More Alli-isms…

I know we’ve posted about this before and probably will again many times as she grows and learns, but watching Alli grow into a little person has been nothing short of amazing. She shocks us almost on a daily basis with how much she remembers, picks up on, and mimics. She’s basically talking in full sentences these days, and here are a few of her favorites:

•      “Mommy go take a shower, okaaaayyy?” This one is usually said each night right before her bedtime as Mommy B heads off to the shower in preparation for her 4am alarm clock. We’ve told her many times that Mommy has to go take a shower now, which is why Mommy has to leave the room before Alli goes to bed. Dad-E takes over and puts her to bed, but not before she utters this sentence to Mommy B as she’s walking out of the room.

•      “Somethin’ ta eat!” She’s really been saying this one for a while, but it has become more and more clear over the last couple of months. I’m pretty sure this was the first full phrase/sentence she said to us to tell us what she wanted… go figure.

•      “Alli, what’s Aunt Bacon’s cat’s name?” “Masseera!” Close Alli, but it’s actually Bagheera – the black-toned Indian leopard character in Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories in The Jungle Book. Close enough, I’ll give you credit for that one. She loves that dang cat.

•      “Thank you, thank you, my heart sings… thank you, thank you, for everything.” Apparently this is a rhyme they sing at school right before they eat, because it’s usually followed by “Let’s eat! Let’s eat!” It always has to do with food, I swear…

•      “Doggy outside, okaaayyy?” Alli is head-over-heels in love with her dog, Scarlett. I’m not sure why, but she loves nothing more than to hug Scarlett around the neck and throw her the tennis ball. Alli has also figured out how to open doors, which has become a double-edged sword lately. When Scarlett scratches at the door, Alli will ask us this question and we’ll instruct her to go let the doggy outside. She will run over to the door, turn the knob and open it, walk to the screen door to the porch and push it open enough for Scarlett to get outside. She’ll then come back in and close the door behind her. She’ll also do the same if Scarlett is outside and we tell her to let the doggy back in. Awesome, one less thing for me to do… On the other hand, she’s figured out how to open her bedroom door – which can make nap time on the weekends rather challenging. I see a trip to the store to find child-proof door knob covers in our very near future.

•      “Ouchie boo-boo ouchie!” This is one we typically hear during bath time at night. Bath time is typically the first opportunity we have to strip Alli down and get her all cleaned up from the day… as well as assess the damage from the day’s activities. It doesn’t happen as frequently as it used to (now that she’s more in tune with her body’s movements), but every once in a while she’ll get a scraped knee or some other type of minor flesh wound. When she does, this is her way of telling us that her oh-so-serious injury needs tending to. So we’ll get it all washed up and covered with whatever animated character Band-aid she feels most attached to that evening… which usually leads to the follow-up “All better…” Cute as can be.

•      “Orange… hi orange! Bye orange... it’s blue!” This one took me a few moments to figure out when she first said it, but it all made sense in the end. Grandma C bought us a video-monitor for Alli’s room for Christmas. Once we got it all set up, we could see (and hear) everything Alli was doing after we put her to bed and left the room. This has never really been a concern for us in the past, but now that she’s going to the potty on her own and has figured out the door knob we figured it might be nice to see what’s happening in there. We mounted the camera on top of one of her dressers that enables us to see her entire room. When you first plug the camera in, it has a very tiny orange light that flashes while it boots up and connects to the Wi-Fi in the house. Once it gets connected, the light turns blue to indicate that it’s on and working. We were hoping that she wouldn’t notice its presence but she quickly discovered it by the second night. This girl doesn’t miss a thing, I swear. Anyway, each night after her bath we head into her room for a couple books (and maybe a potty break) before bed. I plugged the camera in and she uttered the phrase above, as if she’d been watching it for months. I asked, “Alli, do you know what that is?” She looked up at me with a slightly puzzled look on her face. I said, “It’s a camera so Mommy, Daddy and Grandma can see you go to bed.” She thought about it for a couple seconds, looked back at the camera and said “Cheeeese!”  Mmmhmmm…

As you can tell, she’s really beginning to put together the world around her – in a way only a toddler could. She’s becoming more independent with every step and it both excites and scares me at the same time… because she wants to do everything on her own now. More about that shortly…