The Little Miss

Can't do a post for Sadie and Shane and leave out Marissa now can I?  Oh Marissa, so much personality in such a tiny little body.  She is so different than Shane in a lot of ways that I feel like most days I am still trying to figure her out and how best to parent her.  She has reached the stage that I had heard whisperings of from other parents when Shane was at this age but never dealt with with him: wanting to do everything all by themselves.  She wants to put on her clothes, buckle her carseat, turn the pages of her books, close every door, say her prayers, etc. all by herself.  If I even look like I am going to intervene she will swat me away and say, "No! Let me do it!"  and quickly undo anything I started.  We talk every dinner about how everyone says amen because when we say amen she thinks we are doing it for her.  In fact she woke up in the middle of the night last week from a bad dream and I went in there and she was saying, "I don't WANT you to say amen!" I am reminding myself that it can be a pain now, but it will sure be nice to have her really able to do all these things soon and not have to light a fire under her like I did with Shane.  

I draw the line at letting her change her own diaper, though she would rather that than poop on the potty which she is kind of scared of.  She does sit on it all the time, usually after she realizes she's gone in her diaper she will tell me she needs to go.  In fact the other day I told her she didn't need to go to the potty because she just pooped in her diaper and she started dancing around and said, "I'm bouncing!" because she knows that is what I tell Shane when I am trying to point out that he needs to go haha.  So she has fun sitting on it and I am sure as heck not going to push her til she's ready.

She can be pretty feisty but man oh man is she ever so stinking cute, and she knows how to work it.  

 Still cannot leave those baby hands alone for the life of her though.

 She doesn't play with toys a ton, she mostly likes to go around the house and collect all our stuff and rearrange it and pretend to use it/really use it.  She puts up with a lot of bossing from Shane and goes along with a lot of his pretend play, but has no problem asserting herself with him either.

When we go out somewhere where she is free to be independent and do her own thing she does so well.  In the past year she has gone to probably 5 or 6 different nurseries while traveling and she just goes right in without a peep.

My visiting teacher is her nursery leader and she was surprised that Marissa wouldn't be 3 til April.  She said "wow she's so verbal" and Marissa smiled and said "I have a big noggin!" (we tell the kids their heads are so big because they are so smart ha ha).  Oh Marissa, I love you so much!  Please bear with me as I try to figure out what the heck to do with you sometimes!!