Becoming Independent

Ivy is hysterical. She really cracks me up with some of her actions. She loves helping me cook! And she is very independent about it and doesn't want me to help her. Notice I'm not in one of the pictures as she pushed me away to say "Ivy cook!".

And she finds the craziest places to get herself "stuck." She likes to help me put the laundry in our new front loading washer and dryer. I think she enjoys helping but I mostly think she enjoys the empty clothes hamper....she crawls in and cracks herself up. And continually yells "I stuck!" And grunts. And of course when my mother-in-law (MAW - yes she calls her Maw and she sounds like a little redneck kid when she says it) is at the house the fun with hampers only gets better...because Maw will pick the hamper up and drag Ivy around the kitchen in it.

She loves it when we think she is funny! She is constantly chasing and running with Pollack laughing and screaming the entire time. Pollack will get his ball and growl at her while it's in his mouth and take off running. After she chases him around a few minutes she'll run up to me and shout "Mommy! It's funny?!?!?!?!? It's funny?!?!?!?" "To which I reply yes Ivy it's funny." She yells "Hooray!" and runs off and starts chasing him again.

She says the funniest things too! When I put her clothes on her she looks down and says "oooooooo, Ivy's coot (cute)! She also says "Ugh! It stuck!" a lot, she says this when she tries to pick something up and it's too heavy or when she can't get her baby out of the stroller or when she can't pull the fridge open. Basically if she can't move it or she can't get out of it (like her highchair or car seat) she says "Ugh! Stuck!"

She likes picking out her own clothes now. They don't always match but she always looks cute. The other day for church I got her out a khaki corduroy skirt and she said "No Mommy, Ivy want pants." So I pulled out a pair of leggings and she put them on with a little help from me of course and I went to put the skirt back up and she said "No Mommy, Ivy wear skirt." So we put the skirt on over the leggings which were purple. I figured at this point she should pick out her own shirt. So of course she picks the only shirt in her closet that is too small but I let her wear it. I figured it couldn't hurt anything. Of course after she was dressed she looked up and me with the biggest smile on her face and said "Mommy, Ivy's coot."

Hair bows...her new favorite thing. I have tried to put hair bows and clips in her hair since she was a baby and as soon as she figured out they were there she would pull them out. Occasionally I have been able to slip one in but now when I say "Ivy, you want to wear a bow?" She wants to wear 4 bows. I sent her to church the other day with two pink bows, 1 purple bow, and 1 yellow bow. Ahhh, my silly girl. :) Here is her outfit that she picked out on Saturday. She was quite proud of it. Although you can't get the full effect because the shoes that she demanded to wear later aren't in it. They were pink crocs (or something like crocs) and they look like an alligator. Her toes stick out the front where the mouth would be and they have eye balls on them.

As you can see she was quite proud to show her Daddy too!

We have also started the task of potty training. I have to say I thought this would be very easy with Ivy. She is very smart learns things quickly and is very independent...boy was I wrong. She has almost no interest it at all. At bedtime she will say I need to Potty but it's just a stalling tactic. Here are a couple of pictures from her first "real" potty. We let her have some M&M's afterwards and she was quite proud of herself. Although she hasn't peed in the potty for me anymore she has done it at school for her teachers a few times and she has pooped for Chris. But I guess she could care less about doing it for me or Grammie....for the record I think this whole potty training thing sucks monkey balls!

Part if our nightly routine now is Ivy watching Elmo on you tube. Now she has Elmo DVD's that she loves to watch but what fun is that when you can stand behind Daddy in his office chair and watch Elmo while he edits photos.