Here’s a list of toddlerisms that Eirinn recently started.

1. This one’s fun. When she starts to sing a song, I usually join in to help her along with the words and to, you know, interact with her. Now, she’ll start singing and I’ll join in and she’ll yell at me! “NO!” Ok, fine. I guess my singing voice must really suck if my 19 month old doesn’t want to hear it.
2. Also, she will NOT wear a bib anymore. Which would be fine if she was a tidy eater, but she isn’t. She’s been feeding herself for many months now but it still gets on her clothes. We’ve tried bribing her with ketchup (as in, she has to wear a bib or she can’t eat ketchup), we’ve tried us wearing one too (ya, ya, laugh it up), we’ve tried distracting her and sneeking it on. Nope. There will be no more bib wearing because she is not a baby.
3. I tried to cut her fingernails last night in the bath, where I usually do it, and she freaked out. As though she thought I was cutting whole limbs off, not just the nails. She was crying big, huge baby tears and calling for Anonymous Husband to help her (”Anonymous daaaaaaaaddy? Haaaaalp!”) and wiggling. She’s never done that before.
4. And speaking of baths, she now talks to her reflection in the tap.  AS THOUGH IT WERE ANOTHER PERSON. And this other person?  Oooo, she’s bad!  She must be very rude because Eirinn yells at her and hits her in the tummy and gets very frustrated.  The mommy reflection should be punishing the Eirinn reflection because she deserves it for being so mean to real Eirinn.
5. She’s so loud!  The yelling is non-stop and impressive.  She can reach a volume I previously would have only expected to come from some sort of electronic machinery.  And she loves to yell.  If she runs out of actual things to yell about, she’ll just yell “AHHH!!!” so that she can still hear her own voice.  Clearly our next lesson will be the difference between our indoor voices and screaming bloody murder outdoor voices.

It’s been one of those days weeks and I’m not feeling all that funny/creative/nice.  So instead of totally abandoning my legions of loyal readers, I thought I’d cop-out post some of my favourite pictures from before I started blogging my life away.  In the spirit of being fair, I will give you my top 6 for being a day late (again…) on the Friday Five.

1.   

This was Eirinn at Easter, 2006.  She was 5 weeks old.  She looks either bored with this whole Easter deal or ready to order another round.  She was going through one of her ‘eat every hour and a half and watch mommy go insane’ phases, so she’s probably ordering another round.

2. 

Is this not the cutest little bunny picture ever?  Miffy’s got nothing on her.  She was just over 2 months old there.  Which means we were lucky to get a picture where she isn’t screaming.  She screamed a lot.  A.  LOT.  But looking back at pictures like this makes me forget about that just for a little while.

3. 

You’ll see this picture in my banner.  It’s a classic.  She was screaming before and after I took it because of that bonnet.  It was so ridiculous, it was both adorable and almost child abuse to put it on her.  But I made her wear it.  Often.  The look of terror is because of the red light on the camera.  Scaaaaa-ry.

4. 

Never has there been a t-shirt more suited to one person than this one as it relates to Eirinn. 

5. 

Remember the part in Peter Pan when his shadow is misbehaving and it has to be sewn back onto his foot?  It’s right at the beginning.  This picture reminds me of that.  It looks like she’d been chasing her shadow around the room and finally did a flying tackle and has it clenched in her little hands.  If only someone would be kind enough to put the stupid camera down and pin it back onto her.  Plus it’s one of the first pictures where you can see some peach-fuzz hair.  Poor girl was bald for way too long.

And the bonus number 6. 

Eirinn actually participated in Halloween last year.  We went to a local pumpkin patch with our Babyville group and it was the best thing ever seeing all the little babies in their costumes sitting amongst the pumpkins.  Eirinn, surprisingly, was the only one dressed up as an actual pumpkin.  She also looks unamused.

I’m sad looking at this picture because I don’t think she’s going to let me put a costume on her this year.  I tried forcing it on her again today, but it just turned into a wrestling match with a lot of crying and yelling.  I tried making it sound fun to wear it.  I tried wearing the hat myself.  I tried sneaking it on her.  Nothing seems to be working and I’m giving up hope of getting an adorable Halloween, Year 2 picture.  Maybe I’ll just Photoshop her head onto a picture of the costume and be done with it.  Less stress, no mess.

I brag a lot about Eirinn.  I know.  But it’s because she amazes me more and more and in different ways every day.  By the reaction of my mom when Eirinn does something genius-like, I can tell that she’s way more advanced than I ever was.  If that’s the case, logic would lead me to believe that she is going to be smarter than me.  WAY smarter than me.  Oh, who am I kidding?  She’s already smarter than me.

This week she had a turbo-charged learning week.  She flipped her brain to Hyper-Drive Warp Speed and now knows everything.  Literally.  She can do advanced linear algebra, has a masters in Shakespearean theatre, began Swahili 101, completed Spanish for beginners, and finished her first 1000 piece 3D puzzle.  Well, not quite, but close.

Here are five things Eirinn learned this week:

1. How to count to 12.  She can (key word being can, as in she doesn’t do it every time) count to 12, in order, not missing any of the numbers.  Brilliant.
2. The alphabet.  Her version is now complete, A to Z, but still has a thick baby-accent.  I can understand her perfectly, and the alphabet is correct.  Genius.
3. Knows that hello in Swahili is ‘jamba’.  No joke.  There’s a Diego episode (surprise, surprise) that takes place in Africa and the boy says hello and she responds with “Jamba!”, which is right.  Smartypants.
4. Her Spanish vocabulary now includes: ayuda me (help me), abuela (grandmother), abuelo (grandfather), soy (say or I am, I’m not sure; she’s the Spanish speaking one in the family, not me), rojo (red), azul (blue), uno (one), dos (two), tres (three), quatro (four).  I’m sure there’s more, but a foreign language mixed with baby-accent makes it difficult even for a mother to understand.  Desgarrado.
5. She has conquered her first puzzle.  It’s only 6 pieces, but it’s a real puzzle, not one where the shapes go into the cutouts.  She has a little trouble with the dexterity of it, but she puts the pieces where they are supposed to go and just needs out help snapping them into place.  Mommy has run out of synonyms for ’smart’, so…Smart.

Bonus bullet:  She has learned all the lyrics to the theme songs for Go Diego, Go and Dora the Explorer.  Don’t role your eyes.  I’ve done enough of that for all of us.