The Lee Family: Sofia at 31 months....

So, Sofia's no longer "21/2" technically and is getting that much closer to being three! I just can't believe it! She's growing up so fast and is really involved in 'make believe' whenever she plays. She still loves her music and books and often spends literally hours in her room with her Hello Kitty boom box playing Silly Songs or some other kid's song CD while thumbing through her stack of books. While going through books she either recites parts of the book if she knows it well enough, or she'll just make up whatever crazy story she wants, which she mainly does whenever we get new library books that we haven't read to her enough. Her other big love remains Thomas the train and all of his buddies and she spends much of her morning at our coffee table playing with the train station and track she got from her Grandma and Grandpa. We've since bought rubber trains for the bath, but she carries them around with her, plays with them, and even takes naps with them! Strangely enough, she's also big buddies with our space heater! We lost heat for a while in January, so we added our space heater from our movie room to her room so she wouldn't freeze in the night. Now, the space heater (no longer plugged in, of course) has become her 'baby' and is often 'crying' for her and 'needs to be held' or 'needs a nap.' It's all very elaborate and it's gone on now for weeks! When the space heater was still in her room she would put toys in front of it to 'play with' and even give it diapers and pjs! Of course, the other space heater we have is the "mommy" space heater.....Her other buddies are "Peter the Cow" and "Mickey Mouse" - two stuffed animals Mimi and Grandpa Joe gave her for Christmas. Somehow in the past two weeks she's really gotten attached - especially to "Peter the Cow."

Our girl is also very orderly, even though you would never guess from looking into her room. Her room always has books covering most of the floor, toys tossed around, stuffed animals in a pile on her bed, and shoes, socks, leggings and maybe shirts she's trying to put on herself. She's great with getting shoes on and off now, but the rest is still a little tricky and after a few minutes she usually says "too big" and tosses the clothing item aside. With her trains, toys and other things she usually puts things into a row or feels they belong in a certain place. Luckily it doesn't seem like an obsessive thing (we hope) but just her sense of order in the world.

Sofia LOVES standing on her stool step while we are in the kitchen. She likes to watch me prepare meals, or stir food, or help out - although she's a much better helper when cookies are being made than any other dish! If she wants something on the counter, she will simply pull the stool step to the right spot, climb up and help herself.

Lately she's gone from calling me "Mommy" to "Mama" but I think it's due to the various books we read to her. I've noticed that a lot of them say "Mama" rather than "Mommy" so I assume that's where it's from. She still gets put to sleep by the "sleep angel" (Papa) every night and still absolutely loves her sleep (thankfully!). Since she sleeps with a night light, we often find that her toys and books are in different locations than the night before and that many of her books are in bed with her. She's incredibly quiet once she goes to bed, but we know she often gets up and plays on the sly. Recently we've also started "potty training" which basically translates into Papa setting her on the toilet and having her go EVERY TIME, while I try to get her even on the potty and she pitches a fit. I can convince her to get on the potty, and she's very happy once she's sitting on the toilet, but she has NEVER gone for me!

With her "baby" the heater - her bangs are extra long right now because we're attempting to grow them out.