House of No and Other Funnies

Reese has turned into quite the funny girl lately with all of her new words and expressions. We went on a family outing to Half Priced Books recently (the original is right near our house on NW Hwy and is HUGE, it's awesome!) to pick up some child rearing books. I will be honest and say I kind of stopped reading up on milestones and parenting skills at a year. Now that Reese has decided to start having tantrums, I decided I needed some advice on how to deal with them (ignore, take out of the store, soothe???).

One thing I read was about how many times a day they hear the word "no". In our house lately, it is quite a lot. So Jeff and I have tried to stop using "no" so much and redirect her towards other things or explain instead of just shouting "no ma'am!".

The other night I was loading dishes in the dishwasher and Reese decided to climb INTO the dishwasher and stand on it. Well, I was just NOT going to have a broken dishwasher! So of course I exclaimed, "NO MA'AM! This is NOT a toy!". Well, she got the point and I felt like I had turned into my mom. Next thing I know, she walks up to Logan (our dog) and says "No no NOOOOO!" and then she starts saying something that sounds like "no means no!". Poor Logan, he is the lowest on the totem pole these days and even Reese bosses him around. With the "no means no" phrase I have fully realized that I have turned into Roxy (my mom) and I am sure the next phrases out of my mouth with be "money doesn't grow on trees" and "well then I am a monkey's uncle".

It isn't all bad in our house though. Reese is very sweet most of the time and is saying her "peas" and "tank coos". She is not always quite right on when to say "tank coo". For instance, she'll give us a toy and say "tank coo" instead of the other way around. I asked for a kiss the other night and she smacked one on me and said "tank coo". Of course my heart melted into a huge puddle of love right then and there.

Reverting to babyhood

So we have a baby on our hands and it isn't Baby James. Reese has reverted back to being a baby. Every time we go to a friend's house with a baby, she manages to find and climb into every baby piece of gear. For example, we were over at our friend Alison's house. She just had a sweet baby girl Nora. I think Reese likes trying out Nora's baby carrier and bouncy seat more than she likes the baby!

We were over at our friend's house last weekend and Reese decided to climb into their bouncy chair, sit back, and relax. The funniest part about all of this baby business is we could never get Reese to like her jumperoo or bouncy chair when she was a baby, now we can't keep her out of it!

And she is caught!