Mia, two years and three months

Every day Mia steals a bigger piece of my heart. Just when I think she has it all, she does something so endearing, I can feel my love for her grow even larger. She is just so sweet, so funny, and so smart. I'm always saying to her, "Mommy loves a silly girl" or "Mommy loves a smart girl" to encourage those behaviors in her. Some Mia moments from the past couple weeks:

• She is all about her big girl underwear these days. Although we don't have many accidents, we still use diapers at nap time and for bed, and Mia does not like it. She does not want to wear her diaper anymore. She's big now. So we've compromised by putting her underwear over top of her diapers, and this makes her happy.
• Bedtime has become a circus. I attribute it to her awareness that it's still light outside, because she has always done well with her routine until this past month or so. We still do her bath, brush her teeth and dry her hair, read two books and rock a little. But now, once I put her in her bed, it still may be almost an hour before she falls asleep. At first she was hollering for us the entire time, but now she's starting to understand that she can read in bed or play for awhile until she winds down. I know what you're thinking: move her bedtime to later. Well, we tried that, and it still took an hour or even an hour and a half for her to wind down. So we'll keep plugging away at it.
• While the potty training is going well, we've had some "trying" moments. The few times she has had an accident, she freaked out and didn't want us to change her. I've tried to reassure her that she doesn't need to be embarrassed, that it's okay, that we'll make it there next time, etc. but she screams, flails around, and is basically hysterical for like 20 minutes or so. It's awful because we have to clean her up, so we're wrestling with a hysterical child, trying to get poopy and pee-pee covered clothes off her. One time I was trying to clean the poop off her and she stuck both of her hands in her butt crack, screaming at me to leave her alone. So then she escapes me and takes off running, her poo-covered hands causing mass destruction in their wake. I really don't know what to do in those situations.
• Two other times she has peed on purpose. On Memorial Day we were outside playing at Aunt Pat's and I noticed she was holding herself. I took her to the potty and she freaked out, I guess because I interrupted her playing. I put her on the potty but she arched her back, pushed herself off the toilet, and screamed over and over. I finally gave up and went to get a diaper. When I walked back in she was standing on the bath mat, peeing. I told her that was bad, that we didn't pee on bath mats, only on potties. I try not to associate potty training with punishment, but that was deliberate. The next night she did something similar, taking off her diaper in her bed and peeing on her sheet, blanket and pillow because she didn't want to go to bed. What do I do there?? I actually didn't say anything, I was so furious. I just got her out, changed her and cleaned her up, put her back in bed and left.
• Most of the time though, she is very funny and often has me in deep belly laughs. She answers her play telephone, very rapidly saying, "This is Mia Robbins. Can't talk right now, I'm eating dinner. Talk to you later. Okay? Bye bye. This is Mia Robbins."
• She makes up her own songs to the tune of Frere Jacques. There is "I like Cheerios", "I have crayons", and my favorite, "I love Mommy".
• She remembers who gave her which outfits. So as I put on her clothes in the morning she may say, "Baby Macee gave me this shirt" or "This was Chloe's".
• Mia is really into characters right now. We didn't let her watch much TV before she was two, so she's just now getting into movies and TV characters. She loves Shrek, Ariel, Woody and "Buzz Buzz", and her FAVORITE is Jake Sully from Avatar. No, she hasn't seen the whole movie, but enough that she loves Jake Sully.
• She is still very into her babies, and is always carrying one around with her. Last night I went in to check on her after she was in bed and she had spread out a small receiving blanket and was laying Elmo on it. She wrapped him up, pulled him to her and started shushing him really softly. Then she handed him to me and said, "Hold Elmo Mommy, he's crying." So I held him to me and she starts using this really soothing voice, "It's okay Elmo. Mommy hold you. Here, have a bottle" and she put her sippy cup up to his mouth. Oh, she is adorable.
• She continues to be a little fish in the water. She can swim all the way across the pool and back using her cube, and is doing really well with her seated diving. She scares me because she goes under whether we're looking directly at her or not. I can look away for a fraction of a second and I hear her say "1, 2, 3 go!" and she pushes herself under, looking up at me with a big toothy grin from underwater. I've had nightmares that she drowns with a big smile on her face. She's so fearless!
• Mia is afraid of thunder and lightening, and woke up to the storms this morning. When storms are around, she only wants her daddy to soothe her. Mike slept with her on the couch for a few hours this morning. When they got up, Mia crept into my bedroom. She walked over to the bed and said in her little high-pitched voice, "C'mon Mommy. Get up. Hold my hand. C'mon, let's get up" and she took her little hand in mine and led me to her little breakfast table and chairs. We sat there together and had breakfast and watched Mickey Mouse.