Today is Valkyrie’s 2nd birthday and in a few hours we are on our way to meet the Knapps at the airport and then go swimming at a hot spring resort with the girls. I have her cake in the car and tons of snacks. So I am assuming you all saw the blog about stitches, yeah that was fun, not really. Valkyrie is doing fine and recovering. They say it will scar but you know she will look tough. No boy is going to mess with her on the playground with that bride of Frankenstein scar.
I have to admit I really enjoy writing about Valkyrie as she get older every moment she is doing something new and as she grows there is just so much more to write about.
Everyday her vocabulary is growing; it is so fun to teach her new words like: Recycle, Obama, Coldplay. Sometime when we teach her new words it is like the “Friends” episode when Febie tries to teach Joey French, and it is so funny. What comes out of her mouth sounds nothing like what we said and we all have a good laugh. She does know the ABC song and is very good with her letters. We can point to a letter and within a few tries she will get it right.
She loves to listen to “Bret and Jemaine” in the car, sometimes we have to beg her to listen to something else. While other kids at her age know and are singing songs like "Skidda rink" she is singing the lyrics of “Flight of the Conchords”......have I been a bad influence on her?
She knows he numbers and the concept of counting, although there seems to be “two eight” of everything.
“How many horses do you see Valkyrie?”
“Two eight.”
She understands concepts of things like forward and backward. Doesn’t sound like much but for a toddler learning things like that is a big deal. Before I had kids I used to wonder, how they learn things and the truth is they just pick it up. They hear you say it or someone else and it just clicks. Oh how awesome it would be for us adults to pick up on things that fast, we are stubborn and proud beings. 
Valkyrie is very aware of her surroundings and others energy.
I can take her to a park one time and she has such a high situational awareness that weeks will pass and we will drive past a road that leads to that park and she will say “park”. We joke that she has like 20/10 vision because she will see things way before we do.
She has recently switched daycares and she seems to be doing fine, the new kids keep her entertained. This was Jeff’s last week off. Next week the Grandparents are up and going to watch the girls for the week but they will both go into daycare full time on November 30th. The new daycare is very close, so close I can ride my bike there with the girls in the summer.
We have just recently been trying the potty training thing. The great thing about cloth diapers is she knows right away when she is wet. She almost always tells me “wet mama” So I’ll ask her if she wants a change and she agrees. So to me that is the first step, recognizing that she is wet. She occasionally will sit on her potty and go pee, but I’m not pushing it. When she sees me change Skyler she almost always wants a change herself as well. A few nights ago she was able to pull her pants down along with her cloth diaper and go running down the hall yelling “naked baby!” It was so funny, we left her that way for awhile, but then got her in the bath ASAP because she is kind of like a puppy and will just pee anywhere.
When she sees me nurse Skyler or sees me “get into position” she will say “mama nurse nurse, Skyler nurse.” The other night she crawled into my lap and said “nurse mama.” (Now she has been weaned, by her own doing for almost a year so I was curious to see what she would do. Would she go right back into nursing, I have heard of toddlers that will un-wean when a sibling is born.) So I got her into position and Jeff just smiled at me like he knew what was going to happen and out came those pearly white teeth and she bit down, she laughed and ran away. Okay no more of that! I’m sorry was that too personal? ;)
She is trying to teach Skyler new things like the paddy cake song and she is always sharing her toys with Skyler. When Skyler will get upset she will go up to her and shhh her and try to calm her and hand her the toy she was playing with herself, as if to say “here you can play with this if you like.” She is a great big sister and I can’t express how it makes me feel to see my girls show love towards each other.
Well I better get going; I’ll make sure to post some birthday photos soon. Thanks for reading this and showing an interest in a bragging mother’s blog.
