31 months old

Emily is now 31 months old. She is continuing to do really well in regards to Lincoln. She has shown a little more interest and asked to hold him for the first time, but lightly touched his head and then was done. She makes lots of comments, though. Some examples: "Lincoln has a dirty diaper!" "He makes funny noises!" and "That's the baby that was in mommy's tummy!"

Emily also has a fetish with jammies (pajamas). It is often a wrestling match getting her dressed in the morning because she doesn't want to take her jammies off. She asks to put them on several times throughout the day. If you tell her, "Not until after your bath" she immediately asks if she can take a bath. If you leave them anywhere within sight you're pretty much guaranteed that at some point during the afternoon she'll quietly disappear and come back down the stairs wearing her jammies. I don't always have the energy or ability to fight this battle, so she wears her jammies a lot. It definitely puts a damper on the possibility of outside activities, though. :o(

Another habit Emily has fallen into this month is switching from third person (e.g. "Emily want to get down") to often referring to herself as "he" (e.g. "He want to get down"). This is a bit annoying, and it really bugged my mom while she was here because she is an SLP (Speech Language Pathologist) and had been working with second-graders who didn't use pronouns correctly. After gently correcting using "I" the whole time she was here, my mom held an intense speech therapy session during breakfast on the last day. Emily couldn't get down from her booster seat until she correctly used "I" as in "I am finished" or "I want to get down." They sat there for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Wow--that takes a lot of patience! My mom finally got "I think" out of her. She had a few more success later in the day. Austin & I have continued the practice of immediately interrupting any incorrect use of "he" and correcting with "I". On one random occasion I got an "I want to watch George, please." Yay! Unfortunately, the answer was "no" because she had just finished watching the entire 1 1/2 hour video, but she got an M&M for asking! :o)

On a more positive note, Emily can recognize and name almost all the letters and numbers. There are still a few she gets mixed up sometimes (6 & 9, 8 & B). It's funny because if you have any words on your clothing she'll randomly start pointing out and naming letters. She knows all the letters in "PANTHERS"! :o)

Our many May pictures are uploaded to Winkflash and the video player is posted below.