26 months!

Vivien is becoming so verbal lately.  Vivien knows a ton of words now and can combine them into sentences quite well.  She also now knows how to count to at least to 5, and then a few other random numbers.  She has been big into telling long stories this month and once she gets going, she is talking in Vivi language and no one can understand her.  She is obviously very excited about her topic though and often laughs hysterically at the end!

She is a daredevil just like her older brother.  We put out a rope swing over winter vacation and she was the only kid in the neighborhood other than Ryder who would go on it.  The other kids like to watch people swing, but won't consider getting on it.  Vivi on the other hand gets on and yells "Go high!"  She's really into hiking out in the woods, jumping on things and rock climbing.  She loves to be outside and will go out even when it's freezing.

Vivien finally loves books.  She was so-so on them for a while, but now she likes to read before bed every night and at other times throughout the day and she has favorite books.  Just like Ryder, she loves Sandra Boynton books.  They both loves reading her books before bed- that's 90% of our reading routine.  She loves Moo, Baa, La, La, La, Doggies and The Going to Bed Book.  At this point she can finish pretty much every sentence in all of them!

Vivi has been sleeping well.  She still wakes up crying occasionally, but usually she cries for a couple of minutes and then goes back to sleep.  It has always been hard to deal with her at night because just going into her room makes it worse and she never wanted to sleep with us, so all we could do was hold her, which of course meant no sleep for us.  Now she will sleep in our bed, so on those night when the crying lasts longer, we can bring her in and she will go right back to sleep.

Vivien is still a bit of a picky eater.  She only likes bananas and apples as far as fruit goes.  She likes a few vegetables, potatoes, sweet potatoes and broccoli are a few that she will eat plain.  She will eat pretty much anything if it is in soup or a pasta dish though, so that helps with the variety.  She will also eat any and all kinds of treats- especially if they are chocolate!  She has also gotten really good at drinking out of an ordinary cup lately, so that's getting easy.

Playing with her dollhouse, which is usually the site of a devastating house fire ;)

Valentine's Vivi

Look at that curly hair!

She is almost always happy and smiling

Silly Vivi

Look at that happy girl!