way…so maybe that’s another reason why it feels so different this time. Our “baby” is the two year old. For being our last baby, she sure does make life interesting. Travis says we are “going out with a bang” ;) More on that to come!

Abigail currently weighs 24 pounds (10th percentile) and is 32.5 inches tall (25th percentile). She is wearing mostly 18 month clothes, although she can still fit into several 12 month outfits. Our little peanut! Once it gets cold and we have to go back to wearing pants, it may be hard to find pants that will be long enough but not fall down ;) But it cracks me up that she can wear 12 month shorts, and they fit great :) She recently moved up to size 4 diapers, only because we ran out of 3s and I didn’t buy any more. I think the 4s fit better though. She is wearing mainly size 5 shoes, although I think her feet have really grown over this summer. She may be in 6s before long at all. Abigail is FINALLY getting hair…haha!! You can actually see it now. It has really come in a lot since the spring. My favorite thing is that she has some curls in the back just like Brooklyn did. I had been secretly hoping for another curly-headed baby once Brooklyn’s curls fell out, so I am really excited. Her hair is starting to look pretty wild sometimes, but that just matches her personality ;) Abigail has 16 teeth if I’m counting correctly. A few of those are still trying to come in all the way. I think the only teeth she is missing are her 2 year molars, and then we will be DONE with teething! Yay!!

As far as food goes, we still have a very picky eater on our hands. Maybe picky isn’t the right word…it’s really more like a “difficult” eater. It is really hard to nail down what she likes and doesn’t like because it changes daily. And if you know Abigail very well, you know that if she’s not in the mood for something, she absolutely will not eat it…even if she ate it yesterday. She eats cereal for breakfast most mornings and is doing really well with a spoon and fork these days. She usually does pretty good eating a PB&J for lunch (she calls it “nummy J” right now…so cute!), but even nummy J is hit or miss some days. She loves milk, but also drinks water pretty well too. She likes many different types of fruit, but it’s a guess whether or not she will eat a certain type on a certain day. She eats a few vegetables (carrots, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, corn), but she doesn’t eat any of them on a consistent basis. She has a huge sweet tooth and never turns down dessert, but she rarely gets it because she usually chooses not to eat her healthy foods first. Basically, meal times are a real struggle right now. Many meals end with her screaming and pitching a huge fit because she wants “more”, but she doesn’t want any of the foods we offer her. Are you getting a good mental picture of her personality yet? ;) She eats meat sometimes, but it’s pretty rare. Usually, if she tries a bite of meat or something that’s chewy, she will chew on it for FOREVER before finally swallowing it or spitting it out. I’m talking about chewing on one bite for 30 minutes or longer. It’s pretty crazy. I will be very thankful when meal times are not this challenging, but this is just the stage we’re currently in.

On the other hand, though, Abigail is a great sleeper at night…knock on wood. She very rarely wakes up in the night anymore. Her bedtime is usually between 7:30 and 8 PM, and she generally wakes up between 6:15 and 7 AM. She is still sleeping in her crib, and I am in no rush to move her to a big girl bed. So far she hasn’t attempted to climb out of it, so hopefully we can keep using it for a while longer. I can only imagine the battles we’ll face when she is in a bed that she can climb out of. Whew…I don’t even want to think about that. She is still using her paci to go to sleep, and she usually sleeps with several stuffed animal friends too :) Naps are tricky again now that Brooklyn is back in school. It was so nice over the summer to let Abigail nap as long as she wanted to in the afternoon! These days, she is going down for a nap around 11:30 AM or 12 PM (immediately after lunch). She sometimes will wake up on her own, and other days I have to wake her up at 2:15 PM to go pick up Brooklyn from school. That’s her only nap of the day, so we just have to squeeze it in where we can. The challenge of being the youngest child!

Abigail isn’t running quite yet, but I don’t think it will be long. She speed walks everywhere chasing her sisters, can do a somersault, attempts to jump and do jumping jacks (although she can’t get her legs off the ground yet), and has gotten really good at climbing lately. She can climb into the car and into her high chair without help which is nice. She is always exploring all over the house and still loves to get into drawers and cabinets (usually my bathroom drawers and Daddy’s nightstand are her favorites). She also loves it when Daddy flips her upside down over and over again. She has even recently started sticking her face completely under water in the bath tub to blow bubbles. Basically, she is still very active, into everything, and doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

Words that I would use to describe Abigail at age 2: independent, stubborn, loud, and silly. You would think that we would be pros at raising a toddler at this point after doing it twice before, but Abigail is enough to make me feel like a first-time mom all over again. She is a whole new level of stubborn and difficult. I can’t believe I ever thought Brooklyn was stubborn. Abigail will dig her heels in and absolutely refuse to do what I ask her to do sometimes, no matter the form of discipline. There have been several times in the last couple of months when Travis has come home from work to find me crying out of frustration because I just don’t know how to get her to mind. It seriously blows me away that she can make the simplest tasks so difficult. She has a big temper and will just scream and throw a big fit if she doesn’t like something. She definitely thinks she is the boss, so that is obviously something we are still working on. Hopefully we will turn the corner soon, or I may just go crazy ;)

I don’t want to paint her completely in a negative light, though. When Abigail is in the right mood, she can be a great helper. She loves to help unload the dishwasher, put clothes in the washer or dryer, and she is pretty good at helping clean up. Our main problem is just getting her to agree to the idea first ;) She also loves to be silly and have fun. She will laugh and giggle with her big sisters even when she has no idea what’s funny. She does great in Bible class and actually obeys her teachers from what I hear. (That gives me hope that she won’t get expelled from kindergarten…haha!). She also has great manners and will frequently say “please” and “thank you” even without being prompted. She can be a big helper and a lot of fun, but very trying at the same time ;)

Abigail’s speech has really exploded in the last 6 months as well. She is saying so many new words that I couldn’t even list them all. She is even combining them into short sentences sometimes (“Bye Rae Rae!” or “More, please”). She still signs the word “please” even though she can say it at the same time, and I love it. She also still signs “more” occasionally. She loves to call for me in the morning (“Mama! Mama!”) when she wakes up and wants to get out of her crib. When I go in her room, she will tell me “Eat! Eat!” because she wants to eat breakfast. She still answers “no” for every yes/no question, even when she means to say “yes”. It’s a work in progress! Yesterday morning, she counted down backwards from 5 to 1, and I didn’t even know she knew how to do that. It’s amazing all the things she’s learned just from listening to Brooklyn and Savannah. She loves to say “A-Maaaannnn!” or “A-Many!” at the end of a prayer. She is also getting pretty good at pointing to pictures in a book when we ask her to find a certain object. This age is always so fun because they are learning new things so fast!

Likes: playing with/antagonizing her big sisters, chasing Gabby and pulling her tail (still working on that), being tickled under her chin, taking baths and playing in the water in general, trying to ride Savannah’s scooter, pulling stuff out of cabinets and making messes

Dislikes: being told what to do, not getting a privilege that Brooklyn or Savannah have, being offered a food she doesn’t want, being left alone in the playroom upstairs, getting left out

Abigail, you give us a run for our money on a daily basis, but we will get through it together. You are so smart, spunky, and independent! We just have to point you in the right direction, and I know you will do amazing things!