Cumorah, "Get me! Get me!"
peals of ear-piercing giggles, of both baby and toddler variety
Cumorah, "Get me! Get me!"
more giggles
Repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and... until all the sudden I realize that it is very quiet.
Once I heard Cumorah yelling, "Wake up baby, baby, wake up!" Rivers has developed the uncanny ability to snore through Cumorah's occasional early-evening insomnia. Often Cumorah sings and the baby babbles. The baby cries for a tiny bit, indignant that we don't let her stay up later. She stands up, holding onto the rails and jumps. A lot. We can hear the noisy squeakiness all through the house. Sometimes we hear Cumorah's music-playing glow worm doll sing all it's songs through several times. Rivers' crib is on wheels and Cumorah's bed slides easily. There is supposed to be a little space between the two, but often when we go in to check on them the space has disappeared.
All this is just-so-cute and what not, but sometimes it is not so cute when they are playing not-so-nice games and fussing and crying and the like.
Several weeks ago I went in to the girls' room because Rivers was all the sudden having a meltdown. She was already being pretty noisy, but I could hear the change like mommies do, so I went in. She had dropped her binky, or so I thought. After I looked all around for it Cumorah says, "I took it." I told her how that wasn't a fun game for Rivers and blah, blah, blah. The next night that she decided to binky snatch again she got in more trouble and was kicked out of her bed for a few minutes (pretty traumatic). Well a few nights ago, I went in to check on the girls after they had fallen asleep. They had been playing and then Rivers had fussed for a few minutes but it just sounded like tired-going-to-sleep fussing. I was tucking in blankets and smoothing hair back and kissing cheeks, thinking about how sweet my little girls are. I thought how cherubic my little Cumorah looked and what a good little two year old she is, when her sweet little chubby-fingered hand relaxed and out clattered Rivers' binky to the floor. What a little stink!!! She knows exactly what she is doing when she takes it. Poor Rivers. She's got a doozy of an older sister.
I let Cumorah completely veg out for the first time. She rarely watches anything on the tv. Every few days or so she'll watch a Signing Time video (our favorite), but sometimes she'll go a whole week with nothing. (I know, I'm a mean, no fun mom.) Well, earlier this week I had to take care of some finance type stuff and Cumorah watched FOUR episodes of the backyardigans while Rivers had a long morning nap. Cumorah was a total drooling zombie tv watcher. She loved it. There was an episode with soccer monsters. Later in the day she kicked around a ball for a minute yelling, "Soccerrrr!Soccer!" The fourth episode had pirates. During the show she came out of her comatose state long enough to tell me that she wanted to be a pirate. I told her we could make a pirate hat later, which appeased her and she went back to watching the show. So here is our hat. I know John, it is an embarrassingly sissified pirate hat. But she is a girl and I am just not as cool a pirate as you...
Captain Cumorah PickerroniWhat is with the nose picking? At least she's not shoving inch long grape stems up her nose anymore, but really, does she have to have her finger up her nose ALL the time? If she's not picking her nose then she is picking at her lip. I don't know, I think her lips got chapped and she has some dry skin to pick at or something. Sometimes she looks at me with her finger at her nose and she says, "I not picking my nose, I touching it."
Cumorah has a wicked good memory. It really scares me sometimes. Brian is having a really fun time exploiting her talent and teaching her all sorts of things. She has three articles of faith memorized now and can spout them off when you get her started and she feels like performing. Brian doesn't even have to work very hard at it. If you repeat something to her a couple times, she remembers. She picks up songs right away. She picks up new words like crazy. (The other day her new words were "dang it". Oops! I'm glad I don't have a really bad potty mouth. That's about as explitive as I get unless I let the S word slip, don't freak out, the S word around here is Stupid.) Cumorah likes to use the word "automatic". It was originally from automatic public toilets, of which she is deathly afraid, but she did notice that the doors at the grocery store are automatic as well. She also remembers things that we do and places we go. She saw a picture of the Des Moines farmer's market the other day and started talking to me about the market. The last time we went to the farmer's market was October, she wasn't even two yet. That same day we went to Gray's Lake for a walk. She saw downtown in the distance as we were driving there and she asked, "We going to market?" Crazy kid. It will be interesting to find out what her first memories are when she gets older. Brian taught her about bones the other night. She'll tell you all about bones. "I have bones. I have clavicle bone." Tonight he showed her the digestive system. He drew a picture. We looked at Mommy and Daddy's uvulas. Brian got out an anatomy book. Cumorah eats it up. She started drawing her own picture of an epiglottis. Here is Cumorah trying to pronounce a new word. Brian used the word obstacle and she tried to say it, so he told her what it meant and tried to help her (not very successfully) with the pronunciation.
Cumorah really wants to go to the hospital. She is really into getting hurt and being sick and saying, "I need to go hospital." She loves getting medicine and bandaids. It was very exciting when she got a minor injury on her toe earlier this week. "Oooohhhh, I got blood." She has an owie voice. It is a voice full of concern and sympathy. She is also really into giving (not getting) shots.
Cumorah has a train that she rides a lot. She invites Rivers to come along, too. She gets her bags and tells me, "Bye bye, see you next week." Her train is under the kitchen table. She also has a helicopter. She gets the keys out for the helicopter. She has a set of keys and so does Rivers. Rivers flies in the helicopter too, but she doesn't know it's a helicopter. The helicopter is under the piano. There are also a great number of boats in the house. They're usually laundry baskets or boxes. She has used the bathroom stool turned upside down for her baby doll's boat.Cumorah discovered that she can carry the tall bathroom stool all over the house and reach things that she wants. She can also turn lights on and off with the help of her stool. It's really cute unless she is trying to get something I told her she can't have and she ends up having a melt down and throwing the stool.
Cumorah is not all that in to picking up her toys anymore, it's just not a novelty now that she is so grown up. We've tried Mr. Gunnysack who eats up all the leftover toys she refuses to put away. We've tried chocolate and jelly beans and stickers as rewards. Oh well. I've decided that good old fashioned patience and perserverance on my part is the key. Most nights she does pretty well. I'm pretty insistant that she help clean up, but I have to keep my cool, because she loves it if Mommy starts to get annoyed. Little by little I'm discovering ways to make things like that go smoother. I learned that if I have her brush her teeth before bath, while it's filling up or while Rivers is playing in it already that we eliminate the temptation to play the oh-so-fun I-don't-have-to-open-my-mouth-and-let-you-have-a-turn-brushing-my-teeth-and-you-can't-make-me game.
Cumorah is very into setting the table. She loves to put Mommy and Daddy's plates on the table. She gets this smile on her face and you can tell she's feeling so important. I hand her the plate and say, "Use two hands. Be so careful." She says, "That's glass." She also gets to put our glass cups on the table. Sometimes she gets her trusty bathroom stool and gets the silverware out all by herself.
Cumorah is good at jumping.
Cumorah loves to drive the car shopping carts. Mommy doesn't like them as much because they are a pain to maneuver. We were once at a different HyVee, not our friendly neighborhood one, and the bag boy proceeded to tell me that I could not take the car cart out to the parking lot when I asked him to put the groceries in it. I just looked at him blankly until the checker lady said, "Of course she can take it out, she doesn't need to move her babies around." I'm glad she said that, because I wasn't sure how I was going to react, whether the don't-mess-with-the-crazy-mama in me (that I try desperately to hide) was going to emerge or whether I would just meekly transfer baby and protesting toddler into a normal cart. But anyway, Cumorah loves those car carts. Very fun stuff.
Cumorah likes to go to the play place at the mall. She likes to go to Sister Cottrell's house for Mommy's Relief Society meetings. That's just as good if not better than the play place because there are toys, friends, AND candy ('puddles', aka skittles, are her favorite so far). Cumorah likes to go shopping. Cumorah likes to go to church. Cumorah likes to go out. Not so good for a mama who likes to stay in. Fortunately, she does play well at home. I think we are all looking forward to the summer though. I have great plans for going to the wading pool often and to the lake for a walk once a week. We are going to enjoy the warm weather.
Cumorah likes to draw. Cumorah likes to read. Cumorah likes to make pizza on pizza night. Cumorah likes to tease her sister. Cumorah likes to rock in the rocking chair with her mommy. Cumorah likes to kiss and hold her sister. Cumorah likes to hold her sister on the slide at the play place. Cumorah likes to sit next to her mommy and sister while they're nursing and say, "We're a family. We're a happy family." Cumorah likes to help her daddy take the trash out on trash night. Cumorah likes to help her daddy do anything. Cumorah really likes her daddy. Cumorah likes to talk to her grandmommy on the phone. Cumorah likes to type on the computer. Cumorah likes to choose her own tooth flossing thing out. Cumorah likes to dip her hands into her water cup at the dinner table. Cumorah likes to put her dolls down for naps in her room and shut the door and tell everyone to be quiet.
I really like Cumorah. I think she's a lot of fun. Even if she is a sneaky little binky-snatching stinker.
