Understanding and a little bit of Orneriness!

Understanding............
As we get closer to meeting our new arrival, I have been talking with Evie more and more about what may happen.  People often ask me, "Does Evie understand? Is she excited?, etc."  My response is typically the same.  "I feel she gets it to a point, we talk about the baby, we go into the nursery and talk about it being the baby's room, if you ask her where her baby sister is she points to my tummy.....I take that back, tries to lift my shirt (in public or not) and then points to my tummy:0), gets excited when we see babies in public, etc.  But I don't think she will fully understand what is happening until the baby is actually here."

It is really hard to know what a 20 month old is truly processing and understanding since their expressive language is still somewhat limited to an extent.  However, I feel she definitely proved me wrong the last couple days.  As we are getting closer to meeting the baby, she and I have been looking at the pictures from when she was born.  She doesn't grasp the concept it is her as a baby, but that's okay, I just want her to be familiar with looking at pictures of Mike and I holding a baby and of me in the hospital with gown and IV, etc.  As we are looking at the pictures I explain to her that soon the doctor will take baby X (she knows the name:0), out of mommy's tummy and we will get to hold her and kiss her and see her.  She won't be in mommy's tummy any more!  When I questioned for understanding (LOL....sorry you can't take the SLP out of the girl!) and asked her what she would do when baby X was out of mommy's tummy she gestured holding a baby in her arms.  So we have continually talked about this and about how mommy and daddy would be in the hospital and Grandpa and Grandma or Aunt Sheri will stay with her and bring her to see mommy and daddy.

The first night after talking about this, she woke-up in the middle of the night calling out for me, then a couple hours later woke again and called for daddy.  for a moment i wondered if she was thinking about our conversations from earlier that day, but truly felt it was just a coincidence.  Then this morning when she woke-up, she came into our and was saying, "Daddy, on bye-bye" (translation is shoes on).  poor Mike felt as if she was kicking him out the door for work already.  Then she started saying, "Mommy on, Daddy on, bye-bye"  she kept repeating this so I asked her where we would go and she said, "baby out."  My mind stopped for a minute as I began to really start to see how much this little 20 month old mind was processing!

Orneriness........
So this sweet 20 month old also has her moments of orneriness....I know it's really just trying test her boundaries and mommy trying to sort through her "bag of tricks!"....I find myself going back to thinking, okay what would I do if I was in my classroom:0)

Her first sign of testing me was when she began climbing on our sofa and then continuing to climb on the top edge....nearly falling over back of it....practically giving mommy a heart attack!!   This typically occurred when I was in the kitchen trying to fix a meal.  She enjoyed the game of mommy going to get her and then running to do it again......mommy on the hand not so much!  After trying many, many techniques, I decided if I was to get anything done I was going to have to bring in the 12th man, as evidenced in the picture below!  I know it was a temporary fix, but mommy was finally able to finish making dinner!

Fortunately we haven't had to do this in quite some time and she is much better about following the rule of, "we sit or lie down on the couch!"

When I initially blocked her from the sofa, she wasn't too happy about it.....but quickly found another technique in an attempt to get my attention.......opening the kitchen cabinets and trying to chew off the small protective pads on the inside.  As I blocked her from one door, she would laugh and find another.  Once again mommy was having a difficult time getting dinner ready and had to search through her bag of tricks.  One day I saw her baby doll lying on the floor and commented, Oh your baby is being so good.  I'm glad she is sitting here and not biting on the cabinets.....Evie looked at me, hesitated for a minute, then went and picked up the baby and brought her to the cabinet door and pretended the baby was chewing on the small protective pad.  Well....she got what I was saying I guess!

Finally it hit me (not sure why it took so long.....things seem to take a little longer to process as a mommy than a teacher!), but I thought what if I had her help me with dinner.......SUCCESS!!!!  She loves to be a helper and we are having so much fun cooking together.  Sometimes it's difficult since a lot of times it involves chopping or other things she can't do, but if I can give her any ingredients, even if it's just water in a bowl and let her stir she is happy....and so is mommy!  

So glad we have those things under control now.........her only other ornery ploy right now is to hide small objects behind her back.  She knows we take away small, chokable items, so right now if she finds one I will catch her trying to hide it behind her back.....with that sheepish grin on her face:0)   Sometimes I have to look the other way so she does see mommy trying to hide a smile....since she looks so darn cute with that ornery twinkle in her eye!

Hopefully she won't find too many new tricks once her baby sister is here!  In the meantime, we love our playful, spirited, little girl and are lucky that these few behaviors are our most difficult moments.