Lily turned two a few weeks ago and oh what a wild ride she takes us on daily. We had a quiet birthday with pizza for supper, because she is not a fan of our traditional birthday crepes. Honestly if she could have chosen any supper, it would have been cereal. This girl can eat 4 or 5 bowls of cereal in one sitting.
Miss Lily is the most mischievous, sneakiest, diabolical little miss to grace this house. She can open anything, except things under lock and key, and is resourceful enough to reach almost anything except for things that I can barely reach. I started compiling a list of everything she has managed to get into, and though it will make me look like a neglectful parent who never pays attention to my child, I know the truth. And I need this list as evidence when she calls me complaining about the mischief her kids are getting into.
Ahem.
*Things Lily has managed to open and dump everywhere
-bottle of vanilla
-bottle of face lotion
-bottle of glasses cleaner
-unwound entire container of floss
-jar of ground cloves
-bottle of hand sanitizer
-a giant ziploc of beads
-3 bottles of nail polish
-bottle of cream of tartar
-bottle of screen cleaner
-bag water beads (one of the WORST things to clean she has ever dumped)
-box of graham cracker crumbs
-bottle of baking powder
There are guaranteed more, but this is just since I started collecting evidence. Most cupboards have child locks or elastic bands around them, but she has found out how to dismantle or break most of our child proofing attempts. I swear I'd need all cupboards 6 feet off the ground to keep her out.
As soon as you don't hear her, you better start running to find her. 99% of the time, she is in a room with a closed door. And if you can't immediately find her in that room, there is a 99% chance she is hiding in the closet. Once I was reading a bedtime story to Scarlett, and was probably reading for a good 10 minutes when I heard a noise. Lily had been hiding in the closet, consuming some treat she had found, and had stayed so quiet I didn't even know she was in there until she went back to the bag for more treats. This picture is when I caught Lily hiding behind Mia's bean bag chair eating a full size chocolate bar she had managed to open enough to eat through the wrapper.
On the day she got into the nail polish, when I was trying to print something off after feeding her breakfast. I was at the computer for maybe 5 minutes, when I realized I didn't hear her playing with Brooklyn anymore. I ran upstairs and immediately the smell of nail polish hit me. I found her in our bathroom, with a bag of nail polish. When I caught her she held up her hands and said "ooh look, fingers!" She had given herself quite a good manicure, a horrible pedicure, and painted a significant amount of my bathroom floor fuschia. Thankfully she had decided to empty the three nail polish bottles into an empty ziploc bag which she acquired from who knows where. Barely any was on her clothes. After half a bottle of nail polish remover later, our bathroom was mostly returned to its previous state.
A week before she turned two, I was in a meeting, when Gordon called. He started by saying "I wouldn't call if it wasn't an emergency...", then proceeded to tell me Lily had climbed up onto the sink in the main floor bathroom (literally NEVER seen her do that before or even go in that room really), and he found her with his empty tylenol bottle for work. I had just put that bottle in the back corner of the sink a day ago, because I found it on the floor (probably fallen out of his work bag). He wasn't home for me to put it in his work bag right away, so I put it in the main floor bathroom so he would see it and put it in his bag. I knew there had been about 6 or 7 extra strength tylenol in there. She had a red tongue, so we figured she had probably sucked on one at the very least, and we couldn't see any in the toilet, garbage, or lying around. Poison control informed us that any more than 2 extra strength would be toxic for her, and she needed to go to ER to get bloodwork done. He did notice a couple down the drain, and went so far as to take the sink apart to see how many were in there. We could only find two, so I came home from my meeting and drove her to the ER.
There is no dedicated children's hospital here, so we waited in emerg with everyone else to be triaged. It took an hour to see the triage nurse, then another hour of waiting to see the dr at 11pm. I know that's positively speedy compared to normal wait times. It just seemed extra long with an almost two year old who had no intention of sleeping anytime soon, and was surrounded by so many things to touch she was almost jumping out of her skin. She kept saying "Mum, buttons! Mum, buttons!". We found out she couldn't get the bloodwork done until 4 hrs after ingestion which was 1145. I was exhausted and Lily was bouncing off the walls. Thankfully the lady who did her bloodwork was the sharpest shooter I have ever seen. She had the needle in without Lily making a single peep and took 4 vials of blood without her even noticing what was going on. I thought for sure Lily was going to crash at some point. But she just kept on going like the energizer bunny and no amount of cocomelon or baby shark (because YouTube kids was the only thing the wifi wanted to stream) could get her to sleep. I kept lying her in the stroller and reclining her back, telling her to go to sleep. Every time, she would bolt upright and say "No mama! I awake!". Finally around 1am she fell asleep, and about 30 minutes later they came in and said her bloodwork was normal and we could go home.
She is a little artist, and I'm forever finding artwork on the walls or the furniture. No matter how high I keep the markers and pens, her siblings are forever leaving them in her reach. It's the only reason I have a bottle of hair spray on hand.
Everything Lily says needs an exclamation mark on the end. She speaks very well and has no problems telling you what's on her mind, or simply taking what she wants. When you live with Lily you become hyper aware of certain sounds (doors closing, bags rustling etc). My ears perked up one morning, so I came to investigate and watched her stand on a bottom drawer to reach a bag of butterscotch chips up on the counter. She got small bowl for herself (all the kids dishes are in a lower cupboard so they can reach them), and dumped the entire bag in the bowl. She took the bowl to the other room, sat down with a blanket and started to eat her well procured snack. If she wants something like food/drink, she will often bring you the dishes she wants you to put it in. She's a mean pickpocket too, and if she wants my phone she will manage to sneak it out of my pocket with me barely noticing until it's too late.
Lily never wastes an opportunity take what she wants from her siblings...or parents... and is always watching for the perfect moment to catch everyone unawares. Once in church when sacrament was being passed, Gordon foolishly tried to pass the tray over top of her, while she was sitting on his lap, without letting her take a piece. Not going to let opportunity pass her by, she yelled "MY TURN!" reached her entire hand in and grabbed the biggest handful of bread she could. Bread was literally raining from her fingers and the kids started fighting over all the extra sacrament bread falling so they could be "more holy" (according to Isaac). Mia used to keep her Halloween candy in her closet to keep it away from other siblings. But Lily would often go in there, close the closet, and pig out. Once Gordon found her and all she said when he opened the closet door was "Nom, nom, nom!".
Despite, her penchant for mischief, she can be very obedient and helpful. She likes to help unload the dishwasher and does a good job of putting things away where they belong. She's good about putting away her garbage and laundry. And if I start a 5 second countdown or tell her something is "all done", she will usually say "Ok!" and put it away or stop doing what she's doing. The bigger problem is she's usually too quick for me to catch her in the act...
Her favourite shows are anything Frozen or Finding Nemo/Dory.
She knows the alphabet, shapes, colours, and can count to 10. She likes to sing and I'll often hear her singing songs she's heard her siblings sing. She also loves to dance and follow along to freeze dance songs on YouTube.
Lily loves a good snuggle. She is hugely affectionate and loves to hug everyone in the family. She also really likes babies and pretends to shush them, put them to sleep, change diapers, feed them... She loves to look at pictures of her baby cousin and point out any baby in public. She will investigate car seats and strollers if she can.
She loves to be the center of attention and will often take my face in her hands and say "mom wook at me!" But she is also good at just playing on her own. She loves Barbies lately, and thankfully with 3 older sisters there are many of those to come by. She will sit up in her room quietly and take Barbies and shoes out and try and dress them all with certain accessories.
Lily has very little fear when it comes to acrobatics and usually hops down each stair (in a 4 level split she gets a LOT of stair practice), does bum drops off the couch onto unsuspecting people below like it's WWE, and is a monkey climber with two bunk beds in the house to practice on. We used to put her in a playpen at the foot of our bed to nap, so that the little girls could still play in their room since they share with her. Then she started using our blankets as grips to pull herself out of the playpen. So we started pulling the playpen away from the bed when we would put her down. One day I caught her rocking the playpen back and forth to scoot it closer to the bed. Now she can just climb out of it wherever we put her in the room...
Her hair has seemed to grow like crazy the last few months and is easily long enough for pigtails and ponytails. She has 12 teeth finally. Still 8 more to go *insert tears*.
She's become a little bit of a picky eater as of late. She loves breakfast more than any other meal. She just loves cereal, and will continue to ask for breakfast foods the entire day. She can eat her weight in cheese, loves pasta, and likes any type of sausage.
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Lily loves animals. She has no fear of dogs or cats, and if the neighbourhood cat is around, Lily is ready to give him all the love. He has an equal love for Lily and will brush up against her back and forth purring his little heart out. She loves giving our dog Ace all the belly rubs, and any scraps from the table when we aren't looking. Anything animal themed will capture her attention, especially clothes with animals on them. Nothing can beat those when deciding what to wear for the day.
I'm a little apprehensive at what shenanigans she'll get into this year, but she is so loved it hardly matters...unless it means more ER trips...
