Chaselyn - too much for words

My daughter is hilarious. She is a laugh riot. She's just a perfect combination of a little person and a innocent baby that hilarity ensues at every moment. Her latest craze is to put an "o" or "io" on everyone's name. For instance, I'm "Mommy-O". Stanton is "Daddy-E-O". And then there's Jacob-E-O, Craw-de-O (CrawDad), Pa-Pa-O, and my favorite Jesus-E-O. As in "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS-E-O!!!!!!" yelled at various points around Christmas time.

What a joy she was during the holidays. I love Christmas time. I love the lights on houses. I love the Christmas tree and ornaments. I love the cold weather. I love the special holiday treats. I love traditions. I love having time with family. I love almost everything about Christmas. And what a joy it is to have a sweet little innocent child to show all of the amazing things to. She loved the pageantry of Christmas as much as I do. "I see tismas yites" was one of the many phrases that made my heart happy. She loved all the decorations. She loved singing happy birthday to Baby Jesus. She learned about the story of Jesus' birth and wanted to read the story every night. By the time Christmas rolled around she could fill in most of the blanks and identify pictures. Here's the Christmas story as Chaselyn knows it:

Mary was told by an angel that she was going to have Baby Jesus. And Joseph was excited too. An angel told him not to be scared. They rode a donkey to Bethlehem (pronounced roughly as Bellyham). The innkeeper said that there was no room. So Mary and Joseph had Baby Jesus in a Stable. Then the Shepherds who take care of sheep saw a star and went to find Baby Jesus. This made Mary very happy. Then 3 wise men saw a big star and followed it all the way to find Baby Jesus. They brought him presents (one of which she identified as rocks which is what the gold looked like in the book). Then Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus left on a donkey to get away from the mean king.

Granted there were pictures to guide her answers, but it made us proud parents for her to know at some level what Christmas was really all about.

She is also quite the trend setter. She loves her tutu and leg warmers. She's also a fan of any shoes she can find and socks worn as gloves. Hairbands and anything round double as bracelets and she has quite the collection of purses to go with any outfit.

She's at the stage where she likes a friend to go wherever she goes. Favorites are Jessie, Violet, Baby Violet, Little Baby, Baby, and during Christmas time she took Rudolph.

She is quite the thinker. She has the greatest thinking face. Like if you ask her which friend she would like to take shopping (still a favorite past time). She'll furrow her brow, kind of smirk, and then make an "a-ha" face when she's decided.

But just when you think she's made her decision you have to be careful, because she negates things by putting 'not' at the end of her sentence. So rather than saying 'I don't want to take Violet' she'll say 'I want to take Violet not.' It's very confusing, but pretty great too.

Unfortunately Chaselyn is also very aware of the word MINE. I know everyone goes through it, but I'm just not sure I can take it. It's a real bother. It's nice when she says 'My Mommy' it's not so nice when she says 'No Jacob, My Mommy.' We're working on sharing and I'm hoping that getting her back into daycare will help some.

She is a good big sister most of the time. She wants to help with everything. Eating, playing, washing, soothing, tickling, disciplining, everything. She used to want to help with diaper changes too, but I don't think she ever understood the difference in boy parts and thought I was leaving Jacob 'eewy' all the time. So eventually she just gave up. It's nice though when they play together. There's even been a couple times when Jacob started crying when Chaselyn stopped playing with him as if he missed her. So sweet.

She does something new every day. She's getting better at her ABC's She often gets all the letters except 'TUV'. She can count her fingers up to five. But past that she gets lost. Without using fingers, she tends to skip 4 and 6 on her way to 10. She's also learning other songs like twinkle, twinkle little star, Jesus loves me, and more.

I can't express how much joy I get from being able to observe her daily and watch her grow.