She’s figured out that keys go into locks and you turn them to make things happen. With my help, I’ve been letting her unlock the door when we get home. Potty “training” is progressing pretty well. I’m not pushing it. I ask her if she wants to pee in the potty, and when she wants to, I let her. That’s pretty much it. Nice and low key for everyone.

Oak season is here in force. My white car is a delicate shade of greenish yellow and the inside of my head feels like a vise. J has also had a runny nose, and I’m pretty convinced she’s got my allergies. We were trying to give her claritin liquid for a while, but she wouldn’t take it reliably. We had to mix it into pudding and every kid likes pudding but maybe not every day. So we tried Nasonex and Flonase, and both are giving her nosebleeds. But! Today I remembered the existence of Claritin Reditabs! Ever since we were giving her a daily dissolvable tablet of Prevacid, she’s been eager about medicine. You’re not supposed to use claritin tabs on children under two, so I called the pediatrician’s office and they gave me the go ahead without even needing to put me on hold to check. Hooray! So tonight we start those and I have high hopes.

This weekend is Easter weekend. I’m going to see if she wants to dye eggs and on Sunday, have an egg hunt! I put together an adorable basket that I’ll try to remember to take a picture of and upload here.

For easter, her Aunt Janine sent her a doll that has open and close eyes as well as “real” hair. She loves it. We gave it to her last weekend because she was having a rough time, and we have a LOT of easter presents for her. She’s been carrying it with her everywhere she goes since she opened it.

She’s discovered that people have different color eyes! She pointed out a baby with black eyes in book and I told her they were black. Then she pointed to her own eyes and I told her hers were blue. She pointed to Daddy and I told her his were blue too. And mine are brown! Then she pointed to her new “baby” (doll) and declared that her baby had black eyes. They’re brown, but close enough.

3 word sentences are now the norm. She’ll regularly express things that require combining 3 distinct concepts (for instance, daddy blue eyes).

She’s also discovering, or at least expressing, much more complex social understandings. Last week in the bath, she saw Dad take a pill. Remembering her medicine (the aforementioned Prevacid) she asked him for some. He got very stern with her and told her that no, she wasn’t ever allowed to take medicine without mommy or daddy. Ever! I happened to glance into the bathroom right at the end of the speech and she looked frightened :(. A moment later she burst into huge, frightened, sad tears. Poor baby! I took over for a while and pulled her out of the bath for a hug and explained to her that Daddy wasn’t mad, he just wanted to keep her safe, and it’s okay it’s okay. Eventually she calmed down. Definitely the first time we’ve made her cry with tone of voice :(. I think she’ll be as sensitive to other people’s nonverbal communication as I am (If Dad had talked to me in that tone, I might have cried too!).

We’re working with her on being more assertive. When she says “no” and “stop” and “mine” at school, sometimes the teachers don’t hear her defending her toys or whatever, and the other kids take them from her. She does the same thing all toddlers do and tries to take them back, but because she’s so much bigger than the other kids, it ends up looking like she’s pushing them around. So I’ve been trying really hard to get her to say, “NO!” and “STOP!” very loudly. We practice at home. It’s starting to work, I think!  Then last night, while we were at home playing, she was trying to put something on Dad’s head and he said, “No thank you J.” She started to put it on him anyway, and so I stopped her and asked her to listen to his words, because he said no. She looked SO SAD and SO ASHAMED. I felt awful! Poor little girl was just playing :(. I’m not sure if it was my tone or if she’s just realizing that “no” goes both ways and wanted to keep doing what she was doing. Anyway, she came and sat with me for a few minutes, near tears. I told her that no one was mad, and that I know she was just excited to be playing, and that she did a really good job of listening to Daddy’s no. She gradually got her playfulness back and was even ready to go give Daddy a hug after a while. (At first, she didn’t even want to look at him. I think her emotions were too strong and she was struggling to figure them out). So hard for me, but I feel like I handled it appropriately.