30 Months Old

Tomorrow is Esperanza's 'half' birthday - she's 2 1/2 years old! I thought the half birthday obsession of mine would go away, but I kinda love the idea and it's an excuse for us to make cupcakes with sprinkles on them tomorrow...so there ya go.

You always hear so many negative and bad things about 2 year olds. I often use Esperanza's age as an excuse for her behavior, and even my own because the age of 2 is so widely agreed upon as a challenging stage. And I get a little chuckle out of getting peoples simpathy for 'what I'm going through' with my 2 year old. She's only 2 for 6 more months and I won't be able to get the same response when she's 3 (so please just continue to go along with it next time). Yes, I lose it and yell at her a little more than I did when she was an infant, I attempt to take more and more 'me' time whenever I get a chance because I'm on the breaking point of insanity, I get really really frustrated with Esperanza pretty often and maybe I've even taken the easy route and given in to her more often than 'a better than me' parent would have. But if you ask me, 2 is pretty darn great. I don't think my 2 year old is much different than the average so called 'ill behaved' 2 year old...I just think that people don't appreciate 2 year olds and how challenging it must be for them to discover and experience things the way we as adults in this particular society have decided is safest and most appropriate. I would say that for me, things were bad when Esperanza was a 1 year old and though most people wouldn't believe it, 3 months was even worse...but the hang-up about 2 year olds I honestly don't get. Sure, she has a hard time expressing her emotions in a way that most adults consider appropriate, and she rarely if ever listens to me when I tell her something, but I know few adults that behave much better under similar circumstances.

Either way, I love having my two year old Esperanza around. She does silly unexpected things, makes an adventure out of almost anything and lights up the dullest and darkest of days. She loves to stomp in mud puddles when it's pouring down rain outside, she refuses to sit in the shopping cart at the grocery store yet runs wild if she's left to walk obediently beside me, she likes to dress herself when given the chance, she wakes up every morning and asks for me to turn on the music, the fire and the christmas lights (we left a strand of white lights up), she continues to refuse to sit on the toilet and will probably hide behind the couch to poop in her diaper until she starts kindergarten, she's a whopping 26 pounds, she used to sleep through the night but now that I've moved her into her own room those nights are long gone, though it changes every few weeks her favorite color is blue, she's talking in sentances now and has the cutest little voice ever, when I talk to her about her little brother she tells me to 'get him out' of my belly, when I ask her what we should name him she says 'blue', it never fails for her to ask for a drink of water as soon as the lights are out and she's in bed, she loves to paint with watercolors and always goes after the black before any other color, she LOVES stuffed animals and she has them dance in the car when we go for car rides, she is the biggest and most obnoxious whiner I've ever encountered, she has become more and more complient when I do her hair, her hair is curly/wavy and we wonder if it will stay that way or straighten out as she gets older and it gets longer, public scenes of her throwing herself on the floor in the middle a public busy walking area refusing to move because she's upset about something has been occuring more and more often, she loves helicopters, her favorite movie character is Buzz, her dad takes her to visit and play with her cousin Rafael several times a week and she randomly and often asks for Gama, Maiy, Neva, Roman & Tony (you all know who you are).

If you're still with me and can endure more 'Esperanza tid-bits', here are a few other random things about her at 2 and a half that I just must document for the future...

~Esperanza finally enjoys taking baths. Up until just a month or two ago, I dreaded giving her baths, it was a screaming & kicking match every single time. Something changed almost over night though and she now asks to take a bath all the time. It's become part of our bedtime routine and she gets one almost every night.
~Some of Esperanza's favorite snack foods are quesadillas, yogurt w/ honey & wheat germ, peanut butter right out of the container, apple slices (it seems rediculous to buy them, but Safeway's organics brand has the best pre-cut/packaged apple slices!!!) and of course raisins. Oh and almost every morning for the past couple of weeks when I ask Esperanza what she'd like for breakfast, her response is 'bacon & sausage'.

~Among one of Esperanza's unfortunate bad habits is picking her nose. At first it was funny, but now it's a little out of control. She always has her finger up her nose! And then she will of course bring me her findings once she's done because she doesn't know what to do with it. The other day I told her that since she liked picking her nose so much and she liked quesadillas just as much, that we should make mocodillas! Mocos is spanish for boogers. She really liked that idea and now asks for mocodillas rather than quesadillas.

~An odd obsession of Esperanza's is chapstick. She loves the stuff! She will spot a tube of chapstick at people's houses and ask for it, she'll dig through my purse and/or coat pockets for it, she'll search high and low until she has a tube of chapstick in her hands. I have gone through so many tubes of chapstick because she would stick her fingers in it, eat it, rub it on the walls or just twist the entire tube up and out making it so you couldn't put it back in. Over time and punishment though, she now really just uses it on her lips. I tried buying her her own cheap chapstick once. Though it satisfied her need for a short period of time, she knows what the good stuff is. I'm okay with it, at least it isn't make-up.

~Esperanza loves listening & dancing to pop music! This I blame 100% on Armando. He listens to pop music in the car because he does promotional work with current pop artists and listens to make sure radion stations play his advertisements...but really, as much as he might deny it, he's a fan of the music too. Anyways, now my 2 year old loves a song about girls goin' to the club sung by an 'artist' who is having a 'Get SleazyTour'! All I can hope for is that this is the first of many phases Esperanza will go through and good thing this pop phase is at 2 rather than 13.

~'I want _____'!!! I hear this phrase as least a bazillion times a day. Again, it started as something funny, then turned obnoxious and demanding. So, I'm now constantly repeating after her "May I _______ " or at the very least "I want ______ please". No matter how hard I try, nothing seems to replace those two words followed by whatever it is she wants at the moment.

~We've recently added reading a book or two to our bedtime routine. I know what you're thinking 'just now, at two and a half?'. Well, I've tried for the past couple of years to read her books during the day time as well as night time, and she just wouldn't sit still for a book. Not for picture books, pop-up books, or even REALLY short books. She has a collection of books of all kinds on a little book shelf in her room and her only interest in them has been to pull them off the shelf to make a mess. We've been going to story time at the library since she was just a few months old and she never would show interest in books. Until now! About a week ago we were getting ready for bed and she asked me to read her a book. To my surpise, I was able to read the entire book to her without her loosing interest or being distracted. Every night since then we've read a book or two before bed.

~The entire bed time routine has improved so much just in the past couple of months in so many ways - it's as if I have a different child now than I did 4 or 5 months ago. The reading of books, the baths and even the brushing of teeth. We've always brushed teeth before bed of course, but like baths, it was literally a kicking and screaming event. 9 times out of 10 I would have to put Esperanza on the floor on her back, her arms pinned down by my knees with me trying to get the toothbrush to work it's magic very quickly every time a scream came out opening Esperanza's mouth. She HATED to have her teeth brushed. But, overnight recently things changed and she loves to brush her teeth. Often, it is her that reminds me when it's time to brush her teeth because they feel 'yucky' and she wants them to be 'nice & pretty'. I first let her brush her own teeth while I brush mine, then I brush her teeth. She tells me where she thinks I need to brush and it all goes amazingly well.

I could go on but all in all, Esperanza is just an amazing two and a half year old. I can imagine I'll probably have bigger disasters, louder noise, more ER trips, scarrier moments and many more broken random things through the house when I have a 2 year old boy...but I can honestly say that I look forward to having another 2 year old in the in the near future. I am however glad I don't have TWO 2 year olds at the same time!

And here's Espranza getting ready to walk out the door saying she's going to Grandmas - with nothing more than her socks and her purse (which I'm sure has my chapstick in it)...