Terribly Wonderful Twos :)

I wanted to record some of the fun that Mackenzie provides us with these days. I hope, despite the challenges of the two year old year, that I remember how truly fun this age can be. I heard someone else call them the terribly wonderful two instead of the other famous name for the twos :P. And I think that is good to think of it that way, instead of dwelling on the difficulties of parenting an emerging little person full of their own opinions!

Mackenzie is such a chatterbox. She talks ALL. THE. TIME. Seriously. Well, she does still go into shy mode occasionally with new people. But other than that. ALL. THE. TIME!!! And I love it. She is constant entertainment.

She often calls Keelyn "her best fwend". How sweet to know that she already truly loves her little sister. She has picked up on what I tell her & now whenever she's doing something (say eating some yogurt, for instance), and Keelyn's just chilling, she'll look at me & say "when Kee-wen gets older, she eat yogurt wiff me??". And like everything else this chatterbox says, she requires me to acknowledge what she's said (or she'll repeat it until I do!). I am so happy she loves her baby sister, I know that there are many people who struggle much more with sibling rivalry. Maybe my day will come, but for now, such love. I'll have to remember this early love to get me through any future rivalry!

She's becoming very aware of feelings & how she can create various feelings in those around her. I have many times told her when she's disobeying that she's making me sad. Now, if she disobeys (typically this is not coming/walking away when I want her to come to me!) she'll look back & say, "You sad??". Then, when I say yes, she'll often change her ways and come to me & obey. Then, she'll say, "I make you happy?". "VERY happy", I answer!

She's developed a strong sense of what music she wants to listen to on the radio in the car. She's currently enrolled in music class again with Brannon & we listen to that CD alot in the car. She'll say "Don't Like/Want this Song" repeatedly as I skip through the songs until we get to one she wants to listen to. Or if she knows exactly what she wants to listen to, she'll tell me the title to find. And sometimes, when she actually allows me to put it on the radio instead of her CDs, and a song comes on (usually a song with a male singing) she'll say, "No Man Singing Mommy!", meaning she wants me to change the song to a female singer! Or if it is on commercials, she'll say "No Man/Woman Talking!!", and of course, that means change the channel to a song I want Mommy!

And lastly, with an ever-expanding vocabulary, comes some almost correct usage of the English language & other "Mackenzie-isms". Some favorites of mine:

• When I ask her if she was good at preschool, she'll sometimes say "I no eat my fwends". This means she didn't bite her friends! Or so I think, I don't think she struggles with cannibalism :) She actually hasn't bitten anyone in quite some time, but this sticks out in her mind as something to note I guess because I harped on it for a while.
• One of her favorite songs is "The ABC's", only she calls it "ABCD's".
• I love the common mispronunciation of the letter 'L' using a 'Y' sound instead. I will miss her saying things like, "Kee-wen is so yittle" when she learns to correctly say little.