Warm Woolen Mittens

I just started sweating when I typed that title! But that is how the song goes...

At age 2 years and 4 months... wearing an old t-shirt of mine:

• Her favorite foods right now are chicken nuggets with ketchup, berries, watermelon and JELLO.
  


• Favorite shows are Veggietales... she chooses them over Disney movies and Sesame Street!?!
  


• Favorite outdoor activity is "Fwim in the Fwimming pool" (not sure when the 'fw' started, I thought it was only l's and r's that she rejected.) Both Grandparents houses are equipped with Kiddie pools too, so she is set for lots of summer fun.



• She loves to read. She has started reading several books to us. Her favorite right now is The Very Hungry Caterpillar... and she knows every word. If she picks up a book we haven't read in a long time she will open it and say "I don't know these words" and hand it to us so we can read it through a couple of times until she has it memorized. Then she'll read it to us.



• She loves to hear the stories we make up. She particularly loves one Kevin made up about best friends Rocky Raccoon and Philip Fox. She asks him for this story repeatedly. In the car with me she'll ask "Mommy can you tell me the story about the Jesus and the sheep?" This is a story I've told her about 200 times by now. She can tell it back to me too, which I love. I love hearing her little voice say "I don't like it when all the sheep go away from Jesus." She says it every time. :)



• She loves to sing. ALL SONGS. She loves nursery songs and any Veggitales song, especially Larry the Cucumber's hairbrush song. A new favorite is Dolly Parton's "Rockin Chairs" And I recently heard her singing Jimmy Buffett's "Apocalyspo" after she heard me singing it. You may have also heard her singing her hymns from time to time. She's been known to sing "Trust and Obey" several dozen times in a row at increasingly higher and higher volumes. I love to hear "Ho-Wee, Ho-Wee, Hooo-Weeeeeee."



• She LOVES cars and trains like a good little tom-boy... especially Thomas the tank engine and Lighning McQueen... but she also loves Barbies and baby dolls.



• She loves it when we pass a construction site and I can tell her about all the machinery... excavators, bulldozers, front-end loaders, bobcats and cranes. She always asks me what things are first and then immediately says "Oh wow, look at that Exa-Bater!" (I don't know them all... so everything falls into one of those categories...)



• She loves shopping - her favorite stores are Cabela's, Target and the grocery store. (FYI - she spotted a Cabela's billboard from the car at almost a half a mile away)
  

There aren't many things that Leah Curley doesn't REALLY like... and even love! Every time we leave an event, no matter what it is, she says "I had so much fun at _____!" and "I love ____ SOOOOO much!" So coming up with her favorite things is getting more difficult. I think it might be easier to just list things that aren't her favorites.

There is definitely one thing she currently doesn't care for... walruses... aka wasps. I told her one time to take a good look at them and make sure she doesn't ever touch one because wasps can sting you (and we have lots around our house... I think they like our flowers and vegetables and our covered patio.) So now every time she sees one she says "I don't like walruses! They can bite me!"

Bright Copper Kettles

a few of Leah Curley's current favorites...


So you think Leah can dance:
I have music in my vessels so part of me wished for a mildly-musically-oriented child. So far I don't think she can carry a tune in a bucket, but the girl has rhythm! She loves to sing, but she REALLY loves to dance. She LOVES to spin and twirl. She especially seems to love Tejano music, and her fancy footwork looks a little salsa and cha-cha to me. She is always moving to the beat when she is watching TV or listening to music on the radio. She did not get a love of dance from her father or myself, but I'm now finding myself inquiring about starting her in ballet or tap or whatever the heck you do with an almost-2-year-old.... WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME???????
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Let's Pretend:
Cooking and eating top her list of favorite things to pretend. She "eats" alot of things and when it's time for a real meal to be over and she gets down to "play," she usually "eats" some more. We were so proud when she was "eating" only the animals from the Nativity scene. We thought we had just been training her well and she'd learned that its ok to eat certain animals, like turkeys and chickens etc... Even though it was a donkey and a camel, we were impressed. Then the other day I saw her munching away on the Angel of the Lord... When she's not pretending to cook or eat, she feeds her Penguin (Percy) or her baby doll (Baby) or she pretends to put on "mack up." She's also been known to pretend to "fix a boo boo" if she finds anything resembling medical supplies. (Since Christmas, her cooking and eating obsession has gone to a whole new level due to her new KITCHEN! But that's a whole other post!)
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Reading list:
Her current favorites are the "Beast" book (Beauty and the...) and Fancy Nancy - Splendiferous Christmas and "Baby Jesus book" (Christmas in the Manger). I love how she says "fan see nan see." And I love how she puts on her Baby Jesus finger puppet to read the Manger book and points to each page with Him. (Finger Puppet Baby Jesus has temporarily gone missing, should be interesting to see where He turns up.) There are other books she will let me read to her throughout the day, but when its Leah's turn to choose... you know what to expect. The girl is consistent.

Can I just say a quick and sarcastic THANK YOU VERY MUCH to my friend Teriann who gave Leah the Beauty and the Beast book.... which has about 8000 words per page and about 600 pages! Not that I don't love reading to her, I do! But come on! Thankfully this is usually a Daddy/daughter tradition before bedtime. She would listen to him read the phonebook I think. He doesn't even have to do cool voices to keep her interested! Its like magic! (For Christmas she received a plethora of new books so we'll see what the new favs are.... so far 47 Beavers on the Big Blue Sea is my new favorite.)
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Mommy please, eat first:

She says this about 47.5 times a day. The girl loves to eat (except for when she doesn't) and when she is in the mood, she can eat more food than me. A FEW of her current favorites are waffles, pancakes, bread (any and all types), chicken ("daddy's chicken" to be exact... cooked on the grill and really "(s)picy"), turkey (which, in her language, sounds a whole lot like tee-tee but whatever), peanut butter crackers, "basketballs" (breakfast bars... extremely hard to say) apples, grapes, and anything she sees you eating or drinking... Oh, also "candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup." (The 4 food groups according to ELF and Leah C.) Careful cause she'll snatch a candy cane right off your Christmas tree and have it opened and half eaten before you even know what hit you! She'll eat some veggies too... peas and broccoli without even being threatened!

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Drink and Be Merry:

Apple juice and milk are the usual; hot tea at Bibby's house in her very own cup, iced tea from daddy's cup whenever he has some, and most recently Orange juice... followed by lots and lots of mmMMMmMMMmmm's. She wouldn't even try it for the longest time! Oh, and chocolate milk... obviously.

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Loud and Long and Clear:

Laughing, yes laughing is a favorite pastime. She has several varieties: a fake laugh, a funny-down-to-your-guts belly laugh, a silly giggle, and a silent-so-the-only-way-you-know-she's-laughing-is-to-look-at-her-bouncing laugh that she gets when she's hysterical. I've actually been worried about her oxygen level a time or two. She will go a LONG time without breathing and turn funny colors for a good laugh. Sounds familiar. She giggles at most things I do, almost all of what Kevin does and practically everything she herself does is amusing as well. She is beginning to take great pride in getting us to crack up.

Just recently I confirmed something regarding her giggle-obsession which has been happening for months now. It is both precious and maddening to me that Leah knows the difference between obedience and DISobedience. When asked "What should you do when mommy tells you to do something?" she almost always self-corrects quickly and says "obey obey OBEY!" But occasionally she does something like this... The other day after committing a "no-no" she was getting a firm talking to when she just started spewing all the funny things that usually make us crack up... if I had it on film no one would believe that this 22 month old girl was SO STINKING MANIPULATIVE! Just one thing after another waiting for me to crack. It's C-r-a-z-y! (I didn't crack that time... I'm wise to her game and my constitution strengthens with each incident.)

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Espanol:

Leah is obsessed with Caillou (is that spelled right?) which is easily the most annoying show on PBS. But it is pretty cute to hear her sing (and I mean she belts it at the top of her little lungs) the theme song to this show. It has also opened the door to teaching her a little Spanish since my parents bought her a Spanish Caillou book. (I have tried once or twice before to teach her some of what I know, but since I barely know how to teach a toddler my own language, she has just looked at me crazy or ignored me... so we just move on... back to learning English.) But she IS learning it! She knows the Spanish word for bed, although she usually says mama instead of cama unless we remind her, and she knows the Spanish word for pajamas which is of course... pijamas... but it just sounds cute when she says it. (Pee Yamas) Gracias Caillou!

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whiskers on kittens

A few of Leah's favorite things right now:

Wearing accessories, especially hats...boots...

hats and boots...

sunglasses...
and jewelry... wearing all of her Grannie's jewels at once!!

One of her best 2-syllable words is NECKLACE! :)

She also loves pretending.... she loves to host tea parties and even Beans gets to eat some cake and have some tea... and she loves to pretend with her baby doll. Baby doll gets 3 meals a day.

She has had so much fun in the water this summer... I have hundreds of pictures of her with the water hose in the backyard, at various splash parks in town and playing outside in the water at her grandparent's houses too. I don't know if you know this secret, but all water parks and splash areas are more fun when you are wearing your regular clothes and don't have a swimsuit on... At least Leah Curley thinks so. She always enjoyed them, but whenever we went near any water features in her regular clothes, she was more enthusiastic than usual. :)

Favorite foods of the moment: chocolate ice cream, yogurt covered raisins, waffles (faffels if you ask her), toast (because she likes anything that comes out of the toaster I think...), PB&J sandwiches, PB&Banana sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza and pretty much any snack foods or stuff that is sweet. lovely

Favorite words of the day:

• faffels (waffels)
• tash (trash... she's obsessed with trash right now... she loves it when she finds a random piece of trash that needs throwing away)
• I go (when she is ready to go, you know it... yesterday on our way to her Bibby's house she said "I go I Bibby" over and over for about 5 solid minutes)
• I eat, I up, I down, I daddy, I o-side (I want one of these things)
• No (means NO... unless she is confused and means yes)
• Pees (Please... so sweet, and says it appropriately when she wants something... like stickers from our checker at the grocery store)
• Cheeeese (when you say "can you smile?" or when she wants some cheese)
• Pees (also means actual peas which she enjoys eating, or acorns she finds, or beads that look like peas etc...)
• Que (Thank you.... so I have to drag this one out of her, because she's usually already enthralled with whatever it was that she got with her "please" but its one of my favorites so I added it)
  

raindrops on roses

These are a few of her favorite things at 15 and 3/4 months old:

She likes food, but she REALLY likes to eat, raisins, grapes, watermelon, whipped cream, CHOCOLATE ice cream (but any flavor will do), ravioli, meatloaf, ketchup, sweet potato fries from Scotty P's, bread, anything from Luby's, apple juice (its mostly water) and milk... but only from a straw.

She spends her days taking good naps, organizing and re-organizing and re-re-organizing her stuff, being outside, re-organizing things outside, playing with the water hose, reading lots and lots of books, loving on Beans, dancing and twirling until she's dizzy, brushing her teeth, talking (in what language? we don't always know) putting coins in her piggy bank, and going on walks and wagon rides.

Two of Leah's favorite things these days at her Bitty and Pops' house:

My old, yellow baby blanket... (She likes to lay her head on it and pretend to sleep... and then wallow on it)

And her Pops' new haircut! (It seems to bring good luck!)

Her favorite thing at her Grannie and GranStan's house is..... Water!!!!!!!! (And working her ice cream truck... which is not pictured here... but its the first thing she does when she gets there!)