Words

As The Chicka starts to talk more and more, I think that there will be more and more posts without pictures. Posts like this one.

We've been trying to teach Bella cheerfulness. It's a difficult thing for a sub-two year old to grasp. But we're trying anyway. When she fusses about trivial things, we tell her not to fuss and then we ask her to be cheerful. There have been countless instances where we have asked her to be cheerful and she has sucked in that lip and with very wide eyes given us a quivering "mmHMMM!" It's very cute to see her trying so hard. Well, we've decided to take it a step farther, and now we ask her what cheerful girls say, to which she is to respond, "Yipeee!". It's quite cute, because it comes out a bit closer to "appeeee!!" than yipee. What a blessing to have a child so eager to please!

The other day, Bella was having a rough time of it. She was crying at the littlest things, and just having a bad day all around. At one point, she put my purse over her shoulder, walked to the door, banged on it, and said, "Bye!"
I said, "Are you leaving?"
She said, "Bye!"
I said, "Where are you going?"
She said, "Papa!"
I said, "Are you going to see Papa?"
She said, "Yeah! Bye!" and banged on the door some more.
When I failed to open the door for her and let her out to tumble down the stairs, she started wailing and pounding on the door more. So we called Papa so that she could talk to him. Poor kiddo. Who knows what the neighbors think when they hear our toddler pounding on the door to get out.