34 Months

Oh, Heidi is a sassy little thing! But she sure is sweet too! She is currently going through a mommy phase. She wants me to do EVERYTHING for her and while its very sweet, its also very taxing. She insists that I put her to bed every night (sometimes this includes tucking her back in several times each night), I have to be the one to attend to her when she gets up in the middle of the night (this usually doesn't happen, but has happened quite a bit recently with her being sick), and I have to be the one to do any other thing she thinks a parent should do. She still loves Austin- she loves to snuggle in bed with him on weekend mornings, she loves to sit on his lap when he's home, and almost every piece of art she makes is for him, but she definitely wants mommy for most things. Sometimes it drives me crazy (especially when she demands that Austin get out of her room when he tries to respond to her tantrum about being tucked in AGAIN or when she throws a sippy cup of water across the room because Asher brought it upstairs instead of me), but I just try to remind myself that she obviously has a high need for bonding with mommy right now and it will probably pass all too soon. I've tried to find a minute every now and then to give her all my attention and smoother her in love and she just eats it right up.
I have recently started doing 10 minutes of 1-on-1 time with a kid each day, rotating through the three older kids (Trevor gets plenty of 1-on-1 time already). They get to pick what they want to do with me for 10 minutes. Heidi's choices have included painting her nails, spinning in circles together, having me tickle her, and playing board or card games that she's not quite mature enough to play with the boys. She loves this time and asks me at least 96 times a day if its her "special day".
Heidi is very social and loves church. While we are there, she likes to walk around and visit with different women and teenage girls. She is particularly fond of the family who's dog we babysat recently, and sometimes refuses to sit with us because she would rather sit with them. The mom always has snacks for her, so this is a big draw for Heidi- but she also just loves socializing with other "guls" (girls) as she calls them.
Heidi's imagination just keeps expanding and I often find her by herself with toys lined up in some game. She makes them have little conversations sometimes. She will play just as happily with "boy" toys (which is good, because this is mostly what we have) but they are usually part of a family. The other day she was playing with two trucks and one was the daddy and the other was the baby. Recently she also likes to spread her blankie out with the back up because its blue and she likes to pretend that its water. I found her "swimming" with a stuffed whale, then she kicked him out of the water and was floating in the water with one of her dolls. Heidi is very confident about her swimming skills although she's never been. The other day Austin asked her how to swim and she told him "just get in the water and move your body like this and kick". She is very confident about most things- which is great!
Heidi is also very insistent about the things she wants. If I give her an answer she's not pleased with, she will ask me the same question over and over again hoping that I'll change my answer. One example is the other day she was standing in my bathroom with me while I got ready. She was digging through my makeup drawer pulling things out and asking if I needed them. I kept telling her "no, I don't need anything right now" but she just kept trying saying "yes? yes? you do need this? yes? you want this? yes? yes?" She does this with tons of things, trying to coach me into giving her the answer she wants.
Heidi is quite the little handful, but she is a delight and I have no worries that she will get exactly what she wants out of life! I remembered to take pictures of her just before bed, so she's already in her pajamas (although these rarely stay on once she gets in bed- she tells me all the time that she likes to feel her cold blanket on her tummy) and she also insisted on having her "baby bunny" with her in the pictures too. (She originally wanted to sit on one chair while baby bunny sat on another, but I finally convinced her it was better to share a chair)