I’ve been in a bit of a rut in terms of updating this blog, hence the lack of posts…

But ANYHOW… Natasha has entered the wonderful world of “pretend play”, the kind where she pretends to be a specific TV character. Back in September ‘08 when she was only 2 years old, a little boy in her gymnastics class (who was almost 3), pretended he was Franklin the entire class and I was thinking back then on whether Natasha will start that soon too. And sure enough, she now has. Only she isn’t Franklin, but Jeff the (purple) Wiggle! Wiggles is one of my girls’ favourite shows (they love it!), and watch it at least once daily. And Jeff is the Wiggle who tends to fall asleep in random places, after which everyone yells, “wake up, Jeff!”

Well, 3-4 days ago, Natasha has decided that she is Jeff. When we say, “Natasha, drink your juice.”, she’d respond, “Jeff is drinking juice!” Allll day long it’s, “Jeff is playing with choo-choos.”, and “Jeff is going outside!”, and she would fall asleep suddenly, expecting us to yell, “wake up, Jeff!” She thinks it’s hilarious and cracks-up whenever we cooperate; she gets upset when we don’t. She corrects us when we call her by her actual name, because “scuuuuuse-meeee!” She is Jeff!

Even though the only time I bought the girls coordinating/matching outfits was for Christmas, we still somehow end up having matching clothes. I love these dresses! Veronika’s dress was a 1st-birthday gift from my family. And Natasha’s dress we got from my sister-in-law, since her little girl outgrew it.

It’s been 15 days since we started to potty train Natasha (once again), and we’re just amazed at how quickly she trained. In only 2-weeks time, she went from nothing to (almost) fully potty trained. She doesn’t wear diapers anymore at all, and for naps, bedtime, and when we go out, she wears pull-ups. But we’ll probably take the sleeping pull-ups away soon because she’s been waking up dry. Last night she even woke up at midnight to go potty. She stays dry when we go for walks. My little girl is growing up!

Looking at our little 14-month old Veronika, she has the sweetest angelic little face. But the child has been TROUBLE lately! She has turned into a climber and tries to climb anything and everything. The problem with climbing is that she cannot always figure out how to get down safely which results in lots of bruises on her hands & face. Poor baby.

A few days ago, Matthew & I walked in on her sitting on our coffee table. She pulled up her purple Dora chair and climbed up. So of course we removed the chair, hoping that would stop her. But noooo… the child just went & climbed up without the chair. She has very strong upper body and can pull herself up unto anything. She also climbs on Natasha’s wooden picnic table & bench and doesn’t always make it down safely… she has a purple bruise on her forehead. She tries to climb everything in the playground and gets very upset when I pull her down because it isn’t safe for little munchkins like her.

She also looooves dropping stuff in the toilet. She has a tendency to sneak behind Natasha when she uses the bathroom and drop items into the bowl… the worst yet was her sippy cup. Veronika knows all the routines we have in the house and manages to stay on top of them. Very sneaky. She also loves throwing items in the trash can and gets really upset if I don’t let her. Diapers, sure. Toys… um, no.

Here she is, sitting on our coffee table, hugging Iggle-Piggle. She calls him “pickle-pickle”.

I think that as Veronika’s getting older, she’s starting to look more similar to her older sister. It’s hard to see it side-by-side in current photos, but comparing Natasha’s older pics to Veronika’s current ones, we do see many similarities.

Natasha – 14 months

Veronika – 14 months

Regardless, I think they’re both very cute :D Not that I am biased or anything…

I thought I’ll update on our potty training progress because we have taken some major steps forward. We “re-started” potty trained last Monday and I decided to give “naked-training” another chance since she stopped freaking out at every accident like she did several months ago. I explained to her that she’s a big girl now and can no longer use diapers during the day; we said “bye-bye” to her beloved diapers and agreed that they’re only for babies (like Nika). My friend and fellow blogger Aida was kind enough to sew Natasha some panda bear undies, and Natasha was really excited when she received her very own package all the way from Nunavut! She did not want to make panda bears “all wet”. So we completely ditched diapers and she was allowed to only wear underwear during the day.

The weird part is that this is the 3rd time we’re attempting to potty-train, and somehow this time it finally clicked-in; I am guessing she was just not ready the previous few times but this time it was completely different. Between Monday and today (Friday), Natasha just took more and more steps forward. I was prepared to remind her to go potty every 15-30 minutes, but she surprised me and just told me every time she had to go. What a big girl! And today (Friday… 5th day in training), she had zero accidents and used the potty 4 times! We’re very proud of her. She still naps & sleeps in diapers, of course, and we also go out in diapers (pull-ups seem to leak through for her). We’re taking it easy with her and being very relaxed about it, and letting her lead. This is something that I learned from this experience, is that just because I am ready to be done with diapers, doesn’t mean she is. Natasha is a very VERY sensitive girl, and letting her lead is really the only way to go.

Needless to say, she’s covered head-to-toe in stickers (her rewards). I am also attempting to buy her some Thomas pj’s, but haven’t found any just yet.

Our sweet Veronika, 14 months old today!

Today Natasha did a fun craft – she made herself a personalized necklace! I bought her an alphabet-beads kit at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago and today (being as it was rainy), we decided to give it a try and see how she does. It’s funny because the packaging says ages 8+ which I think is way exaggerated age-wise if my 2.5 year old could do it. She had a little trouble with the smaller beads because the hole was practically non-existent but she did a really good job. She picked all of the colors she wanted and she found all the letters for her name as well.

We used adhesive tape to stick one end of it to the highchair tray (to prevent it from moving)
 

And showing off her finished necklace!

We still have a ton of beads left so the next project is to make a matching necklace for Veronika!

Natasha got her very 1st manicure today. She was very happy! We’ve tried it several weeks before, actually, but she didn’t quite get the part where you have to sit and let them air dry. Instead, she ran to play and smudged them off in seconds. Today, however, she asked me to “paint Tasha’s nails?” and I had to explain it to her again. And surprisingly, she sat on the sofa for entire 3 minutes with her hands on the sofa and waited. She loves it! I need to get her something more glittery and girlie though at Claire’s, this color is a bit “old” for her.

Dora’s Bedtime Adventures is Natasha’s current favourite book. Actually… the child is obsessed with this book. The funny thing is that she has 2 exact copies of this book – one was a 2nd birthday present from a friend of mine, and the second I believe my mom got her. Well, she wasn’t too interested in these books for months and months… until recently. This is a bedtime book and has 2 bedtime stories so each evening before bed, she gets Matthew to read her the entire book. Poor Matthew has the entire book memorized! Aside from that, she brings me this book every single morning during Veronika’s nap; if I ask her to bring me a different book, she gets upset. On top, she also spends a great part of each day sitting on the sofa and reading it herself. And I am not exaggerating when I say she has memorized some 90-95% of the book and can ‘read’ each page almost perfectly to what it actually reads.

Today, after reading it together 3 times during Veronika’s nap, I finally told her to PLEEEASE bring me a different book. So she agreed… But what does she bring me? A different Dora book. It’s kind of cute, though!