What's Millie doing these days?

Millie is now 2 1/2 years old. These last few months have been quite a ride with our preschooler. She has grown by leaps and bounds. She is almost fully potty trained. Bedtime is the only time she tells us she has to "go." Maybe it's a stall tactic. So, we're waiting for the day when she tells us she has to "go" all other times of the day. Other than that, she stays dry while she's awake. I have to admit though that I remain anxious every time we go out (which has not been a lot), afraid she might pee her pants.

As many of you know, I bought two books recently on parenting a strong-willed child because Millie's behavior had been textbook "terrible twos." Disobedience everywhere. No matter what I asked/told her to do, she decided to do the opposite. This was especially hard to deal with when I was out alone with both children (one on my hip) and Millie screaming/kicking/wailing in the aisle. Her behavior made me wish I could just walk away and pretend she wasn't my child. It's hard not to feel embarrassed. So far, one of the suggestions from one of the books that has worked for me is giving Millie two choices: I say nonchalantly "do this or time out/no movies/no dinner (just kidding)". Works like a charm. I've found my wonderful child and it's a beautiful thing.

She's learning so much I hardly know where to begin. It hasn't been real structured though- I need to get better at that. Specifically, Millie loves discovering and acting out opposites like open and close, in and out, that sort of thing. She's tracing letters with chalk which I am amazed by! She purposefully hides toys and books either from us or Camden. She can count pass 10 and she usually does it in a playful way. When we say "me too," she says "me three," then we say "me four," and back and forth until about 14 or 15. It's pretty comical. She jokes around a lot (wonder where she got that from). She likes to ask silly questions. When potty training, I would ask her "Where do we peepee?" She answers correctly "in the potty," and then goes on to ask "Do we peepee go in the sky? in the tree, in the toy," and on and on.

She is more opinionated now about what to wear, eat and play with. She is all about dress up and dressing up her baby brother too. He's such a sport about it. They play so well together- praying it stays that way.

Last weekend, Matt and his Dad started constructing the kids' new backyard playset. I snapped that photo to capture her efforts towards the building project.