Beneath the Terrible Twos

So much of my life right now revolves around my newest daughter but the first born is making sure I don't forget her existence.  Dealing with a newborn the second time around feels like a piece of cake, so K has made sure I feel sufficiently challenged all day long.  Seriously, this terrible twos thing is no joke and I feel completely out of my element.  So I am going to take a minute and record the wonderful things about her.  This is the last month of her life as a one year old and she is a seriously cool kid and I love watching her personality develop.
 

One of the weird quirks K has that makes me laugh every time is her whispering.  Whenever she's mad, or sometimes just at random moments, K looks super serious, stares me straight in the eye and whispers the most negative phrases she knows: "shush", "butt", "no show" (show refers to TV), etc.  It just kills me.  It's the worst when I'm being serious with her, or she's in trouble and whispers all creepy at me.

I love it when she gets bored (usually when I'm dealing with the baby) and she just lays out on the floor and gets very still.  It's a quiet action, but a seriously dramatic one for K.  She generally never stops moving but every so often now she just lays splayed out on the floor like she just can't handle life anymore. 

She loves to help with the grown up chores- unloading the dishwasher is her favourite.  I'm always amazed at how much information these little people can hold.  She knows where everything goes.  There are these little plastic bowls that Cole often puts with the tupperware when I like it put with K's other dishes.  The other day, K was unloading the dishwasher with me and she almost put the bowl in the tupperware drawer like her dad but then stopped herself and gave it to me to put up in the cupboard where it was supposed to go.  I was impressed she caught her mistake when her fully grown father didn't.

K loves to pretend to talk on the phone and she always fake laughs while doing it.  Whoever she's talking to is always funny I guess. 

She is learning the actions to a few different songs like "Popcorn Popping", "Wheels on the Bus" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and has gotten really good at them.  She asks to sing them every night before bed and remember where all the actions go in the songs. 

She loves to smell things, like her strawberry shampoo.  She smells it every time we use it and she goes "mmmmm".  She also smells weirder things, like her bathing suit the day after we've been to the pool and it still smells like chlorine.

Whenever we say bedtime prayers, she always makes us fold the arms of all the animals she keeps on her bed.  At the end of prayer, instead of saying "amen" she says "pray". 

I love her little sentences that aren't proper yet.  Whenever she finds out we are going somewhere she gets very excited and says, "I go, I shoes!"  Shoes are her life.  Not looking forward to that when she gets older.  She did not get that from me. 

It's the little things that get me through her bad attitude, rebellion, disobedience, whining, screaming and jealousy of her little sister.  She really is a great kid.