It’s Been A While!

Wow, it has been forever since I’ve written. The older/busier Livia gets, the less time I have to write :). I was writing a  weekly parenting column for the Northern Virginia Daily for a while, but I haven’t had much time to dedicate to that, either. The thing I love most about writing is that it’s always there. No matter how crazy life gets, no matter how many weeks I neglect my blog, it’s there when I have time. Since my last post, here is what life is like now (in a nutshell).

-Livia is finally DONE with ciuccio ! (Her pacifier). We went cold turkey. She lost her pacifier, and we decided not to buy any more. It was tough at first- there was a lot of screaming and wailing, but after 2 days, she stopped asking for it! Hallelujah.

-I have learned a ton about ”natural hair care”. It took me a long time to finally find a ”regimen” for Livia’s beautiful thick curls. After lots ofGoogling and Pinterest-ing, (and LOTS of trial and ERROR), I feel like I am getting pretty good at doing her hair! 🙂

-Livia is such a 2 year old now. I am really enjoying all of the funny quirks that come along with this age. She is so particular about the funniest things- she HAS to listen to ”Rockabye baby” on repeat before bedtime, she LOVES tutus (and wears them with just about anything).

-Livia has a wide range of interests. She LOVES birthdays. Every day, she finds some way to make me a ”cake”, whether it’s using blocks, play dough…pretty much anything she can find, she will turn into a cake.  She has recently started to ask “What’s that?” about everything. Her curiosity really excites me because I know that she is REALLY taking in everything. She LOVES superheroes, especially Iron Man. He is her favorite. She loves the ”How Do Dinosaurs” books and asks me to name every single dinosaur. She has recently discovered audiobooks. I have the Audible app, and since $14 a month is a bit pricey for ONE audio book a month, for now I’m take the cheap route and listening to the samples of each book! :-p The samples are all a good 3-5 minutes, so she gets to enjoy most of the book.  When the sample is done, I just take over reading. Ha!

– In some ways, she is like a little mini version of me. She enjoys Starbucks dates, having her nails painted and giving me makeovers (aka smearing lipstick all over my face). At the same time, she is very different from me. For one, she is very assertive. She does not let anything get past her! 🙂 She also LOVES cooking. This girl can break eggs correctly, without any help. She made muffins BY HERSELF today. All I did was measure out the ingredients. She literally did everything else herself!

-Livia is VERY sassy, which I love, but I’m teaching her about boundairies- what is OK and not OK to say. (ex. if I ask her to clean up and she says ”YOU clean up!”).  Honestly, she doesn’t always take me as seriously as I’d like her to. I know it’s my fault, I’m pretty much like a kid myself in many ways, and I am sometimes a bit TOO lenient. I’m working on it.  She has yet to be sassy with Lamar!!

Anywho, that’s all I feel like writing tonight. I’ll write a more ‘focused’ post sometime this week, and I’ll include some pictures!  Now that I’ve broken back into writing…I should probably write another article for my weekly parenting column (that I haven’t written for in weeks :-/) .

Until next time!

-Laura