Looking Back... Emma is 25 Months Old!

Month 25... or the month Emma discovered the love of music.
I mean real love.
She's always been into music, but now she actually has a favourite album. Yup. A favourite album. At 2 years old. That's pretty cool, if I don't say so myself. It's called "Hello Hello: Brent Songs for Children." This is the same Brent that performed at her bday party. Afterward, he gave her a copy of his CD. Good thing too, cuz I likely wouldn't have bought it for her. Way too cheap these days. Who woulda guessed that she'd LOVE it like she does??! Certainly not I.

As soon as we get in the car, every single day, her first request is always "Brent songs?" When each song ends, she always says one of two things:
"Nuther Brent song?" or
"Nuther Brent song comin up!"

And yesterday was the best. She actually asked me to make it LOUDER.

One day I told her a particuarly Brent song was my favourite. It's all about the keeper at the zoo who gave his keys to the chimpanzees and the chimpanzees set the animals free, OH NO!" It's a catchy little ditty, and I shamefully find myself singing along in the car. Now everytime it comes on, Emma points out that it's "Mommy's favourite Brent Song." But then she reassures me by saying "My like it too..."

Have I told you how she confuses My with I? Everytime she should say "I", she says "My". Like, "My like it," or "My can do it." Yeah, yeah... it's cute.

But back to the love of the song for a minute... She's started singing a few too. No, no, no... not her ABC's. Let's not get carried away now. Still nothin' happenin' on that front. However, here are couple she does do rather nicely...

Row Row Boat
Gently
Streammmm....
Merrly Merrly

I love you
You love me
Barney



She's having even fuller conversations than last month. For instance, we were at Loblaws, coming up the "moveator" (flat escalator type thing) in the shopping cart. Emma in the front, Michael in his car seat in the middle. It didn't properly latch on to the "movator" conveyor belt and so when we got to the top, the whole thing jammed up and we almost plummeted to our death (or at least slid a long way down, asses first, landing on our faces) but were saved by the hunky 20-something man behind me who grabbed hold of the cart before anything horrible happened to anyone. When we finally got off the "movator", I had this conversation with Emma:

E: That was close!
A: Yes, it was.
E: Mommy was scared.
A: Yes, mommy was scared.
E: I scared too.

And the other morning, we were running late (what else is new?).
A: C'mon Emma... Hustle! Hustle! Hustle!
E: I'm hustling!

Or, if she's ahead of me on the stairs, as we're on our way out:
E: C'mon Mommy.... C'mon....

This is what Emma would look like if she & Michael were twins joined at the head, and 20 months apart:



Emma is also being as finnicky as her father in some areas. Like food. No, not what you're thinking - Jeff has no problem eating. Emma, however, has proven that you really don't need food to survive. The past few days I've been thanking God (or whomever) that she's discovered the joy of the Yop. Actually it's the joy of the Danimals Drinkables. I just think people are more familiar with Yop. Better branding. In any case, she's drinking about three or four of them a day. She'd go for more, but I generally cut her off - these things are freakin' expensive! I wouldn't complain so much if they weren't so damn small...

But back to the finnicky part. I'm talking bananas here, people. Bananas. She loves 'em. We all love 'em. It's a banana, what's not to love? But... BUT... they must be a PERFECT YELLOW. Any single marking, the slightest imperfection in colour, and she immediately discards it as "dirty". And will request (demand?) a "clean banana pleeze". It really hit home the other day when she looked at her beautifully ripe banana, one with a couple little blemishes, but hardly acne ridden, and declared it to be "FILTHY." OH. MY. GOD. I gave birth to a two-year-old Jeff.

This is the face you get when you ask Emma to make her "cute smile":



And from the side:



She thinks this is her particularly cute face. It's hard to tell her otherwise:



I've been trying my damndest to instill proper pronounciation in Emma's vocabularly. No gonna's or wanna's. It's going to or want to. No cutting corners. And I've been pretty vigilant about my own sometimes slack-ass vocabularly as well. By admission, my only real downfall, other than the fact that I curse like a fucken drunk trucker, is that I say "yeah" instead of "yes". So does Jeff. "Yup" plays a big role too. And now it does for Emma as well. Damnit. I've gone and tarnished my once perfect kid. So every time she utters "yup", I follow it with "yup is not a word." And she repeats it.

A: Yup is not a word.
E: Yup is not a word.
A: Is yup a word?
E: Yup.

It's going well.

And lastly, my two-year-old no longer says "thank you". I thought I had done a great job engraining the importance of saying "thank you" at every appropriate turn. She had it down. She was golden. So golden that she's taken it upon herself to swift it up a notch. She now says "thanks." Even better, it's not even "thanks, mommy." No. It's now "thanks, mom." When did she turn thirty?