Terrible twos has struck once again, but this time I think it is more of the real thing. I think Audrey goes in spurts, but she sure has thrown me through a loop this time around and made life very difficult. I don't know if it is because I'm pregnant and my patience wears down quicker, but just in the last couple of weeks she has developed a whole new sassy attitude. I guess it is a good thing for her to be independent and be able to state her opinion, but she sure gets sassy.. Lately if she does not want to wear something she does not wear it and will throw a fit if I even make her try. I am starting to learn to just let her choose what she wants to wear, or ask her if she will wear something. If she does not like it she will say No a couple of times, grab it and throw it to the floor and run away. I am trying to teach her to be nicer to her clothes and other such items like her toys, books etc. But she just does not seem to listen until I tell her multiple times in a row to be soft and I even show her how to be with her items. I know she is two and has a very short attention span, but she does not seem to mind, or listen very well lately. She not only throws her clothes to the ground lately, but she seems to be a little more ruff with her toys and gets mad at them. I don't know why this is, but I'm hoping it is just a phase. I think sometimes she is frustrated, because she is two and sometimes it is hard for a child to express exactly how they feel. But Audrey does not have a hard time communicating, because she speaks in sentences very well and has a wide vocabulary and she seems to understand things and she tells me usually what she wants. She always loves playing with her baby dolls and is usually really good with them, because I have taught her to be nice to them, but once in a while she will get mad at them and say no and tap them on the head, or throw them to the ground. I make her say sorry to them and pick them up and if she is still mean to them I tell her that they have to be put away, if she can't treat them nicely.. I really do not know where she picked a lot of this behavior up from lately, but I know sometimes she has little tizz fits with other kids, but not to often . But believe me as parents we are very gentle with her and turn to other forms of discipline, like time out, or taking something away if she can't be nice to it. Also, she has been very picky about what she eats lately as well, when she used to eat quite a variety of foods and now it is quite limited. She will tell me she wants to eat a certain food and I will open it up for her and then she will give me that good sassy "No" I don't want it and then she will say she wants something else, I open that and she will not eat that as well. She has not seemed to have much of an appetite lately either and I have tried giving her favorite foods, just to get her to eat because I worry about her not getting enough nutrition and she even will turn some of her favorite foods down as well. She is not really big on trying new foods and I try to offer her different kinds of foods and she just runs away. It is very frustrating when she refuses to eat and she always still seems to have so much energy for a while. But then seems to have a break down later if she has not eaten and then she will eat.... I do not try and force her to eat, but I do help her eat if she will let me. Sometimes she likes eating on her own, sometimes she just simply pushes the meal away when I put it down in front of her during meal time. She also has that great tantrum throwing down and she is good at it, but I try not to pay attention to her when she throws those, because it just helps her know she can get attention when she behaves like that and that is not what I want her to learn from throwing tantrums. I do try and talk to her at first and ask her what she wants, but she just screams and says her favorite word right now "no'. One other thing she has been doing lately is she will run up to me and just hit me for no good reason... She knows this behavior is not allowed and she will say sorry mommy after I tell her that she is not supposed to do that. But then she comes back a second time and that's when she has to be put in time out... I don't want to say that my little girl is naughty, because she really is so sweet at times as well. I think that she is just trying to test the waters right now and seeing what she can get away with, which is not much when it comes to naughty behavior. I have started reading about discipline and getting a child to behave better and I am using some of those techniques and this past week, she has seemed to be a little bit better. Like if she really wants something that she is not supposed to have, I just simply change the subject to something else and she usually will respond to that. But she does have a good memory and will try and get the same thing later, even when it is out of sight. I don't know who said out of sight, out of mind because Audrey does not seem to forget things for a long time.. Like days, to weeks sometimes. Well enough about all the negative things in my daughter's life I just need to vent, because I have been very frustrated and stressed from her behavior lately.
I will talk about the positive things now, which I'm hoping will be as long as my negative terribly two's post.
I guess I can post about Audrey's Easter experience. This year Easter was a lot more fun, because Audrey seemed to get more excited about what she got and finding things. In Audrey's Easter Basket she of course had candy, which Sean and I ate later on because she does not have much of a sweet tooth. Thank goodness!! She got a big lollipop and really enjoyed that. She got a kite, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, coloring book and crayons and a hula hoop. She really enjoyed flying her kite and had fun trying to blow the bubbles on her own, even though it was kind of a mess. She really is so imaginative now when it comes to coloring, or using sidewalk chalk. She will tell me that she is drawing certain things like a shark, dinosaur, flower, smiley face, butterfly, bird, etc. and just scribbles, but I think it is so cute that she is imagining things and trying to be creative. She knows about sharks, because she watches Nemo sometimes and she plays with dinosaurs at her cousins house. She loves to draw smiley faces and some of her shapes, but we are still working on those. =) Audrey seems to be talking more and more every day and she can really say any word now and has good pronunciation. She speaks in sentences all the day long and sometimes chats my ear off, but really she has a cute high pitched voice and is to irresistable not to listen to. I love just watching her play pretend with her toys and just seeing what she is thinking. She loves to play with play doh and loves to color whenever she gets a chance.
Audrey loves to sing and knows multiple songs now like: Twinkle, twinkle little star, row row row your boat, The itsy bitsty spider, Abc's, popcorn popping on the apricot tree and many other songs I can not think of right now, but really I guess she has known a lot of those songs for quite sometime. She does have quite the little singing voice and I don't think I will ever get sick of it, because it is so cute to listen to her. I am trying to teach her to count to twenty right now, because she has been counting to ten for about a year now, so I decided to start and she is starting to pick up on the numbers fairly fast. I tried teaching her a while ago to count to twenty and she started to mix her numbers up, so we just kept to ten, but now she seems like she is doing better now that she is older.
Audrey loves going to the park to play and she will swing in the swing forever, but loves to go down the slides as well and just run around like a typical kid. I feel so blessed to have such a healthy child who is such a spirited little thing and curious about learning new things all the time. I guess her learning experiences in life have taught me great lessons as a mother and challenges have arised, but we usually seem to get past them. I'm happy to be Audrey's mother and I love her so much and I don' t know where I would be with out her in my life. I posted some picture of her from Easter at the top of this post, so enjoy. I love how her hair turned out that day and I thought her dress was darling. Thanks! To her grandma for buying it for her.
