Clara at 2.5

QUOTES
"I want to hold you"
"That would be nice and good."
Asking the obvious, "Mom, are you drinking your water?" "Dad, are you taking a shower?" "Mom, are you feeding Matthew?"
"Rawr! I'm a tiger!"
"I got a snotty, bergy nose."
"Do you like that Matthew?"

She loves putting together puzzles. She can do puzzles meant for an older child, such as her 20 piece jigsaw puzzle, with ease now. She doesn't get frustrated. It's amazing to watch her work through it.

She also loves having pretend picnics.

She's independent at the playground, which is nice. Although she does like playing up the damsel in distress at times. She will intentionally get herself stuck on something that's a little too hard for her and then sweetly cry out "help! help!" After doing this once, three preteen boys ran over and escorted her the rest of the way up the ladder. She was quite pleased with that outcome and attempted to repeat the scenario a few more times. I chose to intervene because those boys were being sweet, and I didn't want to see them taken advantage of. :)

Canned green beans are arguable her favorite food. She'll eat about too adult servings of them at dinner and then want more. We find ourselves saying things like, "Eat some pasta first, then you can have more green beans." Strangely backwards... but diversification is good, right? If unchecked she will polish off a whole can.

She is very meticulous and organized. She systematically works through her play. For example she creates a stack a books, and then reading one at a time, page by page until they're all organized into a separate "finished" pile. Or she colors with her crayons one at a time until they've all made their mark and been arranged in a neat row. She doesn't appreciate being interrupted from these tasks. She likes to accomplish.

She can sing songs, identify her letters, spell her name (verbally), sort, recognize quantities, and all kinds of other amazing things. Her sentence structure and vocabulary are very good for her age. She amazes us in new ways every day. She's sweet too and good about "thank you's."

She also likes to say, "mom says I have to...(fill in whatever she wants to do)." There are other variations of this too. I've heard about commands from dad, nana, and grandma as well.
My favorite was a few days ago when she very dutifully told me, "dad says I have to go to Chick-Fil-A." I made the mistake of checking with dad, only to discover that he, in fact, did not say that. I missed a window of opportunity there...

Some good Clara faces. She's quite expressive.

So fun.