.: My little sweetie pie

McKenna is doing so well lately. She really melts my heart every day. She is so loving and happy and silly. As Erick and I get more consistent with our boundaries and how we communicate those boundaries, she has thrown less and less tantrums. She is learning to take the time to communicate her needs and we are learning how to help her avoid the frustration of not being able to communicate so that it doesn't evolve into a tantrum. It seems to be much more peaceful and a lot more fun every day.

Here are a few new things she's been doing:

I often will whisper to McKenna "I love you so much." And she will whisper back "I yah you so mush."

If you're familiar with the song "Rockabye Bear" from The Wiggles, she can do the entire dance to that song. She can do motions for a lot of songs but this is the first time I've seen her do an entire dance!

One of my favorite things is how much she loves her baby doll lately. She doesn't have a doll stroller (we think maybe she'll get one from the Easter Bunny) so she takes her push toy that she has, sits the baby on the handle and pushes her around like its a stroller. Then she will take her baby and say "doo doo?" And lay her on the changing pad, tell her "butts up butts up" (I always tell McKenna "butts up 7-up" when I lift her butt up to put the diaper underneath) and she will try to diaper her baby. Then she picks her baby up, gives her some baba, burps her baby (she even makes a burp sound), lays her baby down on her Dora couch, covers her baby with a blanket (which is really a shawl my Aunt Dawn sent her) and says "Night Night". Then she gives baby a kiss, gets up and turns off our lamp. What a little Mommy she is! Erick and I thought how sweet it all was and what a great big sister she'll be. Until tonight I heard that she also likes to take her dolly and throw her off the back of the couch while saying "WEEEEE!" LOL! Let's hope she doesn't do THAT with her new baby brother or sister!

She had two play dates last week. One with Samantha (age 27 months) on Thursday and one with Maddy (age 15 months) on Friday. We went with Samantha and her Mommy to Disneyland and had lots of fun. It was neat to be with a toddler who is the age McKenna will be when our next baby is born. Kind of gave me an idea of what to expect. Samantha is just a doll and McKenna loved copying whatever she said and did. Maddy and her Mommy came over to play on Friday. McKenna gave Maddy lots of kisses and in return, Maddy shared lots of her cookies with McKenna. I could tell she enjoyed her new friends a lot and can't wait to have more playdates with them.

Seeing how much kids can influence each other (in what they learn AND in what they eat) really made me start thinking about the idea of preschool. The church across the street from us offers a preschool program 1-3 days a week from September to May. So after talking about it, Erick and I both thought it would be a very good idea to enroll her one day a week. We really think she'll love it and will thrive in it. So September 1st - my little girl starts "school" *sniff sniff*.

She continues to open up to new foods. Auntie introduced her to fish sticks and McKenna loved them! She ate THREE of them! And a current favorite of hers are apples. She has asked for those for a snack even more than she asks for cookies (which makes me so happy because she was starting to ask for them way too much!) I will usually use my apple slicer/corer and cut the apple into slices, take off the peel and give her a whole slice. She does great with it and loves it. She will eat about half an apple which is fine with me because that means I get to snack on the other half. = )

She's giving names to her loved ones lately. My sister used to be "Deetee" but now she is clearly "Auntie". Saying Uncle Bri is a little more difficult so she usually just calls him "Bi". But she asks for him all the time, even in her sleep! LOL! Gramps (my Dad) is pronounced "Bramps". And Erick's Dad is called "Pop Pop". She chose that name all on her own. Erick kept calling him "Ging-Ging" whenever he referred to him. McKenna never picked up on that. But she did pick up on the fact that Erick calls him "Pop" so she calls him "Pop Pop". She also can say Cheryl's name (she pronounces it Seryl) and she will call for her when my Dad and McKenna go to pick Cheryl up from work. And when we were looking at pictures I pointed out Aunt Dawn and McKenna repeated "An Dawn?" So she knows who that is as well! Everyone and their mother has heard her say Grandma except for me. I think it confuses her when "mama" asks her to say "grandma". So when I ask her to say "grandma" she usually repeats it as "Ma-maw". And of course Luke's name has been as clear as a bell for some time now. She also calls him "Lukey" and "Lucas". LOL! I don't know where she picked that up from but she calls him that often.

Well, I think that's it as far as stories go. I have a few pics that others have sent me but my pics are trapped on my camera (we're having more computer issues right now). So here are a couple and I'll add the others in once we get these issues worked out.

Here she is on her "sorsey". She tells him to "giddyup" and she says "Neeeeeigh!" She can climb up on him all by herself. Unfortunately, she also thinks she works in the circus and tries to stand on his back hands-free!!!