Julia, Months 27-28

We all need a good laugh today, don't we? Laughter is such good medicine.

"A joyful heart is the health of the body, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones." - Proverbs 17:22
 
There's nothing like a toddler to make you laugh. Here are some Julia stories from her months as a 27- and 28-month-old. We love our Julia!

• Julia's favorite color is most definitely blue. She tears through blue crayons and blue paint, loves blue clothes, food, and toys, and always chooses blue when there's a color choice for anything. She knows that Aaron's favorite color is red and that mine is blue, and she really likes talking about favorite colors. A couple months ago, she told me, "Mommy, your favorite color is purple." "No, it's not," I replied. "It's blue." "No," Julia said, "Blue is NOT your favorite color! It's MINE!" I told her we could share it, but at the time, she still didn't seem to buy it. Beware, world. Blue is officially spoken for. Go pick your own color.
• We had been bribing Julia to go potty with a couple M&M's for #1 and chocolate milk for #2, but she'd been doing a little better (for a while. sigh.) with potty training, so we hadn't been giving out M&M's unless she remembered to ask for them. There were a few times she remembered much later. We'd be playing, and she'd suddenly exclaim, "Hey! You forgot my M&M's!" and we'd give her a delayed reward. She then must have calculated that maybe if she just said, "Hey! You forgot my M&M's!" completely out of the blue she might get M&M's, even if she didn't potty successfully earlier. Wrong.
• Potty training continues to be a somewhat frustrating endeavor. We always thought it'd be so easy with an intelligent child, but maybe intelligent children are smart enough to realize they have a pretty sweet deal in diapers - you never have to take a break from playing to go to the bathroom, and an adult completely takes care of the mess you've made at a later, more convenient time. Julia will often tell us, "I need to go poopy!" after she already made her diaper dirty. Aaron recently realized how far she still has to go when he was making her take a potty break, and Julia said, incredulously, "I don't need to go potty! My diaper is not wet!"

• Julia has a Stanford Tree doll from our friend, Maria, who is getting her PhD there. She really loves it and often plays with it along with her Sesame Street dolls, as they're all around the same size. One time, she had the tree say to Ernie, "Hi, Ernie! I have no hands!" What an awkward introduction! 
• Another time, she was talking about the tree and how it has no hands. We pointed out some of the lower branches on the tree and asked her if those could be the tree's hands. Julia said, "No! Those aren't hands! The tree has 5 nipples!" 
• One Thursday morning in April, Aaron and I didn't have to work, so we watched Mary-Claire while Meghan went into the office. When Mary-Claire fell asleep in my arms after a morning bottle, I had Aaron change the sheets in Julia's crib, and I put her in the crib to finish her nap. As Aaron prepared the crib, Julia was trying to climb into the crib, saying forcefully that she wanted to take a nap and kept saying, "This is my crib!" Talk about unheard of! Julia doesn't like napping in the afternoon, let alone at 10 am. Jealously is a powerful motivator ;-)
• But Julia does love Mary-Claire a lot. When she plays with her dollhouse's little girl and baby, she always calls them Julia and Mary-Claire, and has lately been insisting that Mary-Claire is her sister, not her cousin. Recently, Aaron was having the Mary-Claire doll talk to the Julia doll, and Julia said, "No, Mary-Claire doesn't talk! She cries!"
• We were talking about food allergies one day, and I said, "Who can't eat wheat?" "Elizabeth!" Julia answered. Then she started saying over and over, "Elizabeth eats glue! Elizabeth eats glue!" I was very confused until Aaron figured it out. "Elizabeth can't eat gluten, right, Julia?" "Yes! Gluten makes her sick!" Julia said. 
• We recently went to a children's expo, and there was a table to encourage healthy eating. You had to try 5 different vegetables, including one you'd never tried before, and you would get a healthy eating certificate. Julia ate 4 veggies we knew she liked, and I gave her a turnip to try. After she got her certificate, I noticed the piece of turnip, chewed up and spat out, on the floor of the expo center, right at her feet. Certificate worthy healthy eater? Haha!

Julia just keeps growing so quickly! These days, she loves coloring with crayons or markers, "writing" with pen or pencil, playing tag, playing dollhouse, playing with her baby dolls and stuffed animals, "reading" books and being read to, "playing" board games, playing frisbee (she's actually catching it quite well!), and pretending to sleep on the floor with her stuffed animals, dolls, blankets, and pillows. She's a fun one!