Cuteness Summarized

If I were to blog every cute or funny thing that Teagan did, I'd have carpal tunnel and my blog books would be the size of a Twilight novel. So I thought I would summarize some of her recent cuteness in a single post.

She's been fighting sleep for some time now, and yesterday I let her cry it out for a while after I put her down for a nap. Until I heard, "Help! Help!" then "Ayudame! Ayudame!"and came in to find her in the midst of trying to climb out (she may be getting wise) and stuck on the side of the crib. So she can call for help in two languages - may come in handy. But it may be time to slow down on the Dora.

Is there anything cuter than a baby in the bath, laying on their tummy with their little bum cheeks breaking the surface of the water? How about if they look up at you with great big blue eyes and say "Mummy! I Nemo! I swimmin!"

I've started teaching a few piano students and their mums watch Teagan while I teach, which is a win win win. Teagan loves to play with her friends instead of boring old Mummy. Especially since my friend Katie is an expert cookie maker and whips them up nearly every week. Teagan toddles in with a plateful, parks herself in the living room and dares anyone to try to take a cookie from her. It's really very frightening. Luke braved sneaking one and Teagan shoved his hand away. So he tried it with the other hand. She pinned both hands down and spat cookie in his face while yelling "No Nuke!" Charming. I resorted to distracting her with something shiny to get my share.

There are times I've wondered aloud how library DVDs can get scratched beyond recognition to the point they don't play. I got my answer this week. We're entering an independent stage and I can't seem to stop her from operating the DVD player on her own. She knows the eject button and with an attention span of less than 2 minutes, changes DVDs several times before settling on one. She insists on taking the DVDs out of their cases herself (thank goodness she's picked up the finger through the hole trick taking them out) and transferring them to the player, pushing me away and saying "Teagan turn. I help you." Hmm, I'm rethinking placing this particular aspect in the "cute" category.

If you haven't seen Finding Nemo, you may not appreciation this next one. We have church at 2:00 in the afternoon. To say it's a struggle would be a laughable understatement. We make a lot of effort to keep her in Sacrament Meeting, which means getting creative. To stave off what looked like a particularly nasty tantrum, he taught her to say "Noggin", bonk heads (lightly) and say "Duuude." Adorable. Unless it's the middle of the night, you've been rocking her for several minutes (which is hilarious to watch because she's gigantic) and are convinced she's asleep, only to find that once you rest your chin on her forehead in a squeeze of love, she quietly whispers "Noggin" and "Duuude." More maddening than cute, really.

Trying to branch out from Dora and <eye twitch> Max & Ruby (if you ask her, it's "Max & Nuby, Nuby & Max and she dances around to the theme song singing along - Max and Nuby! Nuby and Max over and over), we've been watching the Madagascar movies as a family. 'Madagascar' is difficult for an adult to spit out, so Teagan simply goes with "Noove It Noove It" (citing the 'Move It Move It' song during the credits). Use it in a sentence, you ask? "Teagan do it Noove It Noove It" meaning another DVD is about to meet its maker. (Literally, we've sent Monsters Inc. back to Disney to be replaced. Noove It Noove It will be next.)

Lately she's been a teeny tiny mummy and it melts my heart. She swaddles her Minnie Mouse doll or any other toy she can find, carries them around for a while, whispering things like "I know. It's okay. I know." and then laying them down somewhere, kissing them and saying "nigh night." She does it to me too, but with a little less love. "Sweep, Mummy." Then she drapes me with a blanket. And by "blanket" I mean her changing pad. While it's a sweet gesture, something a little less germ ridden would be lovely.

 

 

 

 

 

The girl's destined to be a nerd. I tell her to pick out stuffed animals to snuggle with at nap and bedtime and she insists on cuddling a pile of books. 

Which leads me to her compulsively neat tendencies. At first it was cute that she sorted all the memory cards by colour and stacked them neatly. But now, if one of the books in a pile is out of line or upside down she has an uncontrollable meltdown, yelling that it's "Boken!" between heaving sobs. It's bordering on the ridiculous.

And that, my friends is just a glimpse of the cuteness/irritation I deal with on a daily basis.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match.

While we aren't quite ready to compete on the Memory circuit, we've been playing it (with rules slightly modified) for a few days now and Teagan is really getting it. I'm sure the fact that this particular version features Dora, Dora and more Dora has nothing to do with her fascination. Trying to figure out how to break it to her that it isn't ALWAYS her turn, though.

Like a Diamond in the Sky

I finally caught her singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on film. She sings it almost constantly, but zips her lip as soon as I run to get the camera. I missed the first few bars, but I'm celebrating the small victories. Those are the only ones I have these days.
My favourite part is when she makes the diamond...and it's really the first time that the song is recognizable. Melts my heart every time. Isn't it darling?

The Cutest Thing.

Brandon tells me the cutest thing about Teagan these days is that she's old enough to run errands. Like getting a tissue when she needs her nose wiped, or pulling books off the shelf to read...and by read, I mean pile neatly. Observe the "cuteness".

Out of the Mouths of Babies and Munchkins on Helium

Ever wonder what a munchkin might sound like after it inhaled helium? Come and talk to Teagan. More often than not, I have a hard time taking her seriously when she's babbling incessantly several octaves above everyone else. While we tend to speak in higher tones when we talk to babies, she has nowhere to go but down. Way down. She loves talking to her little friend Makenna and always lowers her voice to almost a growl. A little scary, but Kenna smiles at her politely.

I don't know if it's because she's my only one, but she is still my baby. Every now and again when she looks at me, I still see a six month old with impossibly chubby cheeks, struggling to support the weight of her fat head. Just this week, she looked up at me from the bathtub and I saw that baby face. And that baby face said "opposites". She has a little bath book about opposites staring Elmo and remembered what it was called from her last bath. It floored me to hear a three syllable word resounding from those oh-so-full-and-kissable baby lips. <sigh> not a baby anymore.

While it's funny to hear her talk, it's hilarious to hear her sing. She's always singing a little tune to herself, whether it be her version of the ABCs or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. (Sidenote: it took me YEARS to figure out that the two songs shared a tune. I was playing it on the piano the other day and she recognized that they were the same. How embarrassing.) She likes to sing the "Hot dog hot dog hot diggity dog" victory song from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse but gets stuck in one particular spot and ends up sounding like a broken record. It goes something like "Hot dog, hot dog, hot digga digga digga digga..." you get the idea. And if you don't...

Getting into her PJs at night stresses her out, so we've tried to dispurse the anxiety with songs. Specifically "Zip a dee doo dah" while we're zipping up her zipper - bet you didn't see that coming. She sings the entire chorus of the the song and it's probably the cutest thing I've ever heard. And the dogs on our street go crazy for it :) As a hilarious little bonus, she now calls her zipper by its full name. I went to get her up from a nap and she'd unzipped it most of the way and asked me to fix her "zip a dee doo dah." Too funny.

In case you thought she could only sing in English and Jibberish, she loves to chant one of Dora's classics in espanol: "Bate bate chocolate." You've got to keep it fresh, people.

A Mother Heart

It's absolutely amazing to me how quickly little girls take to mothering. We gave Teagan a baby doll for Christmas when she'd just turned one. I had thought she was too young, but after a playdate at a friend's house spent cuddling a doll I realized that she just needed to be given a chance. To see my baby carrying a baby around was just darling.

From the get go, she knew how to cradle it and give it a bottle. I marveled at how someone so young could be so loving and nurturing. Then she got distracted and dropped it on its head. Back to life. Back to reality.

Her mothering has become more sophisticated since then, and now she's comforting her babies when she imagines that they cry. I walked into her room the other day to find her with a doll over her shoulder, resting her head on its head, patting its back and saying "It's okay...I know...I know..." I nearly cried. That's a lie. I cried. I like to think that I had a smidge to do with it - although I know that so much of it is natural and inherent.

As I was reporting this to Brandon while we were going through the bedtime routine, we both let out a resounding "Aww" and turned to look at Teagan who was playing with her little kitchen. Taking one baby out of the dishwasher and another out of the oven. She didn't learn that part from me.

Baby Tarzan and Mike Wowski

Like most toddlers, Teagan fixates on our or two obsessions at a time. Move over Dora, here comes Disney. Not a day goes by that she doesn't ask to watch Baby Tarzan and Mike Wowski (or Mo-sters). We had Tarzan on VHS, so were limited to playing it upstairs in the loft. She could take or leave Tarzan once he grows up, but she loves baby Tarzan in the opening few minutes of the movie. She wants to watch those scenes again and again. Funnily enough, she isn't familiar with the concept that it takes time to rewind a videotape. Boy, do I feel old. It was taking us forever and I'm fairly confident we're wearing it out, so I found the DVD on sale at Target and jumped on it. Now it's a lot easier to enjoy Baby Tarzan, and the rest of the gang if she decides to stick it out.

Her other fixation these days is Monsters, Inc. She says "Ees okay" when the monsters are being scary and we laugh in hopes that she doesn't let them scare her. She loves Boo and has taken to throwing her head back and saying "Aah" in hopes of us hurling treats at her. She's forever talking about Sulley, Mike "Wowski", Randall and Boo. In fact, she's so eager to watch it that she often pulls it off the shelf for me and sometimes before I can stop her, she yanks it out of its case. Perhaps that's why it's scratched beyond recognition. We can't play chapters 5-17 without a maddening amount of skipping and pausing. So we borrowed a copy from the Giffords (heaven bless them) and Natalie told me that Disney actually replaces damaged DVDs for a small fee. So instead of us shelling out nearly $30 for a new copy, we can get it replaced for $6.95. Yet another reason to love Disney.

We're looking forward to the prequel to Monsters, Inc. that comes out in the summer. Thinking about taking her to her first movie. We'll see if she gets her movie going attitude from her mum or her dad...